For instance, while the county attorney and sheriff are making their observations of the home, they do not take into consideration the awful state of the house as a possible clue of the everyday struggles in Mrs. Wright’s life. Instead, they blame Mrs. Wright right away for "not being a good housekeeper". Also, the men laugh at the women's assumptions in a way that seems pretty rude. This is also because, to the women, this is a normal form of treatment: they are simply to be seen and not heard; they are pretty much invisible. There is definitely a tendency to mock the remarks made by the females of the play just because they are women.
Which ultimately lead the women to hide critical evidence from the men because they wouldn’t understand anyways. The setting, characters, and clues all contribute to the theme of gender roles of men and women in this short story. A big contributor of the theme of “A Jury of her Peers” is the setting in which the story takes place. Being that the story takes place in the early nineteen hundreds, the women are not seen as helpful. The women are kept in their domain, the kitchen, throughout the entire story because that is where men believed the women should be.
“The Trifles” written by Susan Glaspell in 1916, takes place in an abandoned farmhouse owned by John Wright. The First scene is in a “gloomy” messy kitchen where the first characters, County attorney, and the sheriff arrive with the witnesses the neighbors, Mrs. Peters, Mr. and Mrs. Hale and Hale. The sheriff is doing an investigation of John Wright’s murder and Hale recounts how he discovered Mrs. Wright acting bizarrely, as she told him how her husband died. The County attorney and the sheriff found it weird how Mr. Wright was straggled by a rope when there’s a gun in the house. The two complain of how the women are worrying about the trifles instead of the murder.
Cal The antagonist is Cal. Cal is clearly the opposing character. He may seem as is if he is the victim, but all he does is deliberately attack Andre’s mother not understanding her situation and position. According to the play, Cal states “How many of us don’t want to hurt our mothers and live in mortal terror of their disapproval. Our lives aren’t furtive, just our feelings towards people like you” (50).
Ashley Howard Eng 1102 Professor David Norman December 10, 2012 Symbolism Of Trifles In Susan Glaspell's, "Trifles," symbolism is used to emphasize the meaning of the play. Glaspell writes of a woman who murdered her husband because he was to blame for her cold and lonely life. The women character's in the play, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, solve the murder, while the men, the county attorney and sheriff, wonder about trying to figure it out. Glaspell used symbolism as clues to the murderer's motive that only the women were able to figure out, and in turn kept the motive of the murderer a secret due to the bond of women. Male domination in 1916, when Susan Glaspell’s play Trifles was written, was the way of life.
She tells John, “It isn’t right to leave me here alone. Surely I am as important as your father.” She also takes the risk and asks him to take better care of himself, asking him to shave and not to work so much. She recognizes that her needs are not being met. “It was something of life she wanted, not just a house and furniture; something of John. Not pretty clothes when she would be too old to wear them.” When John refuses to stay home or to heed her requests, she busies herself by painting, baking and by thinking about how things might get better.
“Trifles,” written by Susan Glaspell, is a murder mystery that explores gender relationships, differences between the sexes, and the nature of truth. In the play, the farmer and his wife never actually appear; instead, the story focuses on the prosecutor, George Henderson, who has been called in to investigate the murder; Henry Peters, the local sheriff; Lewis Hale, a neighboring farmer who discovered Mrs. Wright’s body; and Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale, wives of the two local men. The story “Trifles,” is a murder mystery that explores gender relationships in some very subtle ways. The drama takes place at the house where Mr. Wright’s body was discovered to be dead. Immediately the men are paired up on one side as the women are paired up on the other.
Take 1 Tensions between Elizabeth and John Proctor are prominent at first in the act. Miller describes in the stage directions that John "is not quite pleased (with the food prepared by Elizabeth). He reaches to the cupboard, takes a pinch of salt and drops it into the pot". We can see from this stage direction that he doesn't want to make anything even more awkward between him and his wife, and if she sees what he is doing then she may feel insufficient. We could interpret this as tension in their relationship, as it is not normal for married couples to not tell their true feelings to each other.
They were followed by two women. One was the wife of Sheriff Peters and other, the wife of Hale who recounted the murder story. Hale was asked to recount the story of what he saw the previous morning by the sheriff, but was interrupted by the County attorney to know if anything at the crime scene had been disturbed or misplaced. But the sheriff assured the County attorney that, he had sent Frank to the farmhouse earlier to set up a stove fire, and was told not to touch anything except the stove in question. Hale recounted that, while he and his friend were on their way to town with a load of potatoes, he decided to check on his friend Wright, because it was just past eight o’clock in the morning hours to try to convince him to go with him on a party telephone line.
In due course, we see the conflict increase to the point that one man feels his only alternative is armed retaliation against the other. The conflict begins as Daniel responds to a locksmith call at Farhad’s shop. Daniel replaces a broken lock on the shop’s back door, but tries to explain to Farhad that the door itself is the problem, not the lock. Farhad’s English is not fluent, and he does not understand Daniel to begin with, but decides after interpreting Daniel’s warning about the lock that Daniel is trying to cheat him. The encounter becomes a heated argument as Farhad refuses to pay for a door not fixed while Daniel explains that he only fixes locks, not doors.