Inequality In Trifles

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Gender inequality has been an issue ever since the beginning of time. Before women started to stand up for themselves, men would degrade them and not give them credit for the things they did. In Susan Glaspell's drama Trifles, she shows the perfect example of how women were treated before and during the early 1900s . The drama's setting is in 1916 at Mr. and Mrs. Wright’s farmhouse. On a cold winter morning their neighbor comes to talk to Mr. Wright, but consequently finds him deceased on his bed with a knotted rope around his neck. The characters in the drama are trying to find a motive for the murder. However, the men kept overlooking the reason behind the murder because they don’t look at the little details, but they criticize the women …show more content…
In the drama Mrs. Hale asks Mrs. Peters if she knew John Wright, and Mrs. Peters says, “Not to know him, I saw him in town. They say he was a good man”(Meyer 608). Mrs. Hale immediately replies, “Yes-good; he didn’t drink, he kept his word as well as most, I guess, and paid his debts. But he was a hard man, Mrs. Peters. Just to pass the time of day with him-(Shivers.) Like a raw wind that gets to the bone,”(Meyer 608) An example of how Mrs. Hale explains to Mrs. Peters, what she can only imagine what Minnie Wright was going through. She believes that John Wright made her life horrible and lonely. Before Minnie married John, Mrs. Hale tells Mrs. Peters what she was like, she describes her as, “real sweet and pretty, but kind of timid and-fluttery. How-she-did-change,”(Meyer 608) John was not a cheerful man, and he made Minnie not be cheerful as well. Once they were married Minnie went through a drastic change in her life, which is described above. This supports gender inequality because of the way John made Minnie change her life around completely. He didn’t want happiness, joy, or noise. He didn’t want children either; he robbed Minnie Wright’s happiness, and made her depressed, which shows the internal conflict Minnie Wright suffered