Trifles

The Time Has Come Where We Have To Interpret the Law from a Feminist Perspective

Writer sometimes tends to use their own life’s experiences, influences, and beliefs to create their own stories; this is exactly the case for the creations of “Trifles” written in the early 1900's by Susan Glaspell. Glaspell was one of the feministic writers of the early twentieth century that promoted her personal ideas. Her ideas of feminism were influenced by her social idealistic writer husband, George Cook.”I began writing plays because my husband forced me to” (Glaspell). The oppression of women back then was to the point that they were not fully acknowledged as their own person. Their primary role was to take care of their families, keep the house clean, and perform all their caretakers’ duties. In writing “Trifles”, she wrote this play during a time of controversial feminist issues which drew from her past and current experience events. Trifles are mostly viewed as an example of early feminist drama, because it shows two female characters, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale, and their ability to sympathize with the victim's wife, Minnie Foster. They understand her motives, which ultimately leaded them to the evidence they found against her.  Glaspell demonstrated how the male assumption that the women were insignificant members in a male dominated society.  She made a strong feminist statement that women are more than just housewives, or homemakers, and they are more intelligent than they are perceived. Minnie Foster was a woman who had been mentally victimized by her husband so much to the point she decided to kill him, because she blames him for her cold and lonely life.  The men's in this play approached the house as if it was a crime scene, where as Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale accompanied the men's on the investigation, view the house as a home.  This can somewhat concluded that the men's and the women's already have a very different reason on why they are there.

Trifles”...