(DRAMA) - TRIFLES - CHARACTER ANALYSIS AND SUMMARY

UNIT-III:(DRAMA)

Trifles (play)

Trifles is a one-act play by Susan Glaspell. It was first performed by the Provincetown Players at the Wharf Theatre in Provincetown, Massachusetts, on August 8, 1916. In the original performance, Glaspell played the role of Mrs. Hale. The play is frequently anthologized in American literature textbooks. The play was soon followed by the short story, "A Jury of Her Peers", also written by Glaspell, which carries the same characters and plotline.

Characters

·         1. George Henderson – The county attorney

·         2. Henry Peters – Local sheriff and husband of Mrs. Peters

·         3. Lewis Hale – Neighbor of the Wrights

·         4. Mrs. Peters – Wife of the sheriff

·         5. Mrs. Hale – Neighbor to the Wrights and wife of Lewis Hale

·         6. John Wright – The victim and owner of the house

·         7. Mrs. Minnie Wright – John Wright's wife and his murderer

Character Analysis

George Henderson:

The county attorney, he has been called to investigate the murder of John Wright and will probably serve as the attorney for the prosecution in the event of a trial. He is young and professional in manner, but he often dismisses the female interest in minor details of domesticity, and he disparages Mrs. Wright for what he perceives as her lack of homemaking abilities.

Henry Peters:

The middle-aged local sheriff and husband of Mrs. Peters, he is at John Wright's house to examine the scene of the crime. Like Henderson, he gently teases the women about their interest in Mrs. Wright's quilt.

Lewis Hale:

A neighboring farmer, he had entered the Wright farmhouse to ask John about acquiring a telephone, only to find a strangled man and a wife acting very bizarrely. He says, "Women are used to worrying about trifles."

Mrs. Peters:

A relative newcomer to the town who never knew Mrs. Wright before John Wright married her, Mrs. Peters is "a slight, wiry woman" with a "thin, nervous face." She is married to the sheriff and prefers to follow the law, often apologizing for the behavior of the men because they are only doing her duty. Mrs. Peters understands loneliness and the world of the female domestic.

Mrs. Hale:

The wife of the farmer Lewis Hale, she is of a heavier build than Mrs. Peters and resents the condescension shown to her by the men in general and Henderson in particular because of her gender and domestic occupation. She remembers Mrs. Wright as the young Minnie Foster, and she feels sorry for Mrs. Wright. Mrs. Hale regrets not having come to visit Mrs. Wright to alleviate her cheerless life.

John Wright:

A local farmer, he was commonly considered a good, dutiful man, but he was also a hard man and neglected his wife's happiness. He paid little attention to his wife's opinions and prevented her from singing. The play centers on the motive for his murder.

Mrs. Wright:

Born Minnie Foster, she used to be a happy, lively girl who sang in the local choir, but after she married John Wright, her life became unhappy and forlorn. Although she does not appear in the play, she is the main suspect in her husband's murder and sends Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale to collect a few minor items for her from the farmhouse.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Story of a Murdered Farmer in "Trifles" By Susan Glaspell

 

INTRODUCTION:

Playwright Susan Glaspell's one-act play, written in 1916, is loosely based on true events. As a young reporter, Glaspell covered a murder case in a small town in Iowa. Years later, she crafted a short play, Trifles, inspired by her experiences and observations.

The Meaning of the Name Trifles for This Psychological Play

The play was first performed in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and Glaspell herself played the character, Mrs. Hale. Considered an early illustration of feminist drama, the themes of the play focus on men and women and their psychological states along with their social roles. The word trifles typically refer to objects of little to no value. It makes sense in the context of the play due to the items that the female characters come across. The interpretation may also be that men do not understand the value of women, and consider them trifles.

The Plot Summary of a Family Murder-drama

The sheriff, his wife, the county attorney, and the neighbors (Mr. and Mrs. Hale) enter the kitchen of the Wright household. Mr. Hale explains how he paid a visit to the house on the previous day. Once there, Mrs. Wright greeted him but behaved strangely. She eventually stated in a dull voice that her husband was upstairs, dead. (Though Mrs. Wright is the central figure in the play, she never appears onstage. She is only referred to by the on-stage characters.)

The audience learns of John Wright’s murder through Mr. Hale’s exposition. He is the first, aside from Mrs. Wright, to discover the body. Mrs. Wright claimed that she was sound asleep while someone strangled her husband. It seems obvious to the male characters that she killed her husband, and she is been taken into custody as the prime suspect.

 “We live 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.”

The Continued Mystery With Added Feminist Critique

The attorney and sheriff decide that there is nothing important in the room: “Nothing here but kitchen things.” This line is the first of many disparaging comments said to minimize the importance of women in society, as noticed by several Feminist critics. The men criticize Mrs. Wright’s housekeeping skills, irking Mrs. Hale and the sheriff’s wife, Mrs. Peters.

The men exit, heading upstairs to investigate the crime scene. The women remain in the kitchen. Chatting to pass the time, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters notice vital details that the men would not care about:

• Ruined fruit preserves
• Bread that has been left out of its box
• An unfinished quilt
• A half clean, half messy table top
• An empty birdcage

Unlike the men, who are looking for forensic evidence to solve the crime, the women in Susan Glaspell's Trifles observe clues that reveal the bleakness of Mrs. Wright’s emotional life. They theorize that Mr. Wright’s cold, oppressive nature must have been dreary to live with. Mrs. Hale comments about Mrs. Wright being childless: “Not having children makes less work—but it makes a quiet house.” The women are simply trying to pass the awkward moments with civil conversation. But to the audience, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters unveil a psychological profile of a desperate housewife.

