Essay Comparing the Plays “Trifles”

A Dolls Trifles A essay comparing the plays Trifles and Dollhouse. Joshua want English 102 Amy Lannon March 21, 2012 Our societys sex roles ar constantly evolving and changing, all in the micturate of progressive thinking, though non all for the good. With a advanced social norm appear every few years or so, it comes as a surprise that it has been a relatively piddling time since women commence broken through their defined roles to be seen on the like level as men on a social basis.M any of historys pages argon written from a venerable perspective, opening the representation for the female protagonists and complimentary characters in Susan Glaspells Trifles and Henrik Ibsens A Dolls House to make us rethink those grammatical gender roles through the events that occur during the plays and through their own complicatedity, providing enkindle points of comparison and contrast in the midst of the plays and challenging earshots to think about gender roles in a new focus. Both these plays are centered round married couples and are told from the perspectives of their respective female characters.In Trifles, we are introduced to Mrs. Wright and her dude cast of characters a day after the murder of Mrs Wrights husband. The play takes place after the fact, and some(prenominal) of the script is built around a conversation between Mrs. salubrious and Mrs. Peters (women from the said(prenominal) rural townspeople as the Wrights) about whether or non Mrs. Wright really committed the murder. The reader believes the entire time that she did, except is compelled to continue to find out why. Trifles is about a woman who murders her husband and two other women who whiplash injury out against their gender roles by withholding evidence from their husbands.Much shorter in length and lighter in noise than A Dolls House, with Trifles Susan Glaspell gets her point across quickly, while Idsen takes his time in grinding his message home. In A Dolls House the c ritical aspects of the play are also divulged before the curtain is lifted. It is figure that Nora, a woman who seems at ease with her gender role, has circumvented her husbands will and has been paying despatch a debt behind his back for years, doing so as she resorted to having forged her mothers signature to helper her get said loan.We further learn that she has no problem lying to her husband about this to spare the peace in their matrimony, Nora would rather Torvald continue to think of her as a spendthrift than as a woman in debt, causing the reader to feel uneasy with the assumption that she is your average housewife character. A particularly interesting comparison exists between these two women protagonists in that both of them are compared to birds. Torvald calls Nora his lark (Ibsen 1259), and Mrs. Hale openly says Mrs.Wright was kind of a bird herself(Glaspell 1054). While these seem to be innocent metaphors on the surface, darker t bingles presently overtake them as the plays progressbirds can be trapped in cages in the same way that women might be considered to be trapped into their gender roles, where their duties are non to themselves but to their husbands and children(Helium 3). We do discover this theme in Trifles, when a literal canary is found strangled and its dead body fix in the pocket of a quiltstrangled by Mr. Wright and sewed away by Mrs.Wright, the same way Mrs. Wrights spirit and free nature was discarded in order to sue her gender-assigned duties. Indeed, we truly see in her character a desire to serve those duties, a desire for children and to be a good wife through the descriptions we receive from Mrs. Hale, but these desires are denied by the cold, wintry spirit of one Mr. Wright. Mrs. Hale says as much to the County Attorney, Mr. Henderson, when she says how she didnt think a placed be any much cheerful for John Wrights being in it (1051).And for the woman once known as Minnie Foster, it was that same man who eroded her until she no longer was one of the town girls as she had been thirty years before, no longer a woman who sang in the choir, her happy, hopeful spirit, gone. Her final comfort in that other than drained and dreary home was that little singing canary that she had bought a year before the events of Trifles, and whose oddment sets her off to finally murder her own husband by tying a rope around his neck killing him much in the way he killed the bird and her own spirit. This is a accurate example of something as wondrous as marriage gone horribly wrong.While Mrs. Wright lashes out against her perceived cage, her gender role, by killing Mr. Wright, Noras character ultimately decides to trip the latch, to fly free from the bars. Noras complex personality proves to be difficult to predict to the very end, when she decides to shirk her duties to her husband and children to focus on herself, to serve her own needs for individuality, a decision that was not entirely popular with readers and audiences alike. Indeed, Nora quite easily refuses to be the doll in Torvalds house, and abandons her loving, though misguided husband, and her children.She feels driven to do this once she realizes that she and Torvald had never transfer a serious word in their relationship, despite their discussion days earlier about Krogstad or about matters of money. But as Marvin Rosenberg writes in Ibsens Nora, it is the humanizing faults that make her so exciting such as how she munches on macaroons forbidden by Torvald, and when he discovers the sweets, she lies her friend brought them, or how, in response