Sally Burke is not the only critic that considers Susan Glaspell a heroine regarding her active commitment to women. To her acknowledgment, Glaspell has written thirteen plays, fourteen novels, and fifty short stories, articles and essays. In 1931, Susan Glaspell became only the second woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Alison's House. Nevertheless, she is most renowned as one of the first women playwrights that advocate the women's suffrage movement. In her play, Trifles, Glaspell exposes her audience to the way that women were treated in her time. The central theme of sexual tension between men and women is evident throughout the work, as well as apparent in her everyday life. In Glaspell's day, the "American stage had few women characters that were as vibrant, strong, and rebellious as those she created in the teens and twenties" (Mal

hough society viewed women as inferior to men. Trifles attempts to explain Susan Glaspell's attitude towards sexism and the public's view of women, as well as her commitment to the women's movement for social change and justice.

While Susan Glaspell describes her female characters as superior to the male characters, society at that point in time believed that women were less important than men. Several instances in Trifles represent the injustices that women faced in everyday life. The play begins with the characters all walking into Mrs. Wright's house through the shed door. However, the fact that the two women saunter in behind the men introduces the notion that women are inferior to men and are supposed to follow behind their husbands. Susan Glaspell uses this image to represent from the very beginning of the play the perception that women are living in a male-dominated world.

Shafer, Yvonne. American Women Playwrights, 1900-1950. New York: Peter Lang Publishers, 1995.

Moreover, Glaspell also reveals society's image of a woman as having little value without a man. On account of this depiction, the men in the play obscure the women's identities. This is emphasized when Mr. Henderson reminds Mrs. Peters that she is "married to the law" because her husband is the Sheriff (1181). Likewise, women are also seen as having a lower intelligence as observed when Mr. Hale says, "Well, women are used to worrying over trifles" (1174). Mr. Hale's statement is not only a very stereotypical comment generated towards women, but also a very characteristic remark made by men overall in the early twentieth century. Once more, Susan Glaspell's dialogue plays a leading role in creating the differences between men and women of her time.

It is clear, then, that Susan Glaspell used her characters to express her opinion of both genders in her play, Trifles. By writing feminist literature

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Approximate Word count = 1289
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)