What is the significance of the title, Trifles

What is the significance of the title, Trifles

Unit VI: Drama and Identity introduces us to a glimpse of drama by a woman playwright. Women dramatists have been writing for a very long time, especially if you think of the worldwide historical context. However, recognition of their work is still an issue for many writers. Even though we expect that the progress in rights would, in turn, be reflected on the stage, there is still a lot of discussion about the imbalance of voices in theater. In 2014, in response to poor representation in Broadway, a group of women (three of whom are Chicago natives!) started The Kilroys to “mobilize others in our field and leverage our own power to support one another.”

The play we are going to read, Trifles, as explained in the Norton Anthology of American Literature, “premiered on August 8, 1916 at the Wharf Theater in Provincetown, MA. This one act play was based on a murder trial that Susan Glaspell covered as a young reporter in Des Moines, Iowa. Using careful timing, Glaspell delivers subtle revelations that draw the audience and the reader into this play. She definitely intended to shock and awaken the conscience of her audience and challenge their perceptions of justice and morality, while also focusing on the different experiences that men and women might have to the exact same objective fact or event. The play raises some interesting questions: Does justice change with perspective? If so, is it possible to handle it fairly? Since the first production in 1916, Trifles has become one of the most anthologized works in American theater history and is frequently cited as one of the great masterpieces of American theater. Now, it is rightfully considered a masterpiece of the early feminist movement.”

READINGS: WEEK 11

Susan Glaspell, “Trifles” pg 178

Watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGJTHi0rliA

Although this play is short, there are some many messages and ideas beneath the surface than what is actually presented. There are several ways to discuss this play, so you can choose which 2-3 questions to answer below in at least two short paragraphs..Remember when answering the questions, be sure to use evidence from the text to support your arguments. In be sure to answer the questions in complete, correct, detailed, and well-supported sentences.

What is the significance of the title, Trifles? In other words, what does it mean, and what role do trifles play within the text?

How does the setting of the play contribute to our understanding of Minnie Wright’s position?

What symbols exist in the play?

Who has the power, what kind, and how do they use/demonstrate it?

With whom does the audience/reader identify with?

From whose perspective do we see the events and/or characters of the play? Or, are we intended to remain outside the text, looking in objectively?

Please respond to two students with 5-7 sentence if you agree, disagree or try to either challenge or expand on what it is that they say to their post and explain why

Student 1 Margarita

Trifles is a one-act play written by Susan Glaspell. The play is a dramatic one-act scene where a wife is accused of murdering her husband. This play literally plays on the emotions and morality of the readers. As the reader, we assume that the wife did murder her husband. However, the play write incorporated many various aspects to give the wife valid reasoning to kill her husband. Throughout the reading, the readers are conflicted with the concept of justice and ethics. Although the play is only a one-act Glaspell was able to incorporate various themes of femininity, perspective, justice, and morality, which revealed various messages and symbols to be explored.

Susan Glaspell’s “Trifles” has many concepts that hold significance. By the title alone there is a meaning that it upholds. Trifles means a thing of little value or importance. In the play we see how there is a murder trial in the works; however, there is a lot of small details that seem unimportant but hold much significance. In the play, we are presented with the fact that a neighbor checks in on a neighbor only to find out that a tragedy occurred. “Why can’t I see him?” I asked her, out of patience. “‘Cause he’s dead,” says she. “Dead?” says I. She just nodded her head, not getting a bit excited, but rockin’ back and forth… She was still sitting that same way. “Has anybody been notified?” I asked. “No,” says she, unconcerned” (Gilbert, 179). The main character has no remorse or reaction about her husband dying. Of course, she could have been in shock; however, she could have at least called for help. Rather than being preoccupied with her husband’s death she is occupied with trifles. She is being “held for murder and worryin’ about her preserves” (Gilbert, 180). Even the women in the play express how “women are used to worrying over trifles” (Gilbert, 180). Furthermore, the women continue to worry about the trifles by telling the men not to upset the accused murder by saying “if l was you I wouldn’t tell her fruit was gone. Tell her it ain’t, Tell her it’s all right. Take this in to prove it to her. She-she may never know whether it was broke or not” (Gilbert, 186). Women seem to be underestimated by the men. One of the ladies says “my it’s a good thing the men couldn’t hear us. Wouldn’t they just laugh! Getting all stirred up over a little thing like a dead canary. As if that could have anything to do with-with-wouldn’t they laugh” (Gilbert, 186). These women seem to be used to being ridiculed that they simply assume that anything they care about is a trifle.

