Glaspell and American Feminism
In the history of America, women have not always enjoyed freedoms afforded to the male gender. Women were meant to get married, have children, raise those children, keep the house, keep quiet, and serve their husbands. They could not vote, and the majority of them did not work outside of the home. Many people would say the life of the man was much easier; they went to work to make money to support their family. They voted, and there was nothing wrong with them discussing the state of the nation. There is a study that was issued in the Journal of Marriage and Family, which states there are two types of marriages, hers and his, and that marriage is healthier and happier for him, than for her. According the Judith Stevens, “Rosemarie Bank has demonstrated how female characters often play an active and crucial role in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century melodramas, challenging the popular stereotype of the passive, helpless, melodramatic heroine” (Stevens, 1989 p. 46). Susan Glaspell certainly portrays the stereotypical early twentieth century female in her characters, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale. However, I see the challenge of this feministic attitude in the character of Ms. Wright. The inequality of women compared to men is portrayed through the discussions between the characters. The male characters are condescending to the women, and the women are quiet and subdued. The protagonist, Ms. Minnie Wright, is never seen in the play, but her life is told through the words and actions of the other ladies in the play. The ladies examine the “trifles” of Ms. Wright's, and reminisce about their own lives, as well as speculate on Ms. Wright's life. Through the “trifles" of life, Glaspell dramatizes feministic loneliness, oppression, and patriarchal dominance that were so common in twentieth century America, and a sense of freedom from the oppression that became the norm in American society.
Susan Glaspell wrote her play Trifles during a time when women were starting to question their roles in society, marriage, and home. During that time,the life of a woman - who was isolated on a farm - in twentieth century America had to be very lonely. For Ms. Wright, it had to be even lonelier because her husband was gone to work, she had no children, and she lived at least a mile or two away from her closest neighbors. In the nineteen hundreds, it was not uncommon for farmers to live so far away from each other, since so much land was needed in order to plant, grow, and harvest their crops. It was also common that months would go by without a visitor, especially during harvesting and canning season. The women's job was to prepare everything for the winter. That meant canning, knitting, cooking, and cleaning. Since everyone would be busy on their own farm, their would be little time for visiting, especially if their were no children. In Trifles, we are made aware of Minnie's loneliness through the conversation between the ladies. Ms. Hale regrets not visiting the Wright home enough, Mrs. Peters notices the canning, the knitting, and the quietness of the house.
Not only was it a lonely existence, but it was a subordinate position, that Mrs. Wright found herself in. Through the eyes of Mrs. Hale, the reader learns that Mrs. Wright used to be a singer, pretty, and happy. Then, she got married and she was no longer seen in town singing. She no longer were pretty things or worried about her appearance. The few times Mrs. Hale visited her, the Wright's home was not cheerful. Also, Mrs. Hale comments about how Minnie Wright did not even join the “Ladies Aid” because she supposed “she felt she could not do her part” (Glaspell, p 1714). Mrs. Hale even seems to relate her subordinate position, as she agrees with the guys that she is “takin' up our time with little things while we're waiting for them...” (Glaspell, p 1715).
According to Carpentier of Hofstra University, Glaspell uses some of the same themes in her writing, such as “woman's problematic relationship to community, the conflict between her desire for autonomy and individuality, and her need for inclusion in a community of family that refuses to allow her those qualities” (Carpentier, 19914 p. 97). Not only does loneliness play a critical part in this conflict, but so does oppression. Within, Trifles Minnie Wright keeps house, knits, and keeps an isolated life to please her husband. There does not seem to be any indication of her need for “inclusion into the community”, but it does appear she is fighting to separate herself from the oppression of a childless, lonely marriage. We know her marriage is not a happy one because Mrs. Hale says the Wright home was not a comfortable place to be when Mr. Wright was home (Glaspell, p 1716). It leads one to wonder if Mr. Wright discouraged visitors to his home, thereby isolating his wife as a control mechanism. We also can empathize with Mrs. Wright's oppression through the image of the crooked stitches on Minnie's quilting. The ladies wonder at what could have caused Minnie to be “nervous” enough to make such crooked stitches (Glaspell, p 1716). There are many instances noted in the play of oppression, however only the women see it.
