The play Trifles by Susan Glaspell is based on true events that happened at the turn of the 20th century in Iowa. Although a murder mystery, the play explores gender-based themes like power between males and females, gender roles, and gender relations, among others relevant to the play’s setting and contemporary society. Gender roles, in particular, are…
Susan Glaspell’s “A Jury of Her Peers” presents the roles that women are expected to play in society. Minnie Wright is a woman who suffers cruelty and neglect at the hands of her husband. She is a hostage in her own home and is the victim of an abusive relationship. The longer he holds her…
Trifles is a play about the death of a woman’s spirit. She is overpowered by her dominating husband and in the end, killed him for suffocating her spirit. Glaspell characterizes male characters differently than females. The men of this play act towards their wives like a man would in 1916. The men are dominating and…
The play Trifles was written by Susan Glaspell in 1916. This play takes place in one house, the house of Mr. and Mrs. Wright. The play opens with three men and two women entering Wright’s abandoned house. There is unfinished business everywhere you look. Dirty dishes and a loaf of bread are setting out on…
Susan Glaspell’s short story, A Jury of Her Peers, was written long before the modern women’s movement began, yet her story reveals, through Glaspell’s use of symbolism, the role that women are expected to play in society. Glaspell illustrates how this highly stereotypical role can create oppression for women and also bring harm to men…