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. right's husband could not understand or like "a thing that sang": "No, right 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 right 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…...

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Works Cited

Glaspell, Susan. Trifles.  http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/eng384/trifles.htm

Susan Glaspell,(Trifles). Please ensure original wor
Formal Approach

There is a great deal of irony found in Susan Glaspell's work of literature entitled "Trifles." Irony, of course, is when words are used the exact opposite of their literal meaning. The concept of situation irony also exists within literature, in which characters act the exact opposite of the way that a certain situation calls for. An examination of Glaspell's work indicates that the author utilizes both these types of irony in conceiving the plot for her story in which a pair of wives -- untrained housewives -- are able to decipher the motive for a murder case in which law enforcement officials are not. This fact alone is an excellent example of situation irony, and the opposite of what a reader would expect from housewives and law enforcement officials involved in a murder case. A thorough deconstruction of the language of the…...

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Works Cited

Al-Khalili, Raja. "Representations of Rural Women in Susan Glaspell's Trifles." Studies in Literature and Language. 6 (1): 132-135. 2013. Web.  http://ehis.ebscohost.com.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=2&sid=cc0abfce-dd68-4e0e-b7e5-eaab741aa731%40sessionmgr111&hid=15 

Glaspell, Susan. "Trifles." www.One-Act-Plays.com . 1916. Web.  http://www.one-act-plays.com/dramas/trifles.html 

Mustazza, Leonard. "Generic Translation and Thematic Shift in Susan Glaspell's "Trifles" and "A Jury of Her Peers." Studies in Short Fiction. 26 (4): 489-496. 1989. Web.  http://ehis.ebscohost.com.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=2&sid=cc0abfce-dd68-4e0e-b7e5-eaab741aa731%40sessionmgr111&hid=105

The words on the page are powerful as illiams uses symbolism to emphasize moods. Viewing the play with the plays of light and shadows would be a delight because we could see the characters moving in and out of darkness.
August ilson's play, Fences, is titled such because of the fences people tend to build between one another. This is demonstrated with Troy and Cory, who cannot agree upon much. Their differences only push them farther apart. The fences symbolizes separation between people and boundaries people place. The actual fences protests Rose's family but for Troy, it is nothing but a burden. Bono captures the meaning of the fences perfectly when he says, "Some people build fences to keep people out . . . And some people build fences to keep people in" (1631), Troy manages to erect a fence around himself, keeping his son a safe distance away. Time…...

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Works Cited

Glaspell, Susan. Trifles. The Norton Introduction to Literature. New York W.W. Norton and Company. 1991. pp. 1115-25.

Williams, Tennessee. The Glass Menagerie. An Introduction to Literature. 8th ed. Barnett, Sylvan, ed. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. 1985. pp. 967-1025.

Wilson, August. Fences. The Norton Introduction to Literature W.W. Norton and Company. 1991.

Wright as well as their own lives.
Putting aside the fact that oomer's Cane is a much different piece -- it is not a play and is much lengthier than rifles -- the language, form and mood vary significantly. For example, "Fern," one of the stories in the Cane collection, first appears to be a portrait of an exquisite woman who nobody understands. However, the reader soon realizes that she is much more complex. here exists layer upon layer over her, as she is revealed to be a representative of an entire group of American people. She also represents the many ways that women are treated. Her depth is indicative of the other characters in this book as well.

In rifles, the readers immediately walk into the Wright's home with the other characters. here is no one keeping the readers from becoming instantly involved with the action. However, in Cane, the…...

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Toomer's style does not lend itself to easy reading. However, the theme he is portraying has numerous meanings. The complexity along with the imagery and symbolism shows the rich quality and depth of the characters' personalities and lives -- as well as the deep pain they must endure to live during these times.

Barlow, Judith. Plays by American Women. New York: Applause, 1985.

Toomer, Jean. Cane. New York: Norton Edition, 1988.

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 right. This closeness in character makes it perfectly acceptable when the women lie to the investigators about the bird and the cat, as well as when they stay quiet at the end of the narratives (Holstein 282).
As the story unfolds, the reader becomes keenly aware of the emotional abuse and frightening loneliness that Minnie right was facing. Because her character has been flushed out through the use of the tiny things in her life, the reader can solve the mystery of Minnie right. e not only know why she murdered her husband,…...