Although this play was short there were many symbols that portrayed an important message. For starters, the rocking chair served as a representation of motherhood and psychosis. “She was rockin’ back and forth. She had her apron in her hand and was kind of-pleating it” (Gilbert, 179). The main character, accused of murdering her husband, never had a child and we know this because the women “ wonder how it would seem never to have had any children around” (Gilbert, 186). Even though there were no children in the picture at that moment we can infer that there might have once been a child present for the fact that the women shared an anecdote of “when we homesteaded in Dakota, and my first baby died-after he was two years old” (Gilbert, 186). There has been such difficulty with the main character’s lifestyle. It seems as though Mrs. Wright’s marriage was miserable. John Wright was “a hard man… like a raw wind that gets to the bone” (Gilbert, 184). Mrs. Wright was a prisoner in her own home and marriage. This is further eluded when “she said she wanted an apron. Funny thing to want, for there isn’t much to get you dirty in jail, goodness knows. But I suppose just to make her feel more natural” (Gilbert, 182). Before Mrs. Wright was compared to a bird, “[really] sweet and pretty, but kind of timid and-fluttery” (Gilbert, 185). Furthermore, while “(examining the cage) [the]door [is] broke. One hinge is pulled apart. Looks as if someone must have been rough with it” (Gilbert, 184). The broken cage was a struggle for freedom, which is exactly what Mrs. Wright was experiencing along with the other women at the time.

Student 2 Pamela

This week, we read the play Trifles by Susan Glaspell. The play has a lot of hidden meanings, and the title itself points toward the ideas the writer was trying to convey to the audience. The title Trifles is significant because it highlights the fact that, in the play, the men don’t really see the full picture of what happened because they don’t consider the things they think are unimportant, which are thought of as trifles. For example, the men don’t think to look in the sewing box where the women find the dead bird because it never occurs to them that a sewing box could be important in a murder investigation. The women also notice a bunch of other “unimportant” things (the bread out of the bread box, uneven sewing, etc.) that lead them to the realization that Mrs. Wright killed her husband. Essentially, the meaning of the title and the play in general is that men don’t understand the world as well as they think they do because they don’t stop to consider things from a woman’s perspective. In fact, the men in this story thought it was a good idea to go investigate in the barn, completely disregarding the kitchen. Even though it was Mrs. Wright who was in custody and suspected of murdering her husband, they didn’t think to look in the place where she probably spent most of her time.

In the play Trifles, the audience is supposed to, as the story progresses, view what occurred through the perspective of a woman, namely Mrs. Wright. Because the story is set up with the men and the women talking amongst themselves and then occasionally talking with each other, the reader can really get a clear picture of how the two groups are filtering the information differently. The implication is that, if the incident was just shown through the men’s eyes, the audience wouldn’t understand what actually happened. Because it is the women who figure out what probably happened, the audience begins to identify with Mrs. Wright. Glaspell has the two women, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peterson, step inside the mind of Mrs. Wright. For example, after they discover the dead bird in Mrs. Wright’s sewing box, the stage notes say, “Their eyes meet. A look of growing comprehension, of horror. Steps are heard outside. MRS HALE slips box under quilt pieces, and sinks into her chair.” Then, they hide the bird in the box when the men enter and don’t tell them about it, implying that they understand what happened but want to figure out for themselves what to do with the information. This moment is also significant because it shows that women often don’t trust men to make the right judgment call when it comes to dealing with women, even if it’s their own husbands.