Analysis - Trifles by Susan Glaspell PDF

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TRIFLES ANALYSIS Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory We go to Maya Angelou when we to find out why the caged bird sings, but we head to Susan Glaspell when want to know how the caged bird… croaked. The dead canary and its broken cage are by far the most glaring symbols in Trifles, so we guess we'd better break them down, right? Right. Bird = Minnie Foster First, let's all agree that the canary represents Mrs. Wright, who used to be known to the world as Minnie Foster before she inexplicably married the biggest jerk in Dickson County. Here's a quote to prove it, in case you're not convinced: MRS. HALE: She used to wear pretty clothes and be lively, when she was Minnie Foster, one of the town girls singing in the choir. But that—oh, that was thirty years ago. (58) Oooh, what have we here? Pretty clothes… like pretty feathers? Lively… like a chipper bird? Singing in a choir… like a songbird? There's no doubt about it: that canary is Minnie. In case anybody forgot this line, Glaspell also include this one: MRS HALE: She—come to think of it, she was kind of like a bird herself—real sweet and pretty, but kind of timid and—fluttery. How—she—did—change. (109) Okay, now there's no possible way to contest it. The canary represents Minnie Foster: that sweet, fluttery girl who was transformed into the lonely, depressed Mrs. Wright by years of her husband's neglect and emotional abuse. Cage = Sucky Marriage and Escape All right, let's talk about this cage. If Minnie Foster is the canary, then we can definitely see how the cage could represent the stifling marriage that turned her into depressed Mrs. Wright. We know that the cranky John Wright demanded silence in his house. Add that to the geographic isolation that the remote house created, and Minnie Foster was definitely in a cage. However, when we meet the cage, the door has been violently torn off of it. We learn that John Wright tore the door off so that he could wring the bird's neck. Ironically, though, this symbolic murder of Minnie Foster is what leads to murder of John Wright. For Minnie, it's the last straw, and it's the thing that makes her strangle her husband in much the same way that he killed the bird. So even though the cage's broken door is a sign of Mr. Wright's penchant for bird-murder, it might also symbolize the violent way in which Mrs. Wright finally escaped her cage of a marriage. In a way, she not only murders John, the bird-like Minnie Foster also murders Mrs. Wright. Let's talk about these shattered jars of cherry preserves in the cabinet, or as the County Attorney likes to call them: "a nice mess" (27). Because nobody lit a fire over night, the kitchen got so cold that the jars froze and burst. (Aren't you glad you don't live in the olden days?) When the menfolk see a bunch of sticky, glass-infused goop they only see a disgusting mess, but women immediately know how much work it represents. Take this quote from Mrs. Hale: MRS. HALE: She'll feel awful bad after all her hot work in the hot weather. I remember the afternoon I put up my cherries last summer. (55)

So in a way, the preserves are symbolic of all the "woman's work" that the men constantly disrespect throughout the play. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters immediately feel bad for Mrs. Wright when they see the preserves have shattered, and they mention that Mrs. Wright is worried about them. SHERIFF: Well, can you beat the women! Held for murder and worryin' about her preserves. COUNTY ATTORNEY: I guess before we're through she may have something more serious than preserves to worry about. HALE: Well, women are used to worrying over trifles. (30-32) That's right the trifles of the title is originally a reference to these "insignificant" preserves that the women are worried about. So it seems like the preserves themselves can definitely be seen as representing the world of women as a whole. If that's so, what does it mean that they're shattered? Could this represent the abuse heaped on Mrs. Wright by her husband and also the abuse heaped on women by men in general? Oh yes, yes it can. We also think there's something to the fact that the preserves were shattered by cold. Over and over again, the characters talk about how cold it is in the house even with the fire. Maybe we're crazy, but it seems like the cold can be equated with the frigid temperature of the Wrights' relationship… which was eventually shattered by violence. SETTING Where It All Goes Down Early 1900's America, the Kitchen of Wright Farmhouse Turn of the 20th century, America It's a wee bit tricky (because Glaspell doesn't give us an exact year) but we do know the play was first performed in 1916. So we'll go ahead and assume it's set somewhere around then, but probably a little earlier. The thing that's totally clear is that this play is set in a time in America when women got way less respect than they do now. Not that we don't still have room to improve, but women didn't even have the right to vote when Trifles was first performed. Suffrage didn't come around till 1920 when, after years of struggle, the feminist movement finally shoved the 19th Amendment through Congress. The thing that's important to realize is that the slew of sexist comments from the menfolk in the play represent the attitude of most men in the country. The play's ladies aren't the victims of a few random jerks; they're the victims of a whole society of jerks who don't even realize how jerky they are… which sort of makes them even bigger jerks. The Wright Farmhouse Mrs. Hale gives us the details on the Wright house here: Mrs. Hale: I stayed away because it weren't cheerful [...]. I've never liked this place. Maybe because it's down in a hollow and you don't see it from the road. I dunno what it is but it's a lonesome place and always was. (101) Yeah, that doesn't sound like anybody's dream home. We can totally see why Mrs. Wright might've gone a little nuts in this place. It's totally isolated, because it's in a hollow (which is like a little valley).

