Susan Glaspell’s “Trifles”: A Feminist/Post-Structuralist Reading

Abstract

This study offers a feminist/post-structuralist reading of Susan Glaspell’s “Trifles”. It addresses man/woman binary opposition, not by taking the existence of one to mean the absence of the other, but in terms of looking at each side of the binary opposition as having a multiplicity of identifications that require various opposition models. In particular, it pays attention to the post/structuralist view of opposition as a societal construct that does not exist in objective reality, and therefore, could be challenged, dismantled and rectified. The study seeks to analyze Glaspell’s “Trifles” in the light of a quotation from Klages (2011) in which he uses the theatre seating arrangement as a metaphor for woman’s position in the male/female gender binary. Also, In “Trifles”, the patriarchal constructs underlying the judicial conventions have been confronted and the nature of criminality has been redefined when the women in the story repudiate the passivity foisted on them by engaging in a series of domestic feminine details that finally lead to the unraveling of the mystery of the crime. The study sheds light on the feminist rejection of patriarchy, and it concludes with the postulation that the time has come to incorporate the feminine perspective and female settings in the legal investigative tradition.