Triffles by Susan

Glaspell
Nurizzati Najihah Binti Mohd Nazar
Myzatul Akmaar Binti Kamarudin
Nurul Hidayah Binti Md Zin
The Author
• Susan Keating Glaspell was an American playwright,
novelist, journalist and actress.
• Born on July 1, 1876
• Died on July 28, 1948)
• With her husband George Cram Cook, she founded
the Provincetown Players, the first modern
American theatre company.
The Author
• First known for her short stories (fifty were
published), Glaspell is known also to have written
nine novels, fifteen plays, and a biography.
• Typically explores contemporary social issues, such
as gender, ethics, and dissent, while featuring deep,
sympathetic characters who make principled stands.
• Her 1930 play Alison's House earned her the Pulitzer
Prize for Drama.
Summary

• The play begins "in the now abandoned farmhouse of John and Minnie
Wright." On command from the county attorney, Mr. Hale recounts his
visit to the house the previous day.
• He found Mrs. Wright behaving strangely and her husband upstairs
dead, with a rope around his neck. Mr. Hale notes that when he
questioned her, Mrs. Wright claimed that she was asleep when
someone strangled her husband.
• While the three men are searching the house for evidence, "the women
begin to explore the domestic space on their own. As they interact with
the stage environment, the two women discover clues to the couple's
personalities as well as potential evidence in the case.“
Summary

• Through evidence, the wives soon realize that Mr. Wright killed the bird,
and that led to Mrs. Wright killing her husband.
• Although the men find no evidence upstairs in the Wright house that
would prove Mrs. Wright guilty, the wives piece together that Mrs.
Wright was a victim of abuse by her husband.
• They understand how it feels to be oppressed by men.
• After the women discover the truth, they hide the evidence against Mrs.
Wright so that she is spared the punishment for killing her husband.
• Whether Mrs. Wright is convicted is neither confirmed or denied at the
end of the play.
Themes
 • Trifles portrays a world, dominated by men, in which social
Social expectations and restrictions have
essentially confined women to the home and bound them

Oppression of
to their husbands, with little control or identity of their
own.
• Examples:
Women • The county attorney George Henderson and the
sheriff Henry Peters emphasize Minnie Wright’s role as
a housekeeper, and feel free to judge her shortcomings
in this area.
• Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, are identified solely by their
husbands’ last names.
• Minnie is the only woman in the play to get a first
name, but this name only emphasizes how she is
transformed by marriage, losing possession of her very
self, when she marries and goes from Minnie Foster to
Minnie Wright.
 • The title of the play highlights the trifling concerns
that the men mock, and in doing so emphasizes that
the “trifles” that the men overlook because they are
feminine concerns are in fact crucially important.
• Ironically, it is these “trifles” that lead the women to
The Blindness uncover true evidence concerning the crime, while
the men are unsuccessful in finding a motive during

of Men their search of the Wrights’ house.

• Demonstrates the way that the men, in their power
and self-importance, completely overlook the
importance of women and their domestic activities.
• It shows how that self-importance causes the men to
overlook the very thing they are searching for
 • Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters find evidence that serves as
Justice a motive for Minnie’s killing of her husband but also,
from their viewpoint, somewhat justifies Minnie
Wright’s act of murder.
• They understand that Minnie’s act was not just a
murder, but an escape. That her husband’s cruel of
strangling her pet bird was not the sole reason she
murdered him, but rather that the act was the
culmination of the social oppression and socially
sanctioned loneliness that has essentially strangled
Minnie herself.
• And they see this because they themselves have faced
the same prejudice and mistreatment, as when Mrs.
Hale says, “we all go through the same things—it’s all
just a different kind of the same thing.”
 • Mrs. Hale also accuses herself of the crime of not
Justice having supported her neighbor, asking, “who’s going
to punish that?”
• In this moment when Mrs. Hale turns the blame on
herself, the play also highlights all of the men
who aren’t blaming themselves, and how many of
the men’s crimes of varying magnitude will go not
only unpunished but unnoticed by the male-
controlled powers that be.
• Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters hide the evidence of
Minnie’s act because the legal system cannot fairly
punish, account for, or even comprehend the vast
array of crimes that have been committed against
women in general and Minnie in particular.
Characters
 • The wife of the sheriff.
• Mrs. Peters is more timid than Mrs.

Mrs. Hale and more aware of the

responsibilities the women have to
the law and to their husbands when

Peters they uncover the truth of Minnie

Wright’s murder of her husband.
• However, she is unwilling to expose
the uncovered evidence to the men.
 • The wife of the neighboring farmer.
• Mrs. Hale is wracked by guilt at not
having visited Minnie Wright more
Mrs. often to support her through the
difficulties of living with her unkind

Hale
husband.
• She leads Mrs. Peters in their
decision to conceal the evidence
that would undoubtedly convict
Minnie Wright of her crime.
 • The wife of the murdered John Wright, and his
killer.
• Mrs. Hale remembers Minnie for her youthful
innocence and happiness before she was married

Minnie (when she was Minnie Foster).

• Back then, she sang joyfully in the local choir. But
in marriage Minnie became timid, sad, and

Wright
isolated.
• Minnie killed her husband by strangling him in
retribution for his final cruelness of killing her
pet bird, the only being that provided happiness
and company for her in the loneliness of her
home and the patriarchal society that isolated
her (and all women).