A Critical Analysis of the Portrayal of Women in Susan Glaspells Trifles - Essay Example

A Critical Analysis of the Portrayal of Women in Susan Glaspell’s “Trifles” In the play, “Trifles,” Susan Glaspell has portrayed women who are capable of outwitting their male counterparts by destabilizing the patriarchic stereotypical perception about women as frivolous and, mentally and physically weak. Indeed Susan’s use of irony and mystery genre is very eye-catching. Three of the ironies in the text are as following: first, Trifles are not really trifle; rather they are of greater importance.

Second, the women in the play are not mentally inferior, though the male counterparts think so. Thirdly, though Minnie Wright has killed her husband, she is the real criminal; her killed husband ultimately appears the oppressive culprit. In contradiction to the male investigators’ judgment that women are good for nothing, their female assistants quite successfully discover the clues and motive behind the murder of John Wright. Eventually they develop a moral ground in order to support the suspect Minnie Wright whom they found to be the victim of male oppression in John household.

From the very beginning of the play, I have been confronted with a set of questions: why the play is named “Trifles”; why Minnie Wright has killed her husband; why the female investigators decide to hide Minnie’s crime. But as the play progresses, I learnt that the female investigators begin to reconstruct Minnie’s condition under John’s oppression. They perform this reconstruction of Minnie’s tragic situation by engaging with the trifles in Minnie’s kitchen. Thus they outwit their male investigation partner.

They notice a dead canary or bird in Minnie’s sewing box. The dead bird symbolically tells about Minnie’s or in generally a woman’s dead soul in her husband’s household. As the women go on pondering, the ordinaries of Minnies kitchen, they start to comprehend the motive behind the murder what the male characters fail to discover. In fact, these trifles allow the women to gain insight into tangible oppression of Minnie Wrights everyday life. I think Susan has attempted to convey a dual theme: first, it tells about patriarchal oppression as well as women’s tragic condition in their families; second, it deals with the superiority of female intelligence as well as superiority complex of men.

Works Cited Glaspell, Susan. Trifles. New York: Twayne, 1966.