Trifles, Susan Glaspell

"Action is male, Silence is Female"

Feminist theory is centered at the treatment of women living in a patriarchal society, especially illustrated in the short play Trifles. Feminism is the study of women's experience under the long tradition of male rule in society, which silenced women's voices, warped their lives, and treated their concerns as unimportant. Susan Glaspells Trifles depicts the plight of women and their subordination living under the negative effects of a patriarchal society. While Trifles embodies the problems of alienation women faced in the hands of a patriarchal society, in the story one woman is willing to overcome the challenge of being trifled with. This woman is Mrs. Hale.

The play depicts one woman who deals with this kind of alienation. Mrs. Wright, who has been suppressed, oppressed, and subjugated by a patriarchal husband. Her identity is lost because of her husband's expectations of her. Mrs. Wright is found at the crime scene and put in jail. She asks her friends, who are wives of the detectives investigating, to collect her apron and shawl. While the men scamper about trying to solve the crime of who did it, the women rifle through Mrs. Wrights belonging in search of her request. Noticing simple things out of place in the home or the trifles (as the men call it), they inadvertently find clues that reveal Mrs. Wright to be the murderer. However, Mrs. Hale quietly insists on preserving her own identity by protecting Mrs. Wright from the men who seek to convict her of murder. The major idea I want to write about has to do with the way Mrs. Hale stands behind Mrs. Wright even though it seems like the men would rather lock her up and throw away the key. I'd like to begin by comparing and contrasting Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters. In the beginning of Trifles, we see the subject of feminism from a woman's experience under patriarchy, which silenced her voice, distorted her life, and treated their concerns as peripheral. You notice this to be so because Mrs. Peters is struggling against what she is hearing the men say versus what she feels herself. When she finds Mrs. Wrights broken fruit jar she says, "Oh her fruit; it did freeze. She worried about that when it turned so cold. She said the fire'd go out and her jars would break." Mr. Hale then says, "well women are used to worrying over trifles." (Glaspell, 1043) Her voice was silenced by the man's failure to recognize her concerns as legitimate. When the women express their concerns, their observations has been silenced from speaking any further. Being silenced alienates the women, placing them in a lower status. Then you see an alternative, Mrs. Hale tells Mrs. Peters that she would hate for the men to be in her kitchen snooping around and criticizing, Mrs. Peters responds by saying "Of course it's no more than their duty". (Glaspell, 1043) This reflects to me a woman who has been so silenced because of her patronizing husband while Mrs. Hale was willing to recognize the damage the men have done by silencing women.

The domestic system the men have set up for their wives and their disregard for them after the rules and boundaries have been laid down prove to be the men's downfall. The men are outside looking for clues in the barn, completely unaware or unaltered by the fact that a woman could possibly have committed such an atrocious crime. Because women are viewed as having no power the men over look the evidence in the house; The house is for the women and their trifles. At the end of "Trifles" the women find Mrs. Wrights dead bird, with a broken neck. Coincidentally the same way her husband was murdered. Mrs. Peters notices something in a cupboard "Why, here's a bird cage! Did she have a bird, Mrs. Hale?" Mrs. Hale says, "Why I don't know whether she did or not- I've not been here for so long. She continues, "But he was a hard man, Mrs. Peters. Just to pass the time of day with him- [Shivers.] like a raw wind that gets to the bone." (1048) Mrs. Hale knew Mrs. Wright as Minnie Foster, a childhood friend. She remembers her singing in the choir, and being nicely dressed. This happy child later turned into an unhappy woman, with few things in life to look forward to. Mrs. Hale regrets not spending more time with