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Susan Glaspell's play Trifles is filled with moral questions and ethical ambiguity. Throughout the one-act play, each character makes moral and ethical choices that affect the outcome of the investigation. Their moral choices also reveal key things about their characters, their worldview, and their ethical codes. At the center of the play is Minnie Wright and her dead husband John. Death is often a moral matter. If John had committed suicide, the act would have raised questions about the ethics of suicide. If indeed Minnie has killed John, several other ethical questions come to the fore. Glaspell opts to leave the ethics of the play purposefully ambiguous. Whereas the men on the side of the law like the Sheriff and Attorney have simplistic ethical systems in which there are clear-cut delineations between right and wrong, the women in Trifles explore far more complex dimensions of moral choices.
Trifles therefore explores two major concepts in ethics: ethical relativism and ethical ambiguity. Ethical relativism suggests that there are situational variables, including the context of culture, that determine whether an act is ethical or not. Gender can be one of those variables. If there is "a range of...
The women certainly seem to be sympathetic to Minnie, especially as they start to suspect Minnie might have been abused. They point out that when she was young, Minnie was beautiful. "She used to wear pretty clothes and be lively, when she was Minnie Foster, one of the town girls singing in the choir," states Mrs. Hale. After being married to John for so many years, the light went from her spirit. Especially when she beholds what her husband was capable of, potentially killing a sweet birdie, it is easy to see how Minnie might snap.
Yet Glaspell deliberately keeps the truth of the death from the reader. There are too many questions about John's death to instantly believe Minnie might be culpable. After all, it would not be possible for an elder woman to physically overtake a man, enough to be able to strangle him. This issue is never raised, showing that the Attorney and Sheriff lack…
Works Cited
De Beauvoir, Simone. "The Ethics of Ambiguity." Retrieved online: https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/ethics/de-beauvoir/ambiguity/ch01.htm
Glaspell, Susan. Trifles. {play}
Velasquez, S.J. & Meyer, M.J. "Ethical Relativism." Markula Center. Retrieved online: http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/decision/ethicalrelativism.html
Holmes always solves the crime, and that fact is very satisfying to the reader. Similarly, the two women are inadvertently unearthing the clues to the murder alongside the searching investigators. Glaspell endears us to the two women through the use of personal experiences and memories. Through their similarities, the two women also endear the reader to Minnie Wright. This closeness in character makes it perfectly acceptable when the women
Symbols in Trifles of a Woman’s Oppression As Ben-Zvi notes, “women who kill evoke fear because they challenge societal constructs of femininity—passivity, restraint, and nurture” (141). For this reason, Susan Glaspell couched her play Trifles in comedic irony show as to show the real effects of oppressed womanhood that finally explodes in a way that would get the point across to the audience without frightening it to death. After all, the
Ibsen's side note is a remarkably astute and honest appraisal of the realities of patriarchy. The statement was certainly true of Nora and her society. Even as she tries to negotiate some semblance of power in the domestic realm, the barriers to women achieving genuine political, financial and social equality are too entrenched in the society. The central theme of patriarchy is played out through the motif of the doll house
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