Understanding Feminism in Susan Glaspells Trifles free essay sample

In her play titled Trifles, she shows that women are smarter than the men in their lives give them credit for. Glaspell uses her play to make a very strong feminist statement that women are more than just housewives, or homemakers, and that they are more intelligent than they are perceived. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters quickly show how observant they are while the men in the story brush off their behavior as trivial. Mrs. Hale is the wife of a farmer and Mrs. Peters is the sheriff’s wife. They have accompanied the men, who are the sheriff, a neighbor, and the county attorney, to Mr. and Mrs.Wright’s farmhouse after Mr. Wright was found murdered. While the men are scoping out the house looking for what they deem as evidence that Mrs. Wright murdered her husband, the ladies work at collecting some of Mrs. Wright’s belongings to take to her at the prison. We will write a custom essay sample on Understanding Feminism in Susan Glaspells Trifles or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page The ladies unexpectedly find the evidence that their husbands and county workers are searching for and decide to hide it as they feel that the murder was justified. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters both find a quilt that Mrs. Wright was working on. Upon inspection of the quilt, they were able to conclude that something was terribly wrong with Mrs. Wright.They noticed that the quilting was erratic in the latest additions. As the men look over what they deem to be the insignificant troubles in Mrs. Wright’s life, such as the lack of tidiness in her home, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters put the pieces together to solve the mystery. As Phyllis Mael has stated, one could even liken this to putting the pieces together â€Å"like patches in a quilt† (281). The ladies even view the dead canary in a different way, saying that Mr. Wright â€Å"wouldn’t like the bird – a thing that sang† (Glaspell 1328) where as the men did not think anything of it. Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale noticed that Mrs.Wright must have truly loved the bird based on the pretty box she had placed it in for it’s impending burial. This helps them to decide to cover up the items so they would not serve as evidence as motive for the murder, but as things that are unimportant and frivolous as the men believe. The ladies were able to achieve this as they had access to the evidence and they were able to analyze it accordingly. Suzy Clarkson Holstein noted that these women have â€Å"access to knowledge because it is assumed they will not be able to make intelligent use of it† when they were ultimately able to change the course of the case (284). The ladies were able to use the men’s view of women as a protective cloak to hide Mrs. Wright’s actions. Mrs. Wright’s role in Glaspell’s play is one that shows how a woman can eventually self-destruct if she is required to suppress her own wants and desires to be able to meet the needs of her husband. Before becoming Mrs. Wright, Minnie Foster was a lovely girl full of hope and life. She loved to sing and she was a genuinely happy person that enjoyed the finer aspects of life. Mr. Wright was more of a serious person that did not enjoy things like singing and laughter.As Karen Alkalay-Gut mentioned in her essay titled â€Å"’Jury of her Peers’: The Importance of Trifles†, he â€Å"caged† Minnie and took away the beautiful canary that she had grown to love. She saw this as a metaphor for what her husband was doing to her and she just could not handle it any longer (6). From what you can infer from this play, as Glaspell never shows you Minnie’s perspective, Minnie felt hopeless in her marriage and she had to find a way to get out. Divorce was not very highly looked upon during these times, so she felt that she had no other choice if she was going to survive.When they found Mrs. Wright in her home after the murder, she was rocking back and forth in her rocking chair. She was in a state of shock and panic. She knew what she did and she didn’t know how to process the information, just like she did not know what to do when she saw the canary. When she found the canary, she placed it in a box lined with silk where her scissors are usually kept. Brian Sutton made an excellent observation when he mentioned that Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters construed the box as a â€Å"present† because of the luxurious nature of the box (172). Her husband’s death, however, had been brutal. The men in the play look at things in a different light and miss major points in their investigation because of their lack of a feminine view. When the men enter the Wright’s house, they instantly comment on the state of their home. Instead of seeing the things the way that their wives saw, they just took it as Mrs. Wright not keeping a good home for her husband. If they had trusted the women to be able to complete the task with them, they would have been able to see that there was more to the story.Instead, they left the door open for their wives to feel sympathy for the murderess and hide the important evidence they so desperately needed in order to convict Mrs. Wright of her crime. Instead, the woman that murdered her husband, regardless of her reasoning, could be set free. As explained by Karen Alkalay-Gut, the county attorney even â€Å"mocked Minnie’s concern† about some of the things she questioned when taken into custody (3). During the time of this play and the county that it occurred, men were superior to their wives.Their wives were to cater to their husbands and were referred to as their husband’s wives instead of as their own person. When Mrs. Wright murdered her husband, the men immediately chalked it up to feminine worries. Once the realization hit that it was much more than that, the husband’s began to change their attitudes. At this point in the play, the gender roles start to turn a bit. As stated by Karen Alkalay-Gut, Mr. Hale is referred to as Mrs. Hale’s husband â€Å"because he has, for the first time, been betrayed by his wife’s sex† (4). Mrs. Hale is, at least in this point in the play, superior to her husband.