VCCS Litonline Introduction to Literature
English 112 (English Composition II)

A student sees the possibility of considerable influence from Susan Glaspell's living situation on the story line of her play, Trifles.

An Analysis of the Influence of the Author’s Life in Trifles

by Rebecca Search [Rpt. by permission]

“Writers describe the world they know. (They imagine) a story to be happening in a place that is rooted in his or her mind.” (Describing Setting) This is the case with Trifles. Susan Glaspell, in writing Trifles, drew from past or current experiences in writing her piece of literature. Very specific to this case is the influence of the author’s spouse in contributing to her work. The author’s life experience will be analyzed to reflect its influence upon the literature. Susan Glaspell, who lived during the turn of the 20th century, spent her premarital life in the Midwestern state of Iowa (Evans). Upon her completion of college, Glaspell worked as a reporter for the Des Moines Daily News (Ben-Zvi 143). Two years later, after leaving the reporting position, she returned to Davenport, Iowa where she had been born. While at Davenport, Glaspell began writing full-time. (Susan Glaspell)

According to a biographical sketch of Susan Glaspell: Most of her work at this time was aimed at a popular market with a largely female readership. Her stories tended to focus on the efforts of young women to find attractive and wealthy husbands. Even when she drew upon her observations of politics and politicians, the situations and characterizations were conventional, and the endings of the tales were usually happy, no matter what plot twists might be necessary to achieve such an outcome. (Susan Glaspell) (Note the contrast of writing theme described here before her life with George Cook, to that afterwards depicted in Trifles.) While in Davenport, she met George Cook who was also a writer. Cook was married to his second wife and had two children. Having socialist ideas, he was truck farming and raising chickens (Susan Glaspell). Truck farming was also Cook’s idea of a writer’s way of earning a living. He believed that a writer should not write to provide an income. (Dell) Instead of being swayed to write for a buying audience, he was free to write what he chose. A few years after they met, Glaspell and Cook began an affair (Waterman 13). They eventually married and Glaspell helped raise his two children (Verastegui Susan Glaspell – About the Author).

The couple moved East where they founded the Provincetown Players

(Verastegui Susan Glaspell – About the Author). It is while there that Glaspell “wrote for the stage, the medium in which she would achieve her greatest popular and artistic success” (Susan Glaspell). One of Susan Glaspell’s “most powerful and compelling works” is the one-act play Trifles (Verastegui Susan Glaspell – home page). The play was published in 1916 and is set during the latter half of the 19th century (Waterman). Portraying a Midwestern farm setting, the play is staged around a farmhouse kitchen. Three male characters work together in an attempt to solve the murder of Mr. Wright. In the meantime, two female characters bond as they discover clues and the evidence of Mrs. Wright’s guilt as the murderer. Glaspell describes the world she knew in writing Trifles. She commented later in life that her experiences working as a reporter for the Des Moines Daily News had provided her with enough material to quit her job and begin a career as a writer (Ben-Zvi 144). Trifles is based on an actual murder that Glaspell reported, while working for the newspaper (143). She would use the solving of a murder, “No, he’s dead all right,” to portray her characters in Trifles (Glaspell 457). Even though Glaspell had many past experiences, as a reporter, for a career in writing, it would be her relationship with her husband and the Provincetown Players that would allow her the opportunity to start this career (Evans).

Her husband introduced her to new ways of thinking. “She had met Cook and was pulled into the world of socialism, a concern with women’s suffrage, and a more realistic apprehension of the world around her--a new vision—“(Bigsby 6 qtd. in Maillakais). This new vision of the lack of roles for women during the turn of the 20th century, in which she wrote and lived, would influence her writing, as seen in Trifles. The fact that women had little say legally (i.e., they had no voting or jury rights) as well as the male dominance in family affairs would both be driving forces in Trifles. During the investigation of the murder in the play, Glaspell has the male characters working together, minimizing any comments made by the two women. This clear distinction of pitting the men against the women is a result of her newly formed socialist-influenced views. The author makes it clear that the men are intruding on the women’s world by dirtying Minnie Wright’s towels, ridiculing the unwashed pans and sticky preserves on the cupboard shelf – “Here’s a nice mess” (Glaspell 458).

