Men’s Pride Leads to Downfall in Glaspell’s “Trifles”
“Well, women are used to worrying over trifles,” says Mr. Hale in Susan Glaspell’s play,
“Trifles.” While demeaning women and their concerns is criticized as sexist in the twenty-first century, mere decades ago people accepted sexism as common and even warranted. Since the male-dominated society considered women’s tasks less important than men’s, men treated women with a lack of consideration. In the 20th century drama “Trifles,” Glaspell challenges the suppression in effect during her lifetime, basing the play on a series of news stories she wrote about the real-life court case of a woman prosecuted for murdering her husband. In “Trifles,” Glaspell uses symbolism to show that male sexism causes a lack of empathy which leads to men’s failures as much as it does women’s.
From the first scene to the final line, Glaspell uses spatial symbolism to reason her case about the detrimental effects of men’s stereotypes of women. According to the stage direction, the initially timid female characters, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters “...come in slowly, and stand close together near the door,” clearly displaying a reluctance to enter a widow’s empty home. However, as Mr. Hale, the sheriff and the county attorney “go at once to the stove,” they discuss what happened the previous day. When Mr. Hale had first knocked on the door to request Mr. Wright’s help, he tentatively entered when he thought he heard “come in”; now that Mr. Wright is gone, Hale and his male companions have no qualms about entering the house that now belongs solely to Mrs. Wright. The different movements of the characters and resulting space
Burton 1 symbolizes the difference in attitudes between the men, who barge into an empty house they now know belongs to a woman, and the women, who hesitate to infringe upon another woman’s privacy. The men clearly