Teerapong Wanichtamrong

2202235 Reading and Analysis in the Study of English Literature

Acharn Puckpan Tipayamontri

January 7, 2009

Reading Response

A None Place

“Down in a hollow and you don’t see the road” (42), Mrs. Wright’s kitchen is in a house that is literally unseen by passersby. In this setting that is generally invisible, a crime has been committed which no one sees or hears save possibly the suspect who pleads ignorance and is not present in the play. The case that will be tried in court will have no female jury because the time of the play is when women cannot be such a part of the legal system, nor can they vote or be a part of the political system. The setting then, is a time and place where Mrs. Wright’s case effectively cannot be seen or heard.

In this non place, the set is a kitchen where, according to the sheriff, “the law,” there is “nothing here but kitchen things” (38). Wiped of existence and legal potential, the set and setting of Trifles is Glaspell’s genius ironic construction. Out of sight, out of mind, goes the saying. By bringing this dismissible space to her audience, Glaspell forces them to look at and think about a place that otherwise has no position in consciousness. The things that unfold in this nonexistent place—unwitnessed crime, unknown motive, and unfound evidence leading to an untenable case—ask the audience to reconsider its dismissibility. Rather than being negligible, this none place becomes a privileged peek into the unknown. And once known, the place, its hidden female inhabitant, and her secret conspirators, are not easy to forget.

Umaporn Jaisawang

2202235 Reading and Analysis in the Study of English Literature

Acharn Puckpan Tipayamontri

January 7, 2009

Reading Response

SOS

George Henderson the lawyer declares of Mrs. Wright, “I shouldn’t say she had the homemaking instinct” (39), pronouncing her unfit to be a housewife by looking at the house, and especially the kitchen, as a reflection of the woman herself, to which Mrs. Hale takes exception, “Seems mean to talk about her for not having things slicked up when she had to come away in such a hurry.” The set—“a gloomy kitchen” (36)—and its setting—“down in a hollow and you don’t see the road” (42)—then, represent not only the absent suspect herself but also her circumstance and even her state of mind. That her voice and the kitchen are so closely aligned as to be virtually one and the same thing is illustrated in Mrs. Peters’ ease in fulfilling her mission: “She [Mrs. Wright] said they [aprons] was in the top drawer in this cupboard. Yes, here. And then her little shawl that always hung behind the door. (opens stair door and looks) Yes, here it is” (40). Everything is in its place. Therefore, when things are not as they should be, which merely cause Mr. Henderson to give unfair criticism, they should cause the keener and more just observer to take careful note. The women prove themselves to be excellent listeners of Mrs. Wright (or great readers of the text which is the set) and become properly troubled and later alarmed.

The prepared bread dough gives Mrs. Peters pause: “lift[s] one end of the towel that covers a pan) She had bread set. (Stands still.)” (39). The set speaks. That is, Mrs. Wright speaks. And what the bread baking and dough being set to rise say to the sheriff’s wife is that Mrs. Wright was not planning on doing anything out of the ordinary or on going anywhere where she cannot tend to her cooking in progress. The set voices Mrs. Wright’s innocent and normal intentions and plans. “A loaf of bread beside the bread-box” tells Mrs. Hale “She was going to put this in there” and something disrupted her from completing the action. From this normal lonely routine interrupted, the women learn further from quilt sewing that began “so nice and even” but ended “all over the place!” (41) that Mrs. Wright thereafter becomes disturbingly “so nervous.”

The hinge “pulled apart” of a bird cage door (42) and a canary with its neck wrung “wrapped up in [a] piece of silk” (43) answer Mrs. Hale’s earlier demand “What do you suppose she was so nervous about?” (41). Questions are asked and the set responds. This odd but natural conversation that these two women have with the set in lieu of Mrs. Wright reveals an isolated woman desperately starved of companionship. In the language of kitchen things, homey chores, and domestic use, Mrs. Hale is able to understand her former friend’s distress signals and domestic abuse: “She liked the bird. She was going to bury it in that pretty box” (43), and finally come to her aid. Like the canary that can still tell-tales even through its broken neck, the set and setting give Mrs. Wright’s testimony even though she is absent and silent. You can hear it if you know how to look.