After moving to Provincetown, Massachusetts, with her husband, Glaspell became involved in writing for their theatrical group. Here she lived in a community that had high ideals of socialism and feminism (Ben-Zvi 160). This influence encouraged her to create female characters who desired to free themselves from the stereotypical roles into which they had been cast (161). Glaspell creates in Trifles a kitchen scene in which the men are left out. In their stead, the two women, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, are allowed to discover the motive for the murder. Upon realizing Minnie Wright’s plight of injustice inflicted upon her by her husband, the two women take the law into their own hands. They pass the verdict: “That was a crime! That was a crime!” (Glaspell 465). Just as in public life, the women’s suffrage movement would not have had the results it did if women had not collectively joined forces; so too are the results in Trifles. Glaspell carries this collective influence of the women over in the play.

Had either Mrs. Hale or Mrs. Peters been staged alone, it is unlikely that either woman would have been able to, or would have made, the final decision concerning Minnie Wright of not guilty. As the two women gain evidence of Minnie’s difficult life, “I know how things can be – for women” (Glaspell 465), they form a bond of sisterhood with Minnie as well as with each other, since their lives share many of the same characteristics as Minnie’s. Just as women’s suffrage countered patriarchal law, so too do Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters. The two bonded women mutually hide the evidence against Minnie Wright. This influence in Trifles of women’s suffrage and a more realistic apprehension of the world around Glaspell, is described very aptly by Crocker when she states: By focusing on the cruelties of Minnie’s existence, her isolation, her “lack of options,” and “the complete disregard of [her] plight by the courts and by society,” Ben-Zvi feels that Glaspell “concretizes” the position of women in her society, moving the discussion beyond abstract problems of perception (157). The playwright’s tactics force recognition of “the central issues of female powerlessness…and the need for laws to address such issues” (157). The women’s arrogation of authority serves as “an empowerment,” as Ben-Zvi notes: “Not waiting to be given the vote or the right to serve on juries, Glaspell’s women have taken the right for themselves” (158). Thus, the female enactment of judicial power subverts traditional concepts of law and justice (Crocker). 

Even though her relationship with her husband gave Glaspell new ideas of thinking, her marriage to him would lead to gender conflict. Susan Glaspell’s life parallels much of that of the main character in Trifles, that of Minnie Wright. Floyd Dell writes a description of Glaspell as a young newspaperwoman in his autobiography Homecoming. It states: “Susan was a slight gentle, sweet, whimsically humorous girl, a little ethereal in appearance, but too medieval-romantic in her views of life.” This description of Susan Glaspell before her marriage to George Cook correlates with that of Minnie Wright. Before Minnie’s marriage to John Wright, Minnie “used to wear pretty clothes (‘white dress with blue ribbons’) (Glaspell 465) and be lively, when she was Minnie Foster, …singing in the choir” (460). Both Susan Glaspell and Minnie Wright were sweet pretty romanticists before their marriages.

In Trifles, Glaspell sets the play in the harsh environment of a midwestern farm. Minnie Wright experienced the demanding responsibilities and loneliness of the farm setting. This again parallels with Glaspell’s life as Cook’s wife. George Cook was a truck farmer. If he was a writer to any extent, how much of the raising of crops and tending to the chickens, that he raised, was left to his wife and children? One would wonder how much of Minnie Wright’s life and seclusion was experienced by Susan Glaspell. George Cook “practiced free love” (Makowsky 61). Being a victim of her husband’s many extramarital affairs would be Glaspell’s major contributing factor in writing Trifles. Glaspell’s work, according to Makowsky, was an outlet of the anger she had toward Cook (61). In the isolated setting of a truck farm the wife is dependent upon her husband for her emotional needs. Obviously, a husband who is involved in adultery cannot meet them. Just the contrary, the wife would only become more ostracized and lonely.

