Gender Roles In Triffees

Susan Glaspel’s drama, Trifles, critically portrays gender roles and relations in early 20th Century rural America. Its female characters, Mrs. Hale, Mrs. Peters, and the unseen Mrs. Wright all exemplify this gender portrayal through their experiences and actions. Glaspel’s portrayal is one of women being confined by society, but also rebelling against and breaking out of this confinement. Mrs. Wright was confined by her lonesome house and hard husband, as well as the expectations that society had for a wife. Mrs. Hale said how the house “weren’t cheerful ... I dunno what it is but it’s a lonesome place and always was.” (1054). She also said that Mr Wright wouldn’t have been easy to live with. (“I don’t think a place’d be any more cheerfuller for John Wright’s being in it.” (1051) and “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.”) She speculated that societal expectations confined Mrs. Wright: “Wright was close. I think maybe that’s why she kept so much to herself. She didn’t even belong to the Ladies’ Aid.
Wright because of her