Feminist Analysis Of Trifles By Suzan Glaspell

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"Trifles ' is a literary play by Suzan Glaspell written in 1916 and it was inspired by real life events that surrounded a murder case she had covered as a young reporter in Iowa. At the beginning of the play, five characters enter into Wright’s house, and it appears that Mr.Wright has been murdered using a rope in the middle of the night while he was asleep. The five characters included the county attorney, the sheriff and his wife and two Wright’s household neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Hale. (Glaspell 18). The county attorney then leads males only upstairs where they search the crime scene in an attempt to find out the killer’s motive. However, a closer analysis of different scenarios covered in the play shows the society as patriarchal since the women characters are symbols of gender that has accepted to be voiceless for male dominance to prevail. Feminism was illustrated at the very beginning of the play when men entered into the house first as a group and then the women group followed them. …show more content…
Also, when the county attorney took the group of men only upstairs where the crime took a place and women were left downstairs in the kitchen and nobody of them showed any kind of protest or objection. Also, The county attorney had talked about the poor state of the house, which became the women’s discussion subject when men went upstairs. On the other hand, the women praised Mrs. Wright for the way she had kept the house condition through her excellent housekeeping skills (Irigaray 815). In addition, the women express their concern that the county attorney’s remarks negatively affect the bereaved wife’s emotional status. Another perspective of feminism when the women searched the kitchen place in search of the items that Mrs. Wright had requested them from the jail. In the process of searching the house, the women soon discover that, a pet bird that Mrs. Wright has been keeping had been killed in the same manner that Mr. Wright has been murdered; a rope around the neck. However, the women are in fear to discuss about the dead bird openly. The series of behaviors clearly indicate that the women knew that the detectives could rely "on the bird’s death" to reinforce the evidence against the chief suspect, Mrs. Wright. Again, when they hear the men returning, they hide it and behave as if they had not been talking. These behaviors are manifestations of a patriarchal society where the kitchen is taken as a place made for women and with which men had nothing to. The men had traditionally held prejudices that led them to ignore the kitchen space as a potential source of evidence. The men’s notion is supported by the evidence that the detective team disregarded the women affairs as “trifles." The men went ahead to search the spaces in which they believed men had dominance. At one point, the sheriff retorted “nothing here but kitchen things” (Glaspell 1030). This remark clearly depicts Mrs. Wright’s sewing basket, where the dead canary was found, as women’s sphere, where nothing important could be found. To make the matter worse, the men kicked off some of the items they found on their way across the kitchen to demonstrate that the items were like “obstacles to the investigation process.” Another manifestation of the feminism in the patriarchal society is witnessed by the behavior the men expressed when they found anything feminine in the crime scene. It seemed that the men had preset minds even before the beginning of investigations. When …show more content…
The author exonerates the fears and problems under which the women live in the face of patriarchy. When the men descended from upstairs, the women hid the dead bird and stopped their conversation shortly, an indication that the patriarchal force had rendered them voiceless, and their concerns considered peripheral. At one point, Mrs. Peter remarks Mrs. Wright “had a hard man," for anyone to pass the day with, citing that this could be the reason for keeping a pet bird (Clarkson 284). Due to male dominance, the women had remained at the peripherals and isolated, and their lives became “devalued and

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