Gender Roles In Trifles

Playwrights have the ability to control the way the reader directionally and physically visualize their work. Susan Glaspell, the playwright of Trifles, uses the elements of drama to aid the creation of a stimulating mystery. In Trifles, Glaspell tells the tale of a murder needing to be solved through two different perspectives represented by the two different sexes. A group of men and women enter the Wright’s farmhouse to find evidence and investigate the crime scene of Mr. Wright’s murder. In order to create her play, Glaspell employs the elements of setting and language to unravel her play both directly and indirectly. As a playwright Glaspell uses these elements in her play, Trifles, to illustrate gender inequality, and more specifically, that traditional gender roles are often incorrect and unnecessary.
Historically, men and women have been placed in specific gender roles that categorize how they should behave. The setting of Trifles takes places in the typical area of the home mainly inhabited by women, the kitchen, in this case “a gloomy kitchen” (Glaspell 915). Typical of the male gender stereotype, the men leave the kitchen and go off to other rooms because they cannot even believe that any useful evidence would be found in the …show more content…
Once the women figure out Mrs. Wright’s motive, they keep it a secret by refraining to use language about the crime and instead use womanly terms. The word knot in the play originally conveys a form of sewing a quilt but by the end, the women use the word to symbolize “(Mrs. Wright) knotting the rope around (her) husband 's neck” and “they will 'knot ' tell, (because) the bond among women is the essential knot"(Pollaro 3). The women decide to work together because the men refuse to take them seriously. The use of language works to the women’s advantage proving they can do and be more than the specific roles that society labels