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Symbolism In Trifles

Decent Essays

In a century where woman are seen as dumbfound and whimsical a wife commits an unforgivable crime, but is let off the hook because of her friends that hide evidence. that could get her executed in front of the whole town. Mrs. Wright has been changed by her husband to the point that she’s not going to deal with it anymore. Mr. Wright is a hard man that doesn’t make any exceptions to what he wants which ultimately leads to his downfall. Susan Glaspell uses setting to add symbolic meaning in her play Trifles by putting objects in the setting that have background meanings to the story. The first object that Glaspell uses in the setting to add symbolic meaning is the dead canary in the cage. Gaspell uses the dead bird to symbolize how Mrs. Wrights old life as Minne Foster is dead and gone, and can never be brought back. County Attorney (seeing the …show more content…

Wright wasn’t herself and hadn’t been since she married her husband who changed her into the gloomy wife she was to that day. Which in a sense shows how Mrs. Wright isn’t completely wrong for killing her husband. Judith Kay Russell writes in her article Glaspells trifles, “Mrs. Wright is correct in denying individual knowledge or responsibility in the death of her husband” (1). This quote backs up the opinion that Although Mrs. Wright did kill her husband she was also deprived of herself and therefore had a reason to kill her husband. In the end Susan Glaspell uses many objects in the setting to add symbolic meaning to the story. Glaspell uses the dead canary, the broken bird cage, and the dirty kitchen all to give hidden insight to the story if read correctly and deciphered with an open mind. Trifles was written to show the struggles of women in this day and age and uses the stereotypical assumption that women stick to the kitchen and making quilts when really and truly the woman solve the case without even having to try while the men are searching for clues in all of the wrong

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