Trifles by Susan Glaspell depicts a world in which women are ignored in society. The play takes place in the Wright home after Mr. Wright has been murdered. Mr. Peters and Mr. Hale come to the scene to investigate the crime that has taken place. The investigators believed that Mrs. Wright is to blame for her husband's death, but they have no idea why should would do that. As the men's wives -- Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale -- wait downstairs they end up solving the crime by paying attention to what their husbands call "trifles" -- trivial things that they believe have no bearing on the crime. Yet these "trifles" are the keys to the murder. The trifles in the play are symbolic of the many ways in which Mrs. Wright was oppressed. The fact that these "trifles" were found in the kitchen, where women were confined to in that society, is also representative of the oppression that women faced. All of the clues to the solving the murder are found in kitchen "trifles." First of all, the bird is quite symbolic. The dead canary could be a symbol for what exactly Mrs. Wright is capable of (i.e....
murder). It could also be representative of Mr. Wright's oppressive hand and how he killed Mrs. Wright's soul if one were to think of the canary as symbolic of Mrs. Wright's spirit. The fact that the bird is in a special box in the house and not buried somewhere shows that Mrs. Wright didn't mind -- or perhaps even wanted -- others finding it. Why did Mrs. Wright keep the dead bird in the box? This could also point to the idea that the bird is symbolic of Mrs. Wright's soul or freedom because she was similar to this bird -- being kept in the house by an oppressive husband. The dead bird, which was probably one very vocal and full of life, was killed -- its true spirit smashed -- just like Mrs. Wright was probably a different person before she married her husband and he killed her spirit. Mrs. Hale says, "She -- come to think of it, she was kind of like a bird herself -- real sweet and pretty, but kind of timid and fluttery" (Myers 938).
El Dorado by Edgar Allan Poe Susan Glaspell worked as a legislative reporter for Des Moines Daily News between 1899 and 1901, during which time she witnessed and covered the trial of Margaret Hossack, accused of attacking and murdering her husband. Glaspell kept files that recorded the entire investigation throughout several months and wrote Trifles 15 years later. The play has only one act and there are five characters altogether,
Subjective truth forms our perception of reality when regarding people, cultures, religion, or any other differentiating factor, and this is true of the male gender-perception of women. Plausibility structures, which govern our perspective and control how we perceive the Other, are part and parcel of every culture, gender, religion, and community. In fact, they are directly responsible for our ability to believe the seemingly unbelievable about others. For example, for
Pygmalion Effect and the Strong Women Who Prove it Wrong Make this fair statue mine…Give me the likeness of my iv'ry maid (Ovid). In Metamorphoses X, Ovid's Pygmalion prays that his idealized statue will become real. Strong female characters were a threat to Victorian sensibilities. Like the Pygmalion character in Ovid's Metamorphoses X, males in the Victorian age created ivory-like stereotypes of the ideal woman. In late nineteenth and in early
Message, Different Genres Literature is a means by which people can raise questions about the society they live in and address issues of concern to them. One of the questioned often raised relates to the role of women in society. Female writers are able to use literature to express their opinions and explore what it means to be a woman in society. This was especially true in the times when
American Dream; Now a Distant Reality This book was chosen not just because of the way that the story has been written by the author Arthur Miller but also because it revolves around the 'great American dream of success.' The way that the author has shown the downfall of a family and how the main character of the story holds onto his hopes of success to the extent of obsession
Strong Females in Three Works Pygmalion: The female protagonist in George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion is Eliza Doolittle, and she begins her character development from a position of such awkward crudeness, sassiness and social weakness that she has a long, long way to go before she becomes a strong female. This makes her rise into feminism and womanhood and strength all the more dramatic. From rags to riches in a modest sense
Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.
Get Started Now