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Works Cited

Clausson, Nils. "The Case of the Purloined Genre: Breaking the Codes in Susan Glaspell's 'A Jury of Her Peers.' " Genre 34.1-2 (2001): 81-100.

Glaspell, Susan. A Jury of Her Peers. Annenberg Media, Cambridge, MT. 30 April 2007  http://www.learner.org/exhibits/literature/story/fulltext.html .

Glaspell, Susan. "Trifles." Plays. BiblioBazaar, 2006. 30 Apr. 2007  http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/eng384/trifles.htm .

Hedges, Elaine. "Small Things Reconsidered: Susan Glaspell's 'A Jury of Her Peers.' " Women's Studies 12 (1986): 89-110.

Susan Glaspell's Trifles
The title of Susan Glaspell's drama Trifles indicates that it will deal with seemingly small matters: as Mrs. Hale says of the pivotal prop in the stage-play -- "Wouldn't they just laugh? Getting all stirred up over a little thing like a -- dead canary!" (Glaspell 27-8). Yet Mrs. Hale's sense that, if a male audience could see her dialogue with Mrs. Peters in Trifles by Susan Glaspell, they would fail to understand Glaspell's use of the songbird as a symbol of the plight of disenfranchised woman. Glaspell wrote Trifles in 1916, four years before the Nineteenth Amendment gave American women the right to vote. I wish to show that, although Glaspell's play long predates the feminist slogan "the personal is the political," she nonetheless uses symbolism that works on both a personal and political level, to make a statement about the condition of women in 1916.

Glaspell's title…...

In reality, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters are even more invested in the investigation than the men, because they demonstrate an attention to detail that the men lack. By the time the men return from their fruitless investigations, the women have determined both why and how Mrs. right murdered her husband, and they even come to the decision not to supply the evidence without ever alerting the men. Furthermore, their attempts to hide the small box containing the dead bird (whose death was Mrs. right's motive for the murder) are successful precisely because the men disregard the value of their work, with the country attorney saying "oh, I guess they're not very dangerous things the ladies have picked out" (Glaspell). In reality, the lawyer simply does not care about closely investigating the things the women have decided to take, because he assumes that they will not have taken anything…...

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Works Cited

Clarkson Holstein, Suzy. "Silent Justice in a Different Key: Glaspell's "Trifles." The Midwest

Quarterly 44.3 (2003): 282-90.

Glaspell, Susan. Trifles. 1916. Web. 9 May 2013. .

Susan Glaspell's Trifles
Analysis of Symbols in Susan Glaspell's Trifles

Although short, Susan Glaspell's play, Trifles, is packed with key symbols that, thoroughly examined, offer a close look at the isolation and hopelessness that characterized the life of some women in the early 20th century. In particular, Glaspell uses the setting of the kitchen -- the traditional sphere of the woman -- to provide several symbols and offer biting social commentary delivered through vastly different gendered speakers, the male investigators and Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters.

The first crucial symbol in Trifles is the jarred fruit. The men immediately perceive the sticky fruit that has emerged from the broken jars as a mess, and they immediately seize the opportunity to comment on Mrs. Wright's poor housekeeping. In sharp contrast, Mrs. Peters explains that the jars cracked because of the kitchen fire had gone out and notes that Mrs. Wright had worried about…...

TRIFLES by Susan Glaspell
In "Trifles" by Susan Glaspell, the characteristics of the women and the attitudes to their men and their own roles in life are gradually illuminated. The intensity of the situation, in effect two women judging the life of the third, absent party, provides a context in which Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peter grow significantly, in character, strength and importance.

The principle characters in the play are effectively the three women, Mrs. Hale, Mrs. Peters and Minnie Foster-Wright. This is contrary to the opening lines, during which the bulk of the dialogue and the perspective on events is from the men. It not until the men retire upstairs to seek clues, and the two sexes are physically separated, that the women are revealed to be the focus of the play. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters are then shown in their more natural context: without the presence of male company…...

Trifles
Susan Glaspell's one-act play Trifles is frequently anthologized, and for good reason (Makowsky 59; Cerf 103). The play differs from a traditional drama in a number of ways, including its structure and narrative content, but arguably its most important feature is it reveals who its protagonists are and the effect this character choice has on the play as a whole. Although the actions of Minnie right constitute the narrative focus of the play, she is not the actual protagonist, because the story's immediate action is carried out by Mrs. Peters, the Sheriff's wife, and Mrs. Hale, her friend. Once Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale are introduced, however, the male characters frequently attempt to trivialize their actions, such that their status as the primary protagonists is uncertain until the play concludes with their decision to cover for Mrs. right. By examining how other characters and the play itself treats Mrs. Peter's…...