The Symbol of Freedom and Happiness in the Story

When gathering up the quilting material, the two women discover a fancy little box. Inside, wrapped in silk, is a dead canary. Its neck has been wrung. The implication is that Minnie’s husband did not like the canary's beautiful song (a symbol of his wife’s desire for freedom and happiness). So, Mr. Wright busted the cage door and strangled the bird.

Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters do not tell the men about their discovery. Instead, Mrs. Hale puts the box with the deceased bird into her coat pocket, resolving not to tell the men about this little “trifle” they have uncovered.

The play ends with the characters exiting the kitchen and the women announcing that they have determined Mrs. Wright’s quilt making style. She “knots it” instead of “quilts it”—a play on words denoting the way in which she killed her husband.

“Nothing here but kitchen things.”

The Theme of the Play Is That Men Do Not Appreciate Women

The men within this play betray a sense of self-importance. They present themselves as tough, serious-minded detectives when in truth, they are not nearly as observant as the female characters. Their pompous attitude causes the women to feel defensive and form ranks. Not only do Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters bond, but they also choose to hide evidence as an act of compassion for Mrs. Wright. Stealing the box with the dead bird is an act of loyalty to their gender and an act of defiance against a callous patriarchal society.

“I wonder if she was goin' to quilt it or just knot it?”

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRIFLES

Type of Work and Year of Publication:

Trifles is a one-act play centering on two women who discover murder clues that county officials regard as trivial. But the play is not a murder mystery. Rather, it is a cultural and psychological study that probes the status of women in society and their intuitive grasp of  reality. Glaspell wrote the play in 1916 for the Provincetown Players, a Massachusetts acting group that she and her husband, George Cram Cook, founded in Massachusetts in 1915.

The Title's Meanings:

The title refers to more than the items in the Wright home that Peters, Henderson, and Hale regard as irrelevant and Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale regard as significant. It also refers to the men's view of the women as trifles and their observations as unimportant. It is likely also that the murder victim regarded the bird as an annoying trifle. To Mrs. Wright, it was apparently one of her few sources of joy. 

Symbols:

Bird:   Mrs. Wright's spirit. 
Cage:  John Wright's oppression (or immuration) of his wife and her spirit.
Stove, Cold House, and Broken Jars:  When the stove fire goes out, the house temperature drops below freezing and all but one of the jars of preserves break. The stove fire appears to represent John and Minnie Wright's marriage. The fire probably goes out just before or immediately after the murder. The resulting freezing temperatures crack the jars of preserves, apparently representing Minnie's mental well being. The jar that remains intact seems to symbolize the modicum of sanity left to her and the hope for a brighter future that Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters envision for her. 
Unevenly Sewn Quilt Block:  Mrs. Wright's disturbed mental condition.
Rope:  Minnie Wright's usurpation of male power. Strangulation is a man's method of killing. In her rebellion against her domineering husband, Minnie musters the strength to murder like a man, thus perversely asserting her equality. 

Themes:

Casting Off Male Oppression:

In 1916, when Glaspell wrote Trifles, male-dominated society continued to deny women the right to vote and severely limited their opportunities in offices, industries, legislatures, and the marketplace. In the home, the husband was king and the wife a mere vassal. In carrying out one of the most important and demanding tasks in all of society, rearing children, she frequently received little or no help from her spouse. The typical lower- or middle-class wife spent much of her time in the kitchen, cooking, baking, canning, and stoking the stove fire. In "leisure" hours, she sewed, knitted, darned, and quilted. Women who worked outside the home usually held jobs as secretaries, clerks, waitresses, nannies, housekeepers, washerwomen, and manual laborers in factories. There was no minimum wage for these women. Rare was the female physician, lawyer, archeologist, business executive, or professional athlete. However, thanks in large part to pioneering work by women social reformers in the nineteenth century, the women of the early twentieth century began to demand fairer treatment and equal rights. Glaspell's play presents one radical woman rebel, Mrs. Wright, who goes to the extreme to free herself of male domination. It also presents two quiet rebels, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, who side with Mrs. Wright and withhold evidence that the sheriff and the county attorney need to establish a motive for Mrs. Wright's alleged crime.

Women's Intuition:

So-called women's intuition demonstrates its power in this play when Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters discover household items, which the men regard as trifles, that lead to the establishment of a motive for Mrs. Wright's crime. The implication here is that women possess abilities that can complement and augment those of men. A society that limits women's use of their talents is the poorer for doing so. 

Irony:

Sheriff Peters and County Attorney George Henderson pride themselves on their powers of detection and logical reasoning. But it is the two women, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale, who discover the clues and establish a motive amid seemingly innocuous items in the Wright home. The trifles with which the men say the women concern themselves turn out to be the key evidence that the men are looking for. The story ends with an ironic exchange between Henderson and Mrs. Hale: 

COUNTY ATTORNEY (facetiously). Well, Henry, at least we found out that she was not going to quilt it. She was going to—what is it you call it, ladies!
MRS. HALE (her hand against her pocket). We call it—knot it, Mr. Henderson. 

CLIMAX :

The climax  occurs when the two women discover the dead bird, enabling them to envision the events leading up to the murder of John Wright.

 BY – S.YUVALAKSHMI