Cat Chanthavisouk
English 126
Walter Lowe
A Woman’s Place
There is a saying that jokingly asks, “Who wears the pants in the relationship?” In the general public, women are taking stand outside of the housewife role that we are used to seeing them play in the early 1900’s. Instead of being the obedient and compliant woman standing behind their husbands respectfully like earlier in the days, we find women outspoken, blunt, and speaking their opinion loud and clear in today’s culture. Women today feel as if their voices need to be heard and their opinions need to be acted upon, but no matter how loud women voice their opinion or try to take on more masculine, women will always be second to men, who will always play the dominant role.
In the play Trifles, Susan Glaspell shows examples of the woman’s place in a man’s world. The inferiority of women to men is depicted in the acters’ and actresses’ actions and interaction with each other. This play was written in 1916 and shows that the reference to women does not address her by her first name at all. The female characters are simply addressed as Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters. All men in this play are address by their first name. This shows that women in the early 1900’s, had no place or meaning to society unless she was married. Not particularly married to a man with a high place in society, but married at all. This reference to women shows them as a substandard to men.
SHERIFF: Nothing here but kitchen things. (The County Attorney, after again looking around the kitchen, opens the door of a cupboard closet in right wall. He brings a small chair from right-gets on it and looks on a shelf. Pulls his hand away, sticky.)
COUNTY ATTORNEY: Here’s a nice mess. (The women draw nearer up to center.)
MRS. PETERS (to the other woman)L Oh, her fruit; it did freeze. (To the Lawyer.) She worried about that when it turned so cold. She said the fire’d go out and her jars would break.
SHERIFF: (rises): Well, can you beat...