Symbolic realism in Susan Glaspell’s 'Trifles'

Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena
Institute for English / American Studies
Summer Term 2005
 HpS “The Gender Issue in American Drama of the Early Twentieth Century”

Symbolic Realism in Susan Glaspell’s Trifles

Mathias Keller

Table of Contents

I. Introduction 3

II. Minnie’s Misery and Her Brutal Way out 4
A. The Signs of Isolation and Silence 4
B. A Marriage without Love 7
C. Minnie’s Suppressed Creativity 8
D. John’s Strangling as the Symbolic Revenge 10

III. Glaspell’s Critique on Gender Roles 11
A. Symbolic Characters’ Names 11
B. Women’s Superiority in the Investigation Process 13
C. The Quilt as a Text to Be Read 15

IV. Conclusion 17

V. Bibliography 19
A. Primary Sources 19
B. Secondary Sources 19

I. Introduction

Susan Glaspell’s (1876-1948) literary career increased in significance when she and her husband George Cram Cook moved to their summer residence in Provincetown, Massachusetts, in 1915. They founded the Provincetown Players, a group of dramatists who were about to change the development of American literature considerably.¹ Against the more com-mercial and conventional Broadway plays, they shifted, as a part of the "’little theatre’ movement,"² the stage into a fisher’s house and performed ex-perimental plays. One of these plays was Trifles,³ Susan Glaspell’s most reputed dramatic piece, which was first produced in 1916 and published in 1920.⁴ Her "first solo one-act play"⁵ is based on the Hossack’s case, a real murder incident in Iowa on December 2, 1900 when she was a news reporter.⁶ Her reflection of this incident deals with an investigation process which takes place in the farmhouse of the murdered John Wright and his imprisoned wife Minnie. The officials, Mr. Peters (the Sheriff), the County Attorney and the neighbour Mr. Hale, search for evidences in this house to convict Minnie of the murder. At the same time, the Sheriff’s and Mr. Hale’s wives, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale, are supposed to collect clothes for Minnie. While they are in the kitchen, they encounter the important evidences to draw conclusions of Minnie’s miserable life, her deed and, hence, take the opportunity to influence the case by concealing the most crucial evidence from the men.

The play is innovative, among other things, in the respect that the main characters are absent and that Glaspell, as a consequence, creates a second explanatory level by means of symbols underneath the plot surface. This level circumscribes in detail Minnie’s misery and the reasons for kill-ing her husband. By the same means Glaspell also generally criticizes the traditional gender roles by empowering the female characters and undercut-ting male authority. In the following, I will analyze the role of symbols in the play in this thematic order. In the first part, I will consider the motives of isolation and silence, a marriage without love and Minnie’s suppressed crea-tivity that lead to the symbolic revenge. In the second part, the characters’ names, their actions and stage properties will give more insight on Glaspell’s view on gender relations.

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¹ Donna Winchell, "Susan Glaspell," The Wadsworth Casebook Series for Reading, Re-search, and Writing: Trifles, ed. Donna Winchell (Boston: Wadsworth, 2004) 13-14, here: 13.

² Donna Winchell, "’Trifles’: Making It New," The Wadsworth Casebook Series for Read-ing, Research, and Writing: Trifles, ed. Donna Winchell (Boston: Wadsworth, 2004) 3-9, here: 7.

³ Susan Glaspell, "Trifles," Plays by American Women 1910-1930 (New York: Applause, 1985) 70-86. Henceforth, all page numbers refer to this edition.

⁴ Donna Winchell, "’Trifles’: Making It New," 3.

⁵ Ibid.

⁶ Ibid.