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Works Cited

Cerf, Bennett. 24 Favorite One Act Plays. Paw Prints: Newton, 1958. Print.

Demastes, William. American playwrights, 1880-1945: a research and production sourcebook.

Westport: Greenwood Press, 1995. Print.

Glaspell, Susan. "Trifles." The Oxford Book of Women's Writing in the United States. Linda Wagner-Martin. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Print.

While men ignore the kitchen as containing "nothing but kitchen things," women look for evidence precisely there because it is the only place where women are in control. As Holstein (2003) argues, women do not enter the house of Mr. Wright as a place of investigation but as a home of two human beings who have feelings. For men, what matters is the evidence and if they find one, they will charge Minnie with murder, no questions asked. They need facts, evidences, and just follow the procedure. But women want to understand the motives and why a woman would want to avenge her own husband.
Although women discover the truth, they see Minnie as a victim rather than a perpetrator. A conversation between Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale, discussing the character of Mr. Wright, is of particular interest here. Mrs. Peters says, "They say he was a good man." Note…...

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References:

Glaspell, S. (2003) Trifles. In Baym, N. The Norton anthology of American literature (pp. 1893-1903). New York: W.W. Norton.

Holstein, S. (2003). Silent Justice in a Different Key: Glaspell's 'Trifles.'. Midwest Quarterly, 44(3), 282.

Kolodny, a. (1980). A map for rereading: or, gender and the interpretation of literary texts. New Literary History, 11, 451-467.

Play
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 right 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. hereas 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…...

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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

Trifles by Susan Glaspell depicts a world in which women are ignored in society. The play takes place in the right home after Mr. right has been murdered. Mr. Peters and Mr. Hale come to the scene to investigate the crime that has taken place. The investigators believed that Mrs. right is to blame for her husband's death, but they have no idea why should would do that. As the men's wives -- Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale -- wait downstairs they end up solving the crime by paying attention to what their husbands call "trifles" -- trivial things that they believe have no bearing on the crime. Yet these "trifles" are the keys to the murder. The trifles in the play are symbolic of the many ways in which Mrs. right was oppressed. The fact that these "trifles" were found in the kitchen, where women were confined to in…...

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Works Cited

Meyer, M. The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature. Bedford/St. Martins; Ninth Edition.

2011. Print.

Motivation for Murder in Susan Glaspell's Play Trifles
In her brief play Trifles (1916) author Susan Glaspell seems at first to use the aftermath of a woman's having murdered her husband as her main action. However, by the conclusion of this play, it becomes clear that this event, and the way the other characters react to it, is of mere secondary importance. Glaspell uses the setting of the investigation of the murder of Mr. John Wright, by his emotionally abused wife while he slept, to demonstrate deeper underlying concerns. The most important of these is the trivialization, especially by male characters within the play (e.g., Hale; the Sheriff; the County Attorney, and by implication, John Wright) of the women's lives, feelings, perceptions, and rights. In this essay, I will explore ways that Glaspell uses character, language, and setting to develop her theme of women's desperate aloneness in circumstances like Mrs. Wright's,…...

Trifles
In Susan Glaspell's play, "Trifles," a main teme is tat of gender's roles in society. Te women ad to take care of te ouseold, wile te men's role was as public figure.

Te canary is one of te most important symbols in te play, because it represents te freedom of Mrs. Minnie Wrigt, before and after te marriage. Te autor describes er as being full of life "Se used to wear pretty clotes and be lively, wen se was Minnie Foster, one of te town girls singing in te coir." After 30 years of marriage wit Jon Wrigt, wo made er life miserable, se lost er vivaciousness, and became like a bird trapped in a cage.

Te murder itself may be considered a symbol. Wen Mr. Wrigt kills te canary, e destroys, in fact, is wife's spirit and joy to live. Ten Mrs. Wrigt murders er usband, to revenge all te unappy…...

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http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides5/Trifles.html 

http://vccslitonline.cc.va.us/trifles/setting.htm

   http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/202442/Fatehttp://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/american-english/trifle