The most obvious comment that echoes the feminist plight is the one made by Mrs. Hale, “I should have known she needed help! I know how things can be - for women...We live so close together and we live far apart. We all go through the same things – it's all just a different kind of the same thing” (Glaspell, p 1718). It is as if Mrs. Hale is referring to the state of oppression and loneliness all women feel, yet never do anything about. They just keep going through life, “worrying over their trifles”, and appeasing their men folk. However, Mrs. Wright ends up doing something about her plight, or so it is assumed. The attitude of the men is much more subtle, when Mr. Hale states, “Well women are used to worrying over trifles” (Glaspell, p 1713). He seems to imply that everything that concerns a women is much less important that the concerns of men.
The men seem oblivious to it all. They chide the women for their preoccupation with “trifles”. To the masculine person, objects for knitting, sewing, cooking, canning, and the like are merely unimportant. In a patriarchal society, where most popular works of fiction were written by men, about men and their problems, Glaspell was a literary pioneer, who wrote a play about the plight of a woman, with more attention given to the roles of the female characters. Glaspell portrays the men as authoritative, but blind individuals, who demean their wives and Ms. Wright. The men have a one track mind. They are intent on finding a reason for Mrs. Wright's action, but can see nothing important in kitchenware, knitting, or a broken bird cage; they ultimately can not see the motive they are looking for. The women seem to find power in their quiet. They keep quiet as an affront to their husbands, and as a bond of camaraderie with Minnie Wright, another female in trouble. How ironic that the men are condescending of the women for the preoccupation with “trifles”, but yet the women are the ones who actually find what the men are looking for.
The discovery of evidence or lack of discovery symbolizes the differences between men and women. Within the play, the women infer meaning in every seemingly unimportant item they collect, observe and touch, while the men only look for facts, tangible and visible evidence. This shows a stereotypical feminist attitude that women are emotional, romantic people, but men are fact motivated, linear individuals who have to go by the book and step by step. According to Suzy Holstein of the Midwest Quarterly, the men and women are set apart by how they see the farmhouse. The men see a crime scene, while the women see a “home” (Holstein, 2003, p 283). Furthermore, we also receive a different attitude on the idea of a good man versus that of a good woman, through the words of the characters in the play. For the women characters, men are “good” by societies standards when they do not drink, keep their word, and pay their debts, on the other hand; according to the men, women are “good” by societies standards if they keep a clean house, such as “some Dickson county farmhouses” (Glaspell, p 1713).
Loneliness, male dominance, female oppression, and literature make a good match is Susan Glaspell's Trifles. Through history authors have portrayed women as the matriarch of the family, the subordinate to the men. They are to be quiet, take care of their family's needs before their own, serve their husbands, and stay out of men's affairs. What did women know about, besides housekeeping and children-raising? Those are the stereotypes that the feminist movement tried to debunct. Although Susan Glaspell's play came long before the feminist movement, it describes this stereotypical attitude towards women. Glaspell does not put on display a woman who has overcome the role of a passive, helpless female. She dramatizes the inequality between men and women through their discussions and draws attention to the “trifles” of life, and how important they really are in the whole scheme of things. Although, we do not see Mrs. Minnie Wright at all in the play, we learn to empathize with her when it is thought that her husband has killed something she loves. She seems to break out of her cage of oppression, in the same way the bird has been torn from its cage. As we follow along in the play, we discover what originally looks unimportant, becomes very important in solving the whys of this alleged crime. So, after reading about the loneliness, oppression and patriarchal dominance in Minnie Wright's and Mrs Hale's lives we can understand more of what the early twentieth century women experienced and overcame.
References:
Ben-Zvi, L. (May 1992). “Murder, She Wrote”: The Genesis of Susan Glaspell's “Trifles”. Theatre Journal. 44(2), 141-162. Retrieved from JSTOR on August 2010.
Blaisure, K.B., Allen, K. R. Feb, 1995. Feminists and the Ideology and Practice of Marital Equality. Journal of Marriage and Family. 57 (1), 5-19. retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/353812
Brown, K. M. (April 1993). Brave New Worlds: Women's and Gender History. The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series. 50(2). Retrieved from JSTOR on August 2010.
Glaspell, S. (1916). Trifles. In McMichael & J. S. Leonard (2011). Concise Anthology of American Literature (7th ed.) (pp. 1852-1863). Boston: Pearson Education.
Holstein, S. C. (Spring 2003). Silent justice in a different key: Glaspell's Trifles. The Midwest Quarterly. 44(3). retrieved from JSTOR on August 2010.
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