Susan Glaspell’s Trifles is an early feminist play emphasizing women’s necessity to come together into a community[1] to overcome the patriarchal social system. The play offers both a critique of gender role and a critical analysis of coverture[2].
Glaspell based the play off of a murder trial she covered as a reporter in Davenport, Iowa. In the original trial, the murder weapon was an ax struck against a man’s head twice, but in Trifles Glaspell gives the ax to a young boy, who kills Mrs. Peter’s cat, “when [she] was a girl” (Glaspell: 360). Glaspell’s choice to move the act of using an ax to a male character is an attempt to create a dichotomy between men and women. She creates social normality where men are the ones who use axes, since they are the dominant-violent figures, while women are ones who have no business with an ax, since all ax-related needs in a woman’s life is taken care of by her big, strong man. The separate gender roles on display with the ax are also on display through how the women kept in the kitchen of the home—the private-sphere, where women belong—and the men went all through the property—placing them in the public-sphere, where communities and camaraderie exists.
As the men search for evidence of the murder around the house, the women discuss what the men would call ‘trifles’ and disclose a great amount of information to the audience on the farmer’s wife being held as a suspect. The woman being held, Minnie Foster Wright, a woman whose first “name is ‘derived from the German word for love’ (Alkalay-Gut 1995: 72)” (Ozieblo: 67) and maiden name “is resonant of care and nurture” (ibid.: 67). While her married name, “an ironical pun on her rights under the law and on that old dream of finding a ‘Mr. Right” (ibid.: 67), is an objection to coverture and women’s right to be more than just a maternal fixture to be possessed by a man.
The women, Mrs. Hale, a farmer’s wife, and Mrs. Peters, who is “married to the law” (Op. cit. 361), slowly piece together Minnie’s case and “like quilters, patch together the scenario of her life and of her guilt” (Ben-Zvi: 34). As a pair the women become stronger than just one woman can be when dealing with the male dominant voice and the women move from Mrs. Hale’s “just pulling out a stitch or two that’s not sewed very good” (Glaspell: 358) to concealing evidence from the men in the end, as a pair, feeling the empowerment that comes with seeing that someone else shares your problems and being able to come together. Dr. Jenny Spencer, in conversation, said that she speculated that after the play the women would have formed a bond that would allow them to go to one another later because they have together seen that other women deal with the same struggle that they do, thus forming a relationship beyond that with their husbands. The women see their value to one another and “not—just” (ibid.: 361) as possessions of men, as displayed by their few, demeaning interactions with the men who are not concerned with whether “[Minnie] was going to quilt it or just knot it!” (ibid.: 358). The women would come to be a community, where they could find comfort within one another and where that Minnie Foster was going to knot it is significant.
Mrs. Hale tells Mr. Henderson, the county attorney in the public-sphere, in the last line of the play, an important element of the play: that Minnie was going to “knot it” (ibid.: 361). The value of whether Minnie was going to knot it or quilt it did not initially appear to me and had to be developed through conversation with Dr. Ernest Gallo, professor of English and husband of an avid quilter, Dr. Alexandrina Deschamps, professor of Women Studies, and the previously stated Dr. Jenny Spencer. As Dr. Gallo said, “[Men] don’t give a damn about quilts,” and they do not concern themselves with the women beyond being possessions used to humor themselves. The men’s , Mr. Wright’s in particular, neglect of women’s need to be more than just housewives is shown in the certainty that Minnie was going to ‘knot it’ since her domesticated lifestyle did not allow her the relationship necessary to quilt, an activity that required more than one woman to be done. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters together are able to quilt the story of Minnie Foster and Mr. Wright into the story of a woman who is unable to quilt and must resort to knotting, since it can be done alone. Minnie’s necessity to knot was as Dr. Deschamps said, “[she] seized to be [her] own person.” Mr. Wright’s possession of Minnie is, as stated before, coverture, where she became a part of her husband and gave up her own voice. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters do not allow the same to happen to them and choose the “power that comes from choice—the choice of silence” (Ozieblo: 66). The women make “the choice of silence” (ibid.: 66), a choice that could not have been made by either of them if they had not come together to form a relationship and separate themselves from their husbands. In Mrs. Hale and Peter’s formation of a community, they see their ability to be more than just wives, and see the immediate benefit of empowerment: that as women they can see themselves as more than just “married to the law” (Glaspell: 361) or in Mrs. Hale’s case she can see herself as more than just a housewife who “doesn’t like [Minnie’s house] much” (ibid.: 359) because it is discomforting for her to venture outside of her husband’s own kitchen.
Women’s necessity to form a community to create feministic change is almost explicitly stated in Minnie’s inability to quilt, and also, in the first lines of the play where the women are hesitant to come into Mr. Wright’s home, where they may step over the boundaries of what is socially acceptable. Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale do not have to explain their hesitance when Mrs. Peters “(after taking a step forward)” says, “I’m not—cold” (ibid.: 354), but it is not a stretch to say it is because they are not comfortable coming into another’s private-sphere, where women for the most part reside, and critiquing a woman’s character. At first, the women are separate women, only aware of the discomfort that comes with having overstepped their boundaries in coming to the Wright’s, but develop the ability to quilt as they develop the ability to bond. Not only do the two concepts, community and coverture, both appear in the story, but they come together into one idea: women must overcome the coverture, where they only belong in the private-sphere of their male’s life. Women must use the freedom of having overcome that boundary to come into the public-sphere to create a community, the most necessary boundary to be passed to reach the goal of choice, even if their only choice is that “of silence” (Ozieblo: 66).
Works Cited
Ben-Zvi, Linda, Ed. Susan Glaspell: Essays on Her Theater and Fiction. Ann Arbor:
The University of Michigan Press, 1995.
Glaspell, Susan. “Trifles.” American Drama: Colonial to Contemporary. Comp. and Ed.
Stephen Watt and Gary A Richardson. Mason: Cengage, 2003. 354-361
Humm, Maggie. The Dictionary of Feminist Theory. Columbus: Ohio State University
Press, 1990.
Ozieblo, Barbara, and Jerry Dickey. Susan Glaspell and Sophie Treadwell. London: Routledge, 2008.
Waterman, Arthur E. Susan Glaspell. New York: Twayne, 1966.
[1] “Feminist theory defines community as a type of relationship — a sense of shared and warm identity between individual women” (Humm: 33).
[2] Dr. Alexandrina Deschamp defined coverture as being when women “seized to be [their] own person” and became property of their husband.
I haven’t written in here, or in general, in so long that it’s a nice feeling to try it out once again. I just finished this essay for my Modern American Drama class and thought, “Hey, throw it on there.”
Michael
Cool post, I did not thought this would be so amazing when I read the title.