A response paper on Susan Glaspell's Trifle
A response on Susan Glaspell’s Trifles The Trifle, the title suggests that the play is about something that is not important or insignificant actions. However, as the story goes, the truth is far from that. At the beginning of the story, the readers will notice that the two women, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peter are brought to the crime scene to gather some items for Mrs. Wright, suspected for murdering her husband, in jail. The women who have an intention to gather Mrs. Wright’s household stuff to be brought to the jail to make her feel comfortable turn to be the ones who find the evidence and motives of the murder. In Trifle, the title is ironic because it implies what is not important for men is actually the key for solving the murder and finding the motives of the murder. In Trifles, the division between the roles of men and women in that era symbolizes the separation between sexes and gender issues in a community. Women’s roles as described in the play are merely reproductive and social. These roles place women in the kitchen; bake, cook, sew and do patchwork, clean the house, take care of their husband, and other household chores. Moreover, women are not considered as partners in a marriage, but the possession of their husband. Mr. Wright suppresses the things that his wife loves and prevents her doing her own interests. Mrs. Wright feels she is not able to ‘bloom’ as she wishes through her love of music and she becomes a timid and isolated housewife under her husband’s coldness. Besides, women’s intelligent is underestimated by men, so when women expresses their opinions about serious subjects or they have intelligent thoughts, they are not taken seriously by men. In contrast, in Trifles, the male characters are considered as intellectually superior to their wives who are treated as being trifle (not important and silly) for their concern in domestic details such as preserves, quilts, and knots. As the male characters are looking for the evidence, they begin to