Gender Roles in Trifles (Essay Sample)

The play trifles by Susan Glaspell explores a small farmhouse setting in which a murder takes place. Although the plot focuses on solving a murder mystery, Susan Glaspell uses gender roles to portray the idea that the society being lived in oppresses and belittles the women in it. The play opens with a description of the dark and abandoned kitchen that once housed the victim. As the characters in the story enter, the regards they make slowly introduce you to the idea of oppression. The play addresses how the masculine society encloses the women into isolation and forces them to only focus on their household duties.

In this play, the snarky comments and stereotypical gestures made by the men make it evident that there is a clear divide between the gender roles of the sexes. By reading you can easily realize that women are seen as smaller and less important, their ideas frowned upon and ignored. An example of this chauvinistic behavior is shown at the very beginning of the plot when the men start investigating the farmhouse. The County Attorney takes a spin around the kitchen and ends up touching something sticky, the women gather closer to take a look and realize that the stickiness is nothing other than Mrs.Wright's fruit. Mrs.Peters then remembers how Mrs.Wright had worried that her fruit would freeze in the winter and as a result the jars holding the fruit would break. Mrs.Peters announces the concern of Mrs.Wright and in reply  Mr.Hale comments, “Well, women are used to worrying over trifles.” () The remark made by him best emphasizes the strict gender roles in the society they live in which place women as mere objects in a man's world that have pointless and small worries compared to them. 

The theme of oppression recurs in another early scene where the housekeeping skills of Mrs.Wright are criticized. While still inspecting the kitchen for clues, the County Attorney notices the slum appearance of the room. Instead of thinking about what's important, he quickly changes his focus to the mess he sees. He mentions Mrs.Wrights's inability to clean in disregard of the fact that her husband has just died and there are more concerning matters. The County Attorney states, “Dirty towels! Not much of a housekeeper, would you say ladies?” (1294, 30-35) In reply, the women try to defend themselves from this sexist remark. However, the County Attorney simply goes on with his nagging and eventually states that by standing up for Mrs.Wright, the women are simply just being loyal to their sex. By saying this, the County Attorney is stating that a woman is expected to clean and keep everything neat and should be easily able to do so. 

With this play, Susan Glaspell has brought attention to the reality of the social oppression of women. As stated clearly throughout the play, the life of a woman is very restricted and the gender roles in society limit the freedom women have. However, by the end of the play, it was the women who realized the truth of the matter by using their place in society to relate to Mrs.Wright. The understanding of restraint on women's abilities allows both Mrs.Peters and Mrs.Hale to discover how unhappy Mrs.Wright was in her relationship and how that unhappiness may have been her motive. It was never clearly stated that Mrs.Wright murdered her husband, but the criticism expressed by the men she hardly knew, put everything in perspective and in turn, overly justified the possibility. Fortunately, in current times, the gender roles for women in society have changed and women now have more opportunities in life.