Susan Glaspell Gender Roles

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Women were only for a moment part of the social role during the early twentieth century and were primarily given the reproductive role which limited them to raising children and taking care of their households and husbands. Susan Glaspell, a writer in the early twentieth century, lived during that time. As a result, most of Glaspell’s drama finds fault with society’s restricting view of women. This is made known through her play “Trifles.” Glaspell added distinct fine points to the play that allowed it to express sympathy and speak up for women.
“Role learning starts with socialization at birth. Even today, our society is quick to outfit male infants in blue and girls in pink, even applying these color-coded gender labels while a baby is in …show more content…
“Gender Role Concept” is very important in terms of the fact that it is related all parts of life of individuals, behaviors, perceptions and attitudes of men and women (Çelik, 2008). In this perspective, gender roles, which affect individuals’ lives, cannot be isolated from the factors which affect marriage”(Çetinkaya). There has been a role of the “other” that is found within a social order. The “other” can basically be defined as the outsider. The “other” in a society is normally the opposite of what the bulk of a society describes as unflawed or perfect. If it has not been obvious, the “other in this play is the women. The women are seen as weak and only have to worry about their “trifles”. Jars of jam and boxes of fabric are of no concern to the men but their ignorance is a downfall in their case. If attention were permitted to these women, more evidences as to what happened to Mr. Wright would have been …show more content…
After the men left, Mrs. Peters told Mrs. Hale about a time when a boy killed her kitten when she was younger, and remembered how she was so mad at him that if no one held her back she would have “hurt him.” Mrs. Hale then confirmed her earlier belief that Mr. Wright turned Mrs. Wright into an miserable woman, and went on to say that he was also the person who murdered the bird: “No, Wright wouldn’t like the bird a thing that sang. She used to sing. He killed that, too” (Glaspell). The women thought about how terrible it must have been for Mrs. Wright to discover the lifeless bird, to find that the one thing that was provided her companionship and joy in the house was killed. Mrs. Peters also related to the dead canary, associating the motionlessness of the creature to the stillness of her child who died at the age of two. The women have both came to a decision that Mrs. Wright did strangle the life out of her husband, just as he did to the bird, but they are sensitive towards Mrs. Wright. Mrs. Peters, Mrs. Hale, and Mrs. Wright are all connected by the common emotion of suffering: “We all go through the same things it’s all just a different kind of the same thing” (Glaspell). This is when the women reached an agreement that they will remain loyal, and keep their knowledge of the murder to
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