Susan Glaspell's "Trifles" Exercises

from Portable Legacies (page721)

Explorations of the Text

2. What clues lead the women to conclude that Minnie Wright killed her husband?
The clutter in the kitchen, the broken hinge of the empty birdcage hidden away in a upper cupboard, the bad sewing, and last but not least, the dead bird in the sewing basket.

Mrs. Hales drew an analogy of Minnie Foster like a bird that sings, "singing in the choir", "real sweet and pretty". The bad sewing reflects the stability of the mind, or rather thoughts. The bad sewing is a indication of distress or distraction. The dead bird reflect's the brutal silence of Minnie Foster.

Mrs. Hales knew Minnie Foster, who was lively and like a bird; and Mrs. Peters could empathize the death of a pet, when she lost her kitten to a boy with a hatchet.

3. How do the men differ from the women? from each other?
The men was portrayed as sexist people. Glaspell made it clear for the readers to see from the beginning with the line "worrying over trifles" said by Mr Hales. This utterance bonded the women as they "move a little closer together". Then Glaspell formed the story in a way to show how 'serious' the men were in their job by putting them all over the house searching, all except for the kitchen where the women were told to wait. 

The person held for suspect was a women yet the men overlooked that fact. Even with the most stereotypical concept that women spent most of their time in the kitchen, the men did not bother to check the kitchen for clues. They immediately assumed that (there are) "nothing here but kitchen things".


4. What do the men discover? Why did they conclude "Nothing here but kitchen things"? What do the women discover?

After going around the house, the men found nothing but only to go back into the kitchen where the women had already solved the crime. The men's judgement were clouded due to their ego and pride. The women discovered many, from the quilt with bad sewing to the dead canary. They had solved the crime but decided to keep the evidence for they empathize with Minnie Foster's experience of a bad marriage and a hard man.

Research on a Major Playwright - Henrik Ibsen

Descendants to sea captains and businessmen, Ibsen was born in 1828 in Skein, Norway. The eldest of five siblings, Henrik was the only one showing promise. His father’s business failed when he was eight years old and they had to retire to a country house. This incident caused him to experience how materialistic his friends were: they were eager to dine and drink as guests of the affluent merchant but forsook all connections when the Ibsens lost their financial standing.

In his youth, he was a talented painter but his family was too poor to send him to art school and neither could afford to train him for his preferred profession, medicine. At fifteen years old, his father sent him to Grimstad, a small provincial town south Skein. There he became an apothecary’s apprentice, the next best thing to medicine. He was there for six years and led a lonely life. He started to read voraciously and particularly in contemporary poetry and theology. In 1849, he wrote his first play, Catilina, a drama written in verse modelled after one of his greatest influences, William Shakespeare.

Ibsen then moved to Christiania (now Oslo) in 1850 to prepare for university examinations to study at the University of Christiania, after he saved enough money through extreme economy and privation. Living in the capital, he became acquainted with other writers and artistic types. One of these friends, Ole Schulerud, sponsored publication fees for Ibsen first’s play Catilina, which failed to get much notice.

The following year, Ibsen met with a job opportunity to work as a writer and manager for the Norwegian Theatre in Bergen. The position became an intense tutorial in all things of theatre and even include travelling abroad to learn more about the craft. Ibsen left Norway in 1862.

1857, Ibsen returned to the Christiania to run another theatre there. This was a frustrating venture for him and others claim that he was mismanaging the theatre. Despite in deep waters, he found time to write Love’s Comedy (1862), a satirical take on marriage.

In this time period too he married Suzannah Thoreson in 1858, with whom he had a son with. Among his many works produced during this time were The Pretenders (1863); Love's Comedy (1863); Brand (1866); Peer Gynt (1867); Emperor and Galilean (1873); Pillars of Society (1877); Ghosts (1881); and An Enemy of the People (1882).

A Doll’s House (1879), a play significant for its critical attitude toward the 19th century marriage norms caused great controversy at the time. It was also the play that propelled him into the European avant-garde.

A Doll’s House incorporated a plot that he repeated in many following works, Ibsen was in the phase when he cultivated the “critical realism”, where the individual experiences an opposition to the majority, the society’s oppressive authority. When the individual intellectually frees himself from traditional ways of thinking, conflict arises.

Ibsen was a major 19th century playwright, director and poet. He died in May 23, 1906.