This parallels with the loneliness experienced by Minnie Wright in Trifles. Glaspell stages Minnie alone in a farmhouse down in a lonely hollow, which even her neighbors do not visit. “I could’ve come. I stayed away…Maybe because it’s down in a hollow…a lonesome place,” laments Mrs. Hale (Glaspell 463). “A woman has been left completely alone to perish in the ‘stillness’ (1007). However, no law has been created to punish this crime.” (Verastegui Susan Glaspell – My Perspective on Susan Glaspell) Loneliness is the crime that leads Minnie Wright to murder her husband. Lisa Crocker describes this conflict when she says: Veronica Makowsky, in Susan Glaspell’s Century of American Women: A Critical Interpretation of Her Work, sees the conflicts between the playwright’s love for her husband, George Cook, and her resentment over his unfaithfulness found release in the “rebellions” of her characters, whose “actions demand that the patriarchal world consider their feelings and situations as something more than domestic ‘trifles’” (61) (Crocker). 

Paradoxically, Glaspell needed Cook. Even though her married life with him was very difficult, yet being a nonconformist, Cook could “enact the rebellions” that society would not allow her to do (Makowsky 20-21). Elizabeth Evans sums up best what led to the “birth” of Trifles when she states: According to Glaspell’s recollection, during their stay in Greenwich, George Cook, needing material for “The Players” first season in New York, demanded that Glaspell write a play (Makowsky 24). Searching for ideas, Glaspell turned to her experiences as a reporter in Iowa, combined with her feminist philosophy and her life with Cook. She credits his influence for challenging her to change her genre from fiction to drama, and to “overthrow convention” in her form and content (24). The result is the play that she is best known for, Trifles. (Evans)

                                                            Works Cited

Ben-Zvi, Linda.  “’Murder, She Wrote’:  The Genesis of Susan Glaspell’s Trifles.” 

     Theatre Journal 44 (March 1992):  141-62.

Crocker, Lisa.  “Biographical Influences on Glaspell’s Trifles.”  Susan Glaspell –

     “Trifles”.  American Literature Research and Analysis Web Site.  8 Oct. 2003.

     <http://itech.fgcu.edu/faculty/wohlpart/alra/glaspell.htm>.

Dell, Floyd.  Homecoming.  The National Archives Learning Curve.  “George Gig

     Cook”.  9 Oct. 2003.  <http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Jgig.htm>.

Describing Setting.  Literature.  Annenberg/CPB.  10 Oct. 2003. 

     <http://www.learner.org/exhibits/literature/notread/setting1.html>.

Evan, Elizabeth M.  “Biographical Influences on Glaspell’s Trifles.”  Susan Glaspell –

     “Trifles”.  American Literature Research and Analysis Web Site.  8 Oct. 2003.

     <http://itech.fgcu.edu/faculty/wohlpart/alra/glaspell.htm>.

Glaspell, Susan. Trifles.  Responding to Literature (4^th Ed.).  Stanford, Judith A.

     New York:  McGraw Hill, 2003.  455-67.

Guardiano, Jan.  “Bibliography.”  Susan Glaspell – “Trifles”.  American Literature

     Research and Analysis Web Site.  8 Oct. 2003.  <http://itech.fgcu.edu/faculty/

     wohlpart/alra/glaspell.htm>.

Maillakais, Mikes.  “A woman’s Place:  Literary Background for Glaspell’s Trifles”. 

     Susan Glaspell – “Trifles”.  American Literature Research and Analysis Web Site.

     8 Oct. 2003.  <http://itech.fgcu.edu/faculty/wohlpart/alra/glaspell.htm>.

Makowsky, Veronica.  Susan Glaspell’s Century of American Women:  A Critical

     Interpretation of Her Work.  New York:  Oxford UP.  1993.

Susan Glaspell.  Literature Online.  Pearson Publishers.  23 Oct. 2003. 

     <http://occawlonline.pearsoned.com/bookbind/pubbooks/kennedycompact_awl/

     chapter21/obj>.

Verastegui, Amari. Susan Glaspell – About the Author.  9 Oct. 2003. 

     <http://www.tcnj.edu/~verasteg.htm>.

---.  Susan Glaspell – home page.  9 Oct. 2003.  <http://www.tcnj.edu/~verasteg.htm>.

---.  Susan Glaspell – My Perspective on Susan Glaspell.  9 Oct. 2003.  <http://

     www.tcnj.edu/~verasteg.htm>.

Waterman, Arthur.  Susan Glaspell.  New York:  Twayne.  1966.

---.  Susan Glaspell (1876 – 1948).  15 Oct. 2003.  <http://www.georgetown.edu/

     faculty/bassr/heath/syllabuild/iguide/glaspell.html>.