Susan Glaspell Case

The author of the play "trifles" is Susan Glaspell who is known as an American Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, actress, director, novelist, biographer and poet. She made an important contribution for the development of American modern drama, but she had been ignored as a female playwright. In 1916, Susan Glaspell wrote her most famous play "trifles" which is regularly anthologized in American literature textbooks.

Actually, "Trifles" adapted from a murder which Susan Glaspell had reported when she was a journalist. And this play tells us a story that Mrs.Wright is suspected of killing her husband; sheriff Henry Peters and the country attorney George Henderson come to Mr.Wright's house for investigation, with the help of Lewis Hale who found the body; and two women Mrs. Peters, Mrs. Hale who ignored by men. The investigation is mainly to found out motivation which would prove that it is Mrs.Wright killed her husband. However, men fail to find out the evidence, while women find out key clue by accident and hide it away as a result. The surprised end raises our thinking about women's miserable life and awakening in that sociality.

The drama shows us women's Miserable Life in that sociality. The title of the play, "trifles", is an irony of men's discrimination on women. As Mr. Hale says in the play: "women are used to worrying over trifles". These words are real portrayal of women's life at that time, when men took the lead in every fields of social life, while women were bound to the endless housework. They were cooks, cleaners, nurses, etc. However, they were looked down upon by men, in whose minds, women were nothing and not worthy of respect. Men were the rules and laws then.

The drama also shows women's awakening that they have courage to defend for themselves and make decision independently under the inequity. According to "trifles", Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters showed strong sympathy to Mrs. Wright and they decided to hide the evidence shows their process of awakening and unify. Looking at the saying said by County Attorney, "ah. Loyal to your sex, I see...," this is the dialogue between the County Attorney and Mrs. Hale. Here Mrs. Hale wanted to tries her best to defense of Mrs. Wright and managed to convince the men that Wright is innocent and she is a good woman. She even feels extremely guilty when she recognizes her failure to help Mrs. Wright in desperation. So she says to herself :"Oh, I wish I' d come over here once in a while! That was a crime! That was a crime! Who' s going to punish that?" At that moment, she realizes that all the women share the same experience: "We all go through the same things. It's all a different kind of the same thing. " She is aware that they should help each other. And she tries to persuade Mrs. Peters to help Minnie, for whom, however, that's a difficult process to go through.