The Role of Irony, Symbol, and Setting the Issue of Gender Differences in Susan Glaspell's Trifles - Essay Example

For many people, it is their own gender that defines their strengths as well as their limits. The use of irony, symbol and setting in Susan Glaspell’s Trifles helps define the various differences between the gender roles of men and women during the time when the play was written. Glaspell’s Trifles employs irony in demonstrating gender differences between men and women. The men in the play, the Sheriff, Hale and the County Attorney, enter the house of Mr. Wright in order to search for evidence for the crime.

They are closely followed by the women, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters. However, the fact that these women are merely addressed as “Mrs.,” unlike the two men who are addressed as “County Attorney” and “Sheriff,” somehow simply ascribes to the women the subservient role of wives and demeans the role of women in the play in particular and in society in general. Moreover, aside from the fact that the women are addressed simply as wives, they are shown to be, according to Hale, “worrying over trifles” since they worry about the preserves that Mrs.

Wright has left frozen (Glaspell). These women also search through Mrs. Wright’s sewing things where they find the bird with a broken neck wrapped in silk. This is somehow the strongest evidence that the men are looking for. However, because the men consider the women and the female gender in general as merely concerned over trifles or useless matters, the men do not ask Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters if they have found any evidence. The irony is that “[the women’s] low status allows them to keep quiet at the play’s end” (Holstein 284).

Had the men not had any perceived prejudices against these women, they would have asked them if they had seen anything unusual. Another irony is that the men, although assuming themselves as superior, have not been able to find any evidence after their search, while the women, although assumed to be useless and stupid, are the ones who have found something significant. Thus, despite such assumed ignorance of women, it is “powerful men [who actually] remain ignorant” (284). Aside from the irony, the symbols in the play also reveal the gender differences between men and women, but this time, it is in the form of discrimination or prejudice against the latter.

Firstly, when Mrs. Hale mentions, “We think the—cat got it,” she seems to be alluding to the old question “has the cat got your tongue?” (Glaspell; Holstein 285). This somehow implies that women in the early 20th century, when Glaspell wrote the play, somehow did not have a voice of their own in a society dominated by men. This applies not only to Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, who are presumed ignorant by the men, but also to Mrs. Wright, whose forced silence may have somehow been the reason for her motive to kill her husband.

Another symbol used in the play is the dead bird in the birdcage with its neck wrung. This bird is the Mrs. Wright who has been once known as Minnie Foster – “one of the town girls singing in the choir” (Glaspell). However, her marriage to Mr. Wright may have not only altogether “silenced” her like a dead bird already incapable of singing but also somehow obliterated her identity from one “Minnie Foster” to a mere “Mrs. Wright.” The murder that ensues is then considered an act of “insurrection or rebellion” or “gaining authorship” (Wright 302).

In fact, it is the domination of men that makes women like Mrs. Wright want to