Trifles Literature Reviews Samples For Students

Background and Setting

“Trifles” is a one-act play written by Susan Glaspell in 1916. Glaspell brought base for her play from a real murder story of a former John Hossack, the case that she had covered when she was a journalist with Des Moines Daily News Paper. In that case, the victim’s wife, Mrs. Margaret, was suspected as a murderer. Based on this story, she built a story for her one-act play, “Trifles.” The action of the play revolves around a murder of a farmer Mr. John Wright. Someone put him to death by strangling him by a rope. His wife was sleeping next to him when he was murdered, ...

According to Laurence Perrine, there are two primary purposes for any literature – to entertain and enlighten. While entertaining is the easier part, Perrine opines that a literature should do more than just entertain, if it is worth scholarly scrutiny. Thus, a fiction can be categorized into escape and interpretive literature. An escape literature is one, which mainly aims at entertaining and intended as a time pass. Whereas, an interpretive literature aims at making the reader delve more intensely into the world around him. While an escape literature aims at taking its reader away from his world for a while, an interpretive literature takes ...

Glaspell, Susan. Trifles, A Play In One Act. Baker's Plays, 1951. Print.
In Susan Glaspell’s play, “Trifles,” is a feminist drama that primarily takes place on a farmhouse, which is the scene of a murder, and dialogues keep shifting from one character to another. Henry Peters, the sheriff and Lewis Hale, a neighboring farmer arrive at the Wright farmhouse with their wives and George Henderson, the county attorney to investigate the murder of Mr. John Wright. Lewis Hale retells Mrs. Minnie Wright’s story, who claimed that her she was asleep when Mr. Wright was murdered, and was behaving oddly. Even ...

Part I. The men in Trifles act like they are professional detectives who are on the track of a deadly killer. Unfortunately, in their haste to look impressive, they forget to check out items in the kitchen, such as the ruined preserves and the dead canary that is wrapped up in the quilting material. These “trifles” would have given them insight into the personality of the murderer, as well as some of the emotional influences she had been undergoing. Rather than look at the “kitchen things,” the men dismiss them, saying that “women are used to worrying over trifles” (10) ...

At the end of A Doll House, Nora leaves and gets Torvalds out of her life. In Trifles, Mrs. Wright finds a way to be free from her husband. Both of these women will pay a heavy price for their actions. This paper makes the argument that of the two characters, Mrs. Wright is more justified in taking the drastic action because of three main reasons. First Mrs. Wright s has no social life bur Nora has children and friends. Secondly, Mrs. Wright is poor and a low class woman but Nora lives is affluent and enjoys the abundance of the upper-class. ...