Susan Glaspell's Trifles

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Trifles is a one-act play written by Susan Glaspell in 1916. In the play, Glaspell makes great use of irony, symbolism, and metaphors, she also makes a great play for the newly emerging feminist movement. We first see women’s suffrage and fight for equal rights taking root in the 1840’s, and then in the 1890’s a movement, termed the Feminist movement, began to take place. This movement advocates women’s suffrage and fight for equal rights, and challenges the long-standing nature of the “female role” and the oppression that coincides with the role. In Trifles Susan Glaspell, an avid feminist, makes a clever and well played point in regards to the roles of women, and how women are often overlooked and underestimated by men. Throughout history,…show more content…
Glaspell’s grandparents were among the first settlers in Davenport. Glaspell grew up listening to her grandmother’s stories about life as an early settler on lands still inhabited by Indians. Glaspell admits that she was influenced predominately by the women in her childhood, rather than the men. An Influence that undoubtedly helps shape Glaspell’s writing and strong advocating for women’s rights later in life. After graduating high school, Glaspell spent three years reporting for Davenport Morning Republican and Davenport Weekly Outlook. In 1897, Glaspell began studying Philosophy at the University of Des Moines. (O’Neil) Glaspell than went to work for the Des Moines Daily…show more content…
Wright, Mrs. Hale, and Mrs. Peters to Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, three sisters known as the Fates. The Fates are said to be incarnations of destiny and life in Greek Mythology. (Three sister) Lastly, an interesting analogy is made between the play and the 2001 film, Legally Blonde. In the film, the attorney of a woman on trial for murdering her husband withholds evidence that could potentially acquit her client of the murder, but could also damage her client’s reputable business character. Without using the evidence, the attorney wins an acquittal by using trifles such as the inability to wash her hair after getting a permanent, and a remark made about a pair of shoes, to prove that her client did not commit the murder. The attorney and her client are sorority sisters; the film uses the comradery of sisterhood, and the use of everyday trifles, much like Glaspell’s play. (Legally

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