My Ántonia, Trifles, and A Raisin in the Sun: Study Guide

Mr. Shimerda and Early Relationships in My Ántonia

The landscape of the agrarian lifestyle in Nebraska is such that Mr. Shimerda is the least suited for it. He has the soul of an artist and longs for a more refined world in which to express himself. He is a man who needs to live among people with ideas — people who express those concepts in conversation — and that is not the world he finds in Nebraska. Indeed, he seems like a man sent to this part of the world as a punishment. He admits that at times life on the farm has made him "crazy with lonesomeness" (367). He is refined in a world that does not recognize that refinement as anything but a weakness, and this sense of being out of place ultimately contributes to his death.

The relationship between Antonia and Jim in the section "The Shimerdas" is antagonistic on her part because of the skirmish Jim has with Ambrosch. Antonia has a very strong sense of family, and the fight with Ambrosch colors her perception of Jim, making her highly protective of her family and critical of any outsider who might challenge it. Antonia had been friendly before, but after the incident she says, "I never like you no more, Jake and Jim Burden" (130). This episode has far-reaching effects, and those effects are evident in Antonia's changed attitude from that point forward. Her relationship with Jim is strained as a result.

Antonia gains a great deal from her service in the Harling home, and the children gain much from her in return. The Harlings admire Antonia, and Mrs. Harling wants to help shape the girl. Antonia gains a second family from the experience and also learns much about music from Mrs. Harling. The children are contented by her presence and her help in the home. At this stage, Antonia is still friendly with Jim, and the entire group seems to have achieved a harmony by being together.

At the end of the section called "The Hired Girls," Jim says he is proud of Antonia and she is proud of him: "I was so proud of her that I carried my head high" (225). The immediate reason for this is that she shows regard for him — she tells him not to spend too much time around Lena and, in doing so, reveals that she still cares about him. He is proud of her because she has a true heart and is still, to him, his Antonia. Willa Cather's My Ántonia consistently uses these moments of mutual recognition to anchor the novel's emotional core.

Jim Burden's View of the Land and the Country Girls

Jim has a particular view of the land in the first section of the novel. At first the expanse is just land — "not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made" (7). Jim begins to differentiate between the open expanse and broken, tilled land. When he is with Antonia, he takes a different view of the whole state: "The great land had never looked to me so big and free" (48). Jim's view of the land seems to depend on his view of the people he is with at any given time, but overall he becomes more tied to the land as he works it.

Jim states at one point, "The country girls were considered a menace to the social order" (201). These girls were distractions for the boys of Black Hawk, who were expected — and expecting — to marry local town girls. The country girls were considered too beautiful, and so they caused the Black Hawk boys to lose focus and turn their attention away from the matches the community anticipated. These girls thus upset the social order. They became the subject of scandalous stories and were criticized in the community for being too alluring and too disruptive.

Gender, Evidence, and Irony in Trifles

The title of Susan Glaspell's play is intended to be ironic, for the subject matter and the women involved are not trifles at all — though the men treat the women as if they are, and clearly regard what they see as "women's work" as mere trifles. This titular irony helps illuminate the theme and adds to the sense that the men fail to see the truth while the women know it instinctively.

The Sheriff and the County Attorney are looking for evidence about the killing of Mr. Wright — evidence they believe will be used to prosecute Mrs. Wright for murder and explain why she killed her husband. These two men are puzzled by the death and by the role of Mrs. Wright, but they fully believe they will be able to discern the truth. At the same time, they see the women — Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale — as doing no more than pawing through the "trifles" of Mrs. Wright's life. Mr. Hale is present as a witness, having found the body on the day of the murder. Mrs. Peters is the wife of the Sheriff, and she and Mrs. Hale have come along to collect some things for Mrs. Wright, who is in jail.

The men and women look through the house, but the women remain largely in the kitchen while the men search elsewhere for the evidence they seek. The women understand that the kitchen was the wife's domain, and they find their evidence in different places than the men think to look. The men seek solid, tangible evidence — letters, pictures, weapons — that can help them understand the people in the house. The women, by contrast, read less tangible evidence: ordinary objects that reveal the psychology of Mrs. Wright and the nature of her relationship with her husband. Such intangible details are what the men would dismiss as "trifles," but they carry much deeper meaning.

The Wright house is seen as not a happy place, and this unhappiness is manifested first when Mrs. Hale indicates that she has not visited her friend in some time — this house is not conducive to visits. She singles out the presence of John Wright as the reason for the lack of cheer. The men also remark that Mrs. Wright was not much of a housekeeper, and for them this contributes to the house's gloomy atmosphere. The current circumstances — a dead husband and a wife in jail — further diminish whatever warmth the house might once have held.

The men overlook the kitchen, yet this is where the women find all of the answers they need. The men walk out, saying there is nothing in that room but kitchen things. Yet those kitchen things tell a story. The items the women observe begin with things the men do see but do not interpret correctly, such as the paper towels on the floor. The women also note unfinished tasks still evident throughout the kitchen: bread set but not yet baked, preserves not yet finished, and a patch of suddenly irregular sewing. The most important evidence they find is first the birdcage with its door twisted on its hinges, and then the dead bird, wrapped up and placed in a sewing box. The County Attorney does notice the empty cage, and the women lie about what happened to the bird.

The women face a conflict in the end over whether to tell what they know or to let things stand. More than this, they understand that telling might actually help Mrs. Wright, since the County Attorney indicates that a jury sometimes needs some small thing it can see as a cause. Mrs. Peters faces an added conflict because she is married to the Sheriff — "married to the law," as he puts it. Yet she does not want to participate in a prosecution whose outcome is uncertain. The women sympathize with Mrs. Wright because they, too, have been made to feel that they and their interests are only "trifles." They recognize that Mr. Wright was violent, cruel, and unwilling to let his wife have any life of her own. They know what that kind of existence feels like, and their sympathy is born of shared experience.

Works Cited

Cather, Willa. My Antonia. New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1954.

Glaspell, Susan. "Trifles."

Hansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin in the Sun & The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window. New York: Signet, 1966.