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If you have read Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-paper,” Freeman’s
A New England Nun, or poems by Frost or Robinson about the
loneliness and psychological pressures of rural New England
life early in the twentieth century, you will be on familiar
ground with Glaspell’s Trifles, which first was published
as a short story. What we see here is a rural New England
before the coming of the interstate highways, the ski resort
industry, and floods of weekenders from Boston, New York,
and other major cities. This is both a mystery story and
a story about women coming together imaginatively within
a world and a justice system dominated by men. With a scattering
of evidence, two women piece together an understanding of
what someone like themselves has had to endure, and what
has forced her over the brink. They empathize in ways that
the men of this place cannot understand. The American twentieth
century gave us many dark tales about farm families in isolation.
How does Trifles contribute to that tradition?
Explorations
1. Think about the challenge of making this play longer
- of providing more character development, more background
about
the Sheriff, Mrs. Peters, Mrs. Hale, and life in the Wright
household. If someone were to make a feature film out of
Trifles, the studios would require a length of at least ninety
minutes. What might be gained or lost in such an expansion?
2. If you were casting this play for a major production,
what contemporary actors and actresses would you think of
as ideal for the various parts, and why?
3. We now read Trifles in an age of Stephen King and ILM.
The bookstores are flooded with grisly tales of the New England
outback; and in the film versions of such stories wide-screen
gore is standard fare. In contrast, Glaspell’s play
is austere and understated. The murder has happened “yesterday” and
we don’t see the violence, the blood, or the body;
most of the “action” involves two un-heroic friends
in a kitchen, looking at small clues. The big revelation
is a little dead bird. This kind of drama can therefore seem
very odd. What moments or qualities in Glaspell’s play
strike you as retaining their freshness? Does the play still
have an impact? Talk with a friend about understatement and
inference as techniques in narration, in times when visual “special
effects” and earsplitting stereo are the stock-in-trade
at the multiplex. Can small quiet dramas have a place in
our own popular culture? Or are we, for the moment at least,
deaf to the whispered voices of Trifles?
Other Sites to Consult
http://www.learner.org/exhibits/literature/read/author.html:
Biographical information.
http://www.tcnj.edu/~verasteg/glaspell.htm: Biographical
information, bibliography, criticism, photographs, and additional
resources, as well as information on Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
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