Argumentative essay structure and techniques

Susan Glaspell's work is a powerful feminist text that draws the attention to the destructive effect that the strict and coercive roles the women have to play in a society has on their inner lives. Glaspell's play is thus an overt criticism of the disregard that men have for the feminine, seemingly unimportant inner world. In the play, the male and the female world stand widely apart, separated by stark differences. The title of the play has a comprehensive meaning that summarizes the main claim of the text: the word "trifles" refers on the one hand to the women's 'unimportant' activities such as they were in a traditional society (looking after the household, raising their children and so on) and on the other hand, to their inner world of sensibility and fragility, which is completely dismissed by man. The theme of the play is very significant as it offers a new insight into the problem of the discrimination against women.

The play's cogent message is thus that, for centuries, women have been incarcerated in their pre-established roles as wives and mothers who only have "trifles" to worry about, and this has broken their spirit. The plot of the play relates the discovery of a murder in a household from a small town: a wife has presumably strangled her husband. Neither of the two characters are actually present in the play. During the investigations of the murder, the contrast between the male and the female worlds becomes obvious, as the sheriff and the other men make ironic commentaries about the women's trifling discussions about the preserves, the needlework and so on: "Sheriff: Well, can you beat the women! Held for murder and worryin' about her preserves. County Attorney: I guess before we're through she may have something more serious than preserves to worry about. Hale: Well, women are used to worrying over trifles. [the two women move a little closer together.]"(Glaspell) the inquiries made by the sheriff and his men are symbols of the typical, pragmatic and masculine world of action. In the meanwhile, the wives, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters notice the "trifles" connected with the main female occupations. The first sense of the word "trifles" can now be elucidated: the men are disrespectful to the women's insignificant activities, although this role has been imposed on them by society. By contrast, the male world is the world of action, of 'important' business and decisions: "Mrs. Peters [Apologetically.] of course they've got awful important things on their minds."(Glaspell) While women occupy their time with 'trifles' men have to solve all the 'important' problems of society.

Glaspell seeks thus to overturn the common misconception that the role of women is less important than that of men in society, and she demonstrates that the women's sensibility and intuition can be many times more effective than the men's pragmatic view of the world. Thus, while the men are incapable of finding the most important detail of the crime, the motive, the two women discover it through their sensibility as women, and through the understanding that comes from common experience: they find a dead canary in one of Mrs. Wright's sewing boxes and realize that her husband had killed the bird, and this was the motive for the murder. The bird is here a symbol for the way in which women have been imprisoned in their social roles, their world limited to the four walls of the household: "She -- come to think of it, she was kind of like a bird herself -- real sweet and pretty, but kind of timid and -- fluttery. How -- she -- did -- change."(Glaspell) the second sense of the play's title becomes obvious: there is no place in the male world of overt action for women's fragility and sensibility, symbolized by the singing bird. The two wives intuitively understand that Mrs. Wright's husband could not understand or like "a thing that sang": "No, Wright wouldn't like the bird -- a thing that sang. She used to sing. He killed that, too."(Glaspell) Thus, men appear here as insensible and devoid of understanding outside the practical purposes.

The play thus emphasizes the importance of the neglected "trifles" of the women's inner lives, which seem unimportant, as they produce no obvious effect on the outer reality. John Wright is described as a good man through the eyes of society, but the women intuitively perceive his coldness and heartlessness, which for them is equal to murder: "Yes -- good; he didn't drink, and kept his word as well as most, I guess, and paid his debts. But he was a hard man, Mrs. Peters. Just to pass the time of day with him -- [Shivers.] Like a raw wind that gets to the bone."(Glaspell) Wright performs well in society, but the women understand the chilling, murdering effect such a man would have on the joy of life. The women's experience is thus seen almost as a common block: all go through a "different kind of the same thing': "I know how things can be -- for women. I tell you, it's queer, Mrs. Peters. 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."(Glaspell) Thus, the division of the two worlds, the masculine and the feminine appears to be irreconcilable, as the many men have yet to understand the subtleties of life.