Mrs. Wright had zero contact with anybody except for her jerk of a husband; she couldn't even wave at people who were cruising by on the road. It's not hard to get how Mrs. Wright might've felt like a bird in a cage. The Kitchen The only part of the Wright house that we actually see on stage is the kitchen, which doesn't sound so nice. The very first line of the stage directions tells us straight up that the kitchen is "gloomy" (1). Ugh, that's incredibly depressing, considering that Mrs. Wright probably had to spend most of her time in that kitchen. On top of being generally gloomy, the kitchen is also full of signs of "incompleted work" (1). There are dishes in the sink, a filthy dishtowel, dirty rags, and a random loaf of stale bread. Later we also learn that one of the cabinets is full of sticky, oozing preserves because Mrs. Wright's jam jars burst over night. The men see the dirty, gloomy kitchen as a sign that Mrs. Wright was a bad housekeeper, which in their mind translates to her being a bad woman in general. They're so oblivious to the female perspective that they don't even seem to take into account the fact that Mrs. Wright had to sort of leave things as they were when she was hauled off to jail. Kind of hard to keep things tidy at home when you're... not there. Probably the most important thing to think about here is that the kitchen is symbolic of women in general. In this time period especially, the kitchen was thought of as the woman's place. The men are so dismissive of it that they don't even bother to look for clues there, which is pretty bizarre since they're investigating a crime committed by a woman. The Sheriff even has this slightly hilarious line: "Nothing here but kitchen things" (26). (Oh, classic Sheriff.) The irony of this line pokes us in the face later when it's in the kitchen that Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters later find the clue for which the men are looking. Sorry, Sheriff. Guess you should've paid a little more attention to "kitchen things." NARRATOR POINT OF VIEW None Like most every other play, Trifles is all dialogue and doesn't have a narrator through whose eyes or voice we learn the story. The characters get out there on stage, giving us all the drama they've got in them, and it's up to us to put it all together. GENRE Drama, Mystery, Parable It's no big secret how Trifles qualifies as drama. It's a play, right? It's a piece of literature written mostly in dialogue that's never fully realized until it's brought to life by actors in front of an audience. This play also happens to be a mystery. Sure, it's pretty obvious from the beginning that Mrs. Wright killed her husband. Her excuse that she somehow slept through him being strangled beside her in bed is pretty flimsy. Unlike a lot of mysteries, though, this isn't really a whodunit. It's a whydunit. The main thing we want to know is why Mrs. Wright snapped and offed her hubby. Trifles might also qualify as a parable since it's a pretty simple story with a strong message. Throughout, Glaspell whacks us in the face with just how disrespectful and condescending men can

be towards women. Seriously, these guys are all-out jerks. Nowhere is this clearer than when the whydunit is solved, and we learn that Mrs. Wright snapped after her husband snapped the neck of her canary—and this was after years of neglect. Yup, seems like Mr. Wright was really Mr. Wrong. TONE Dark, Opinionated This play is definitely dark. We're got a brutal murder, the corpse of dead bird, and the first stage direction tells us we're in "gloomy kitchen" of a "now abandoned farmhouse" (1). From the first moment they see the stage, the audience is going to know they aren't in for a light comedy. It's also totally clear that the author of this play has some strong opinions about the treatment of women. Check out this set of lines: COUNTY ATTORNEY: No—it's not cheerful. I shouldn't say she had the homemaking instinct. MRS. HALE: Well, I don't know as Wright had, either. (43-44) Here, Glaspell shows how sexist men are by assuming that women can only be worth anything if they're good homemakers. Next, she cuts that idea apart by jabbing us with the idea that it's also men's responsibility to make a home. As a writer, she's not being all that subtle with her opinions. But given the massive amount of oppression that women dealt with in her time, it probably just wasn't the time for subtlety. WRITING STYLE Realistic, Political There's no doubt that, with Trifles, Glaspell was channeling the theatre's founding father of realism: Henrik Ibsen. Just like Ibsen, Glaspell has her characters speak like normal people do.

Yeah, it may sound a little stilted to us today, but Midwestern farm folk really used to talk like the characters in the play. When Glaspell's audiences heard Hale say, "How do, Mrs. Wright, it's cold ain't it?" it sounded totally normal to them (20).

Besides the dialogue, Glaspell also puts her characters in realistic situations. Even if murders don't happen every day in the play's rural setting, it's believable that such a murder could happen. It's not as fantastic as, say, aliens coming down and strangling Mr. Wright.

Also like Ibsen, Glaspell used her realistic plays to critique society. Similarly to Ibsen's A Doll's House, Trifles is totally unafraid to say, "Hey, society! Look at the way you're treating women!" The realistic settings and situations made it harder for audiences to say to themselves, "Meh, that's not happening in my backyard." TITLE The title of the play is oozing with irony. The title comes from this gem of a line from Hale: "Well, women are used to worrying about trifles" (132). He says this in response to the fact that Mrs. Wright

seems to be more worried about her preserves bursting than she is about the fact that she's being held for murder. After this line, all the guys yuck it up about how women never worry about important stuff, and then the guys head off to go do important man stuff like looking through the bedroom for evidence. The title's irony rears its head when Mrs. Hale's and Mrs. Peters' concern with trifling women stuff ends up solving the mystery. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters would never have figured out what happened if they hadn't stayed in the kitchen (a.k.a. the woman's place) and been looking through Mrs. Wright's quilt scraps. So it seems like all this unimportant woman stuff weren't just trifles after all. The title also works on a larger level: it also represents how women as a whole are treated like unimportant trifles....