The Negative and Destructive Effects of Male-Female Relationships Portrayed in the Writings of Susan Glaspell

The Negative and Destructive Effects of Male-Female Relationships Portrayed in the Writings of Susan Glaspell Susan Glaspell, born in 1882 in Iowa, is a name commonly unknown amongst the popular group; however, it is a name that was once very popular and now it has become virtually forgotten. Many feminist critics including Linda Ben-Zvi have taken up the role of bringing Glaspell’s work back into the main stream. Over the career of Glaspell, she wrote nine novels, more than fifty short stories, and published fourteen plays including a 1931 Pulitzer Prize she won for her play “Alison’s House” (Glaspell 891). Her most famous writings include the short story “A Jury of her Peers” and the play Trifles which either one of the two “may be found in almost every anthology introducing college students to literature”(Carpentier 92). Because of these two works, Christine Dymkowski, another well known feminist critic has considered Glaspell as “one of the two most accomplished playwrights of the twentieth-century America” (Carpentier 92). Glaspell’s work has a strong topic of feminist ideas which is why “the stories [Trifles and “A Jury of her Peers”] have enjoyed a surge of popularity since feminist scholars rediscovered it in the early 1970’s…Recently [Trifles and “A Jury of her Peers”] have been republished in collections of works by female authors depicting women’s experiences” (Bryan 1294). Glaspell wrote Trifles in 1916 in a mere ten days and the following year she adapted the play as a short story called “A Jury of her Peers.” The two stories are very similar in nature, the only difference being that Trifles includes stage directions since it is written in the form of a drama. Susan Glaspell normally “focuses on the negative and destructive effects that male-female relationships have on women, but she also stresses the ways in which women cope with their circumstances” (Glaspell 891). These ideas are commonly shared between Glaspell’s play Trifles in 1916 and her

Cited: Ben-Zvi, Linda. “’Murder, She Wrote’: The Genesis of Susan Glaspell’s Trifles.”Theatre Journal 44.2 (May, 1992): 141-162 Bryan, Patricia L. “Stories in Fiction and in Fact: Susan Glaspell’s A Jury of Her Peers and the 1901 Murder Trial of Margaret Hossack.” Stanford Law Review 49.6 (Jul., 1997) 1293- Carpentier, Martha C. “Susan Glaspell’s Fiction: Fidelity as American Romance.” Twentieth Century Literature 40.1 (Spring, 1994): 92-113 Maynard & Company Inc., 1917, 256-282. Roberts. 4th Compact Ed. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2009, 891-902. Gubar, Susan and Anne Hedin. “A Jury of Our Peers: Teaching and Learning in the Indiana Women’s Prison.” College English 43.8 (Dec., 1981): 779-789 Stephens, Judith l. “Gender Ideology and Dramatic Convention in Progressive Era Plays, 1890- 1920.” Theatre Journal 41.1 (Mar