The Spousal Abuse of Women in Susan Glaspell’s Trifles

Assist Instructor Shirin Kamal Ahmed

doi:10.36473/ujhss.v224i1.251

Abstract

This research plans to focus on the spousal abuse of women in Susan Glaspell’s Trifles. Susan Glaspell (1876-1948) is one of the remarkable American female playwrights whose main literary concern is focusing on women issues. The drama of Trifles is considered her master piece in which she sympathises with the American abused women and speaks up for them. American woman is still suffering from spousal abuse but in the early 20thcentury this problem was ignored, excused or denied because women did not have their legal rights and were treated as being inferior than men. The system then gave men the authority over women in all aspects of society even at home. When speaking about abused women, critics’ main concern is the physical effects of the abuse ignoring other types of the spousal abuse, their impacts and consequences. Through her realistic drama of Trifles, Glaspell exposes different types of spousal abuse which are important as the physical onesince they have bad impact on the victims. This research will analysethe types of spousal abuse in Susan Glaspell’s Trifles, their impact and consequences.

Highlights

Glaspell who has brought it to a rich and effective maturity.‖Susan Glaspell gained her outstanding placeas the mother of the modern American dramabecause she rebelled against the gender standards of her society via playing a crucial role in the American theatre that was appreciated by remarkable American and British critics as she wasdescribed as ―American drama's best kept secret.‖(Quoted in Stowell,1992:56)
Susan Glaspell is one of the most important American playwrights whose drama of Trifles integrates the mood of society towards women at a time when their social status is viewed as underneath malestatus. Glaspell dedicates her theatre for discussing feminine issues ata time near the peak of women’s suffrage, Glaspell’s play can be considered as a call for women’s rights via exposing one of the most important and banned issues that is the spousal abuse of women
Susan Glaspell’s Trifles is about a murder case of Mr Wright, yet the spousalabuse of women is a central theme in the play as the whole play is centred on an abused woman who is forced to kill her husband after enduring her sufferings for so long time

Summary

Susan Glaspell: Biographical Sketch and Works

Susan Glaspell (1876 – 1948) is an American journalist, Pulitzer Award-winning dramatist, novelist and actress. Glaspell’s wrote many remarkable works among them are :The Glory of the Conquered (1909), The Visioning (1911), Lifted Masks (1912), Fidelity (1915) and Suppressed Desires (1915).To most readers Susan Glaspell is still known primarily as being the author of Trifles(1916) a one-act play that was appreciated in ―Small Things Reconsidered‖ an essay written by Elaine Hedgeswho said that: Women’s role or place in society, the confinement and isolation, the psychic violence wrought against them, their power or powerlessness vis a vis man, are not concerns restricted to Glaspell’s time and place These concerns achieve their imaginative force and conviction in her story by being firmly rooted in, and organically emerging from, the carefully observed, small details of a localized way of life. It was not legally guaranteed especially when the murder is approved to be based on vengeance rather than being a reaction of unbalanced person, a matter that is vividly portrayed in Susan Glaspell’s Trifles. (Johnson, 1998)

Susan Glaspell’s Trifles

Conclusion