"Trifles" and "The Glass Menagerie"

Paper Summary:

The paper discusses how Susan Glaspell's "Trifles" and Tennessee Williams' "The Glass Menagerie" are, in spite of the different styles they use, very similar in their subjects and especially in the way they the construct the main relationships between men and women. The paper portrays how both plays represent femininity through symbols of extreme sensibility and fragility. The paper shows how the female protagonists in the stories, "Laura" and "Mrs. Wright" are also alike in many ways.

From the Paper:

"Glaspell's play is thus an overt criticism of the disregard that men have for the female, seemingly unimportant world. The main relationship in the story, that between the two absent characters, Mrs. Wright and her husband, is very significant: Mr. Wright gets strangled with a rope in his sleep and the main suspect is of course, his wife. The investigations and inquiries made by the sheriff and the attorney are symbols of the typical, pragmatic and masculine world of action. In the meanwhile the wives, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters notices the "trifles" connected with the main female occupations: the preserves, the needle work and so on. While the men are incapable of finding the most important detail of the crime, the motive, the two women discover it through their sensibility as women, and through the understanding that comes from common experience."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Glaspell, Susan. Trifles. http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/eng384/trifles.htm
• Williams, Tennessee. The Glass Menagerie. http://staff.bcc.edu/faculty_websites/jalexand/Williams--The_Glass_Menagerie.htm

More papers on "Trifles" and "The Glass Menagerie":

• Analytical Essay # 123285 : "Irony and 'The Glass Menagerie'"
• Essay # 33644 : "Tennessee Williams and "The Glass Menagerie"
• Book Review # 100918 : "Deception and 'The Glass Menagerie'"

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