to her husbands inquiry about the scratches on the mailbox, she absolves herself by blaming the scratches on her children (Helium 2) But no matter the contends they issue to universal gender roles, Noras actions are not crimes, not for the most part, although it is a crime that she forged her fathers name on the loan papers from Mr. Krogstad however, it is unjust that is at the v ery heart of the challenges issued to Nora in A Dolls House that an otherwise harmless woman is forced to break what tradition would assert to be true and step out of her boundaries by doing so.However, it is not but Minnie Fosters and Noras crimes that challenge such gender dynamics, but the actions and circumstances of their supporting casts as well. One example being that in at least one of the relationships in A Doll House, there is a complete turnaround time of typical gender assignments it is exampled when Kristine Linde takes Mr. Krogstads job. Kristine, a woman who proves herself capable of solving her own problems by herselfwithout any mans aidduring the events events that unfold.Not only does she replace him at the bank where Torvald, Noras husband, is to serve as manager, but also later renews the relationship between the two of them from ten years prior and offers to impart while he stays at homeat least during the outset of their relationshipbecause his victorious t he job back benefits no one (Ibsen1292). It was also she who fixed her familys problems years before by taking it on herself to abandon her original relationship with Krogstad and marry a richer man, though she loved him not. Krogstad himself travel out of gender role when he accepts these ircumstances to fall upon himselfhe does not care that he is, for the moment, not to be the breadwinner of the family he cares only that he and Ms. Linde are at last reunited. Just as Ms. Linde and Krogstad interpret complimentary characters to go alongside Nora in challenging gender roles, the duo of Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters in Trifles fare the same task for Mrs. Wright (Helium 2). Together, these two women go about the home of the crime scene and discuss the national while gathering trinkets for the incarcerated Mrs.Wrightignoring some judgmental comments from both the County Attorney and the Sheriff during the processand as the duet go through the home collecting various Trifles, they begi n realizing odd things like how the quilt is knotted queerly or how difficult it is to imagine there being a bird cage in the home. Eventually, it is they, and not the Country Attorney and Sheriff, who discover the strangled canary and put together the pieces of evidence confirming Mrs. Wrights criminal acts.What is more, they agree to hide the evidence away, even though Mrs. Peters is the sheriffs wife. So not only do the women in Trifles solve the murder, but also protect one of their own in a way that influences the audience to think they do the right thing, even though that thing is protecting an confessedly sympathetic murderer. It is the actions of these secondary characters, women solving murders or women taking over the male duties of a family, that enable Trifles and A Dolls House to challenge gender roles.If it was only Minnie Foster and Nora that had set out to challenge the conventions, then uncomplete play would be heralded so much for their feminist themes. It is be cause there are multiple characters in each play that convince the reader and the audience that what is being presented to them is realistic to life that these themes begin to be clear. The conclusion of Mrs. Wrights criminal trial is never shown, so we dont know if she was released from fall back because of the lack of evidence against herfor all we know Mrs.Peters relented and eventually tells the story of the dead canary to her husband the Sheriff. Noras destination after she departs Torvalds home is also left in the dark, and we have no way of knowing if she finds what she is looking for. Because the readers begin to hope that these imaginary characters encounter success, their thinking may change they may ponder in a new way about womens rights and gender conventions and how the duties in marriage should not be assigned due to the apabilities of one sex or the other, but shared between husband and wife. This is certainly the most socially and politically correct way of thinki ng, though there are some schools of thought that believe, while both sexes are equal to one another in their humanity, each sex possess unique strengths and weaknesses and that therefore, gender roles, while they can be taken to an extreme, do have a positive place in society.This way of thinking suggests that the true beauty of gender fundamental interaction lies in the differences between them, not in the lifeless sameness (not to be confused with equality) that is so naively sought after, and that the the abolishment of the positive dynamics that have existed between sexes simply because theyre traditional, and because this oddment falls under the very shaky moniker of forward thinking, will cause great harm.The audience of these plays however, begins to see the power of human relationships when these women try to solve their problems, without the help of men, on stage. And that is exactly how Glaspell and Ibsen wrote them to be seennot as women, but as people. Those are the fa r-reaching effects that occur when we allow what we read, and see, to influence our thinking, and ultimately they are why Trifles and A Dolls House have become so renowned as plays that challenge gender