References:

Hemmer Prof., Bjorn. "The Dramatist: HENRIK IBSEN." n. page. Web. 3 Nov. 2013. <http://www.mnc.net/norway/Ibsen.htm>.

Merriman, C.D. "Henrik Ibsen." Literature Network. n. page. Web. 3 Nov. 2013. <http://www.online-literature.com/ibsen/>.

Research on a Major Playwright - Susan Glaspell

Susan Glaspell, a playwright, actress, director, journalist and novelist was an American Pulitzer prize winning author. A writer of great production, she published nine novels, fourteen plays and more than fifty short stories. Her stories are often set in her hometown, Iowa, and contain semi-auto biographical contents, and touching on modern issues like gender and ethics.

Born in the 1st of July in 1876 in Iowa, Davenport, she was originally Susan Keating Glaspell. Her parents, Elmer Glaspell and Alice Keating, a farmer and a teacher respectively, gave her a conservative, middle class home and a family that was not well off. Living on the family farm, she was an animal lover and would often rescue stray animals. Later on, the family farm was increasingly threatened by urban development. Glaspell’s view of the world was shaped and formed by her grandmother’s tales who talked a lot about the regular visits of Indians to the farm in the years before Iowa became a state. Glaspell’s growing up across an ancestral village, she was influenced with the belief that Americans should worthy inheritors of the land. This became a recurring element in her elements. This lifestyle in Davenport had an intense influence in her work and gave her a voice that was unique from any other American writer of playwright of her time.

Little was known about Glaspell’s early life or her parents but one point that remains clear was that she had kept many virtues she acquired during her childhood and from her birthplace. These virtues were reflected in her works both positive element s and negative elements.

She attended public school in Davenport and in 1897, she entered Drake University in Des Moines. It was in college that she aspired to be a writer and was fostered. She then began to submit stories to magazines. Two years later she received her BA and went on to be a journalist for the Des Moines News. After years of works, she decided to give up her job and to go back to Davenport and focus on her own writing.

1903, Glaspell enrolled herself into the University of Chicago to do graduate work but it was known that she did not achieve any degrees higher than her BA that she received from Drake. During this period, Glaspell’s life was partially in shadows.

She was introduced to George Cram Cook who later became her husband after travelling together. They moved to Provincetown, Massachusetts where they alternate their summers and winters there and Greenwich Village in New York. Their migration between the two locations was a result of being involved with the Liberal Club. This group helped Cooks to create the Provincetown Players, the group of actors that help produced Glaspell’s plays.

Through 1915 and 1916, Glaspell had her first formal season with the Provincetown Players, who produced two of her one-act plays: Suppressed Desires (1915) and Trifles (1916). Suppressed Desires was co-written with her husband and Trifles was her most anthologized play. Trifles, one of the most commonly-taught plays in American Literature classes was surprisingly not an award winner.

The background for Trifles was from a crime Glaspell covered when she was working as a journalist for Des Moines News. On December 2, 1900, John Hossack was murdered with an axe as he slept. His 57 year old wife, Margret, was charged with the killing.the jury did not believe her story that she slept through the killing, even though she lay next to her husband as he was murdered. She was found not guilty.

Trifles was the play that allowed Glaspell to begin refining her technique of one-act plays, but more importantly, it allowed her to employ a device which she could make uniquely of her own. This device appeared numerous times through the span of her work and it became a trademark of Glaspell’s plays.

Seven years with the Provincetown Players and she contributed ten plays the theater group. After creating a name for herself, she left for Greece with her husband in March of 1922. After about two years there, her husband died in Delphi and was buried in Greece. Glaspell continued travelling Europe and had a second marriage with Norman Matson in 1925. Their marriage was short lived and divorced in 1931.

While they were married, they wrote a play together, called The Comic Artist, but like their marriage, it was not successful.

1930 Susan Glaspell wrote another play, Alison’s House. It was a play loosely based on incidents of the life of Emily Dickinson. Employing Glaspell’s signature device, the unseen central character, it was a full length play of three acts. It was not received well by audience and was only staged a mere 42 times but it was chosen to win the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 1931.

Susan Glaspell died on 27th July 1948.

References:

Reuben, Paul P. "Chapter 8: Susan Glaspell.." PAL: Perspectives in American Literature- A Research and Reference Guide. . n. page. Web. 3 Nov. 2013. <http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap8/glaspell.html>.

Simkin, John . "Susan Glaspell." Spartacus Educational. n. page. Web. 3 Nov. 2013. <http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Jglaspell.htm>.