Khemika Pailinrat

2202235 Reading and Analysis in the Study of English Literature

Acharn Puckpan Tipayamontri

January 7, 2009

Reading Response

Torn Loyalties

Mrs. Peters might be seen as a minor character compared to the central absent actor, Mrs. Wright, and the outsize and outspoken farm wife, Mrs. Hale, but the ironic title Trifles cautions us that we ignore slighter things at our own peril, for she embodies a crucial conflict in the play whose outcome not only determines the fate of a tormented woman but also defines her own independence from her husband the sheriff, freeing two women with one resolve as it were.

Unlike Martha Hale, her fellow accomplice, Mrs. Peters does not know Minnie Wright personally, making her a more neutral jury member or judge. If anything, Mrs. Peters, despite her sex, starts out defending the men, “Of course it’s no more than their duty,” and is predisposed to respect the legal system, “the law is the law,” even if it is skewed against a woman or women. That she changes her position from alignment with her husband’s affiliation with the law or from a noncommittal (even fearful [presumably of wrongdoing]) bystander, “(in a frightened voice.) Oh, I don’t know,” to a co-conspirator of a crime is a remarkable about-face worth close attention.

This is the conflict that turns the play. At the climax of the story, Mrs. Peters is torn between loyalties. Should she be loyal to her husband, who also happens to be the sheriff and upholder of the law? Should she be loyal to her sex, in the words of Mr. Henderson, the county attorney? More specifically, should she be loyal to her sense of wrong: “It was an awful thing was done in this house that night…Killing a man while he slept, slipping a rope around his neck that choked the life out of him”? Or should she be loyal to her sense of sympathy, of human identification: “(in a whisper) When I was a girl—my kitten—there was a boy took a hatchet, and before my eyes—and before I could get there—(Covers her face an instant.) If they hadn’t held me back, I would have—(Catches herself, looks upstairs, where steps are heard, falters weakly.)—hurt him”?

The play witnesses and displays Mrs. Peters’ struggle. She becomes not merely herself but also an audience surrogate, a proxy for viewers’ own debate within themselves about what is right or wrong, who is a criminal and who is not, whether it is possible or acceptable that the law is not just, and the paradoxical idea that committing a crime might be the right thing to do. She swings between clashing ideas: “I know what stillness is. (Pulling herself back). The law has got to punish crime.”

This is the conflict whose resolution defies simple classification and upturns several easy categories. If it is difficult to judge whether Mrs. Wright is a bad person or whether her act is supportable, it is even more uncomfortable to say that Mrs. Peters is a bad person or that her act is outright wrong. Glaspell carefully makes it inconclusive. In response to the county attorney’s suggestive question that “a sheriff’s wife is married to the law. Ever think of it that way, Mrs. Peters?” she replies “Not—just that way.” The double meaning can be taken as “not exactly,” disagreeing with the remark, or as “not only that way,” arguing for more than one definition or dimension of her identity: she is not only a sheriff’s wife, or married to the law, but also a woman, a person in her own right, an upholder of other kinds of justice besides the legal, and can be affiliated with other loyalties like friendship and other kinship.

Mrs. Peters’ final actions similarly straddle different territories. “Suddenly Mrs. Peters throws back quilt pieces and tries to put the box in the bag she is wearing. It is too big. She opens the box, starts to take the bird out, cannot touch it, goes to pieces, stands there helpless.” On one hand, her definite attempt to hide the incriminating evidence is clear. On the other, she does not actually do it, both because it is physically and emotionally impossible for her to do so. Her silence after Mrs. Hale’s closing words is another, ironically, active choice that aids and abets the withholding of proof of motive that would have made a valid case against Mrs. Wright. Is she bad for helping a murderer? It is intriguing to consider that not doing something is doing something. To see this “slight wiry woman” with “a thin nervous face” as a lesser character is a serious underestimation of her role in the play. Her wrenching sincerity in grappling with opposing loyalties to eventually favor a woman stranger she has just come to know in half an hour through her kitchen is designed to appeal to audience sympathy. She is the linchpin in this astonishing conversion of theater goers into conspirators. In the end, she is loyal to a sense of justice that the law at that time does not and cannot deliver. And the audience, inexorably, becomes associated in this collusion.