How Would Glaspell’s Audience in 1916 Likely Feel About Mrs. Hale’s and Mrs. Peter’s Decision at The End of The Play? What About a Modern Audience? Why?
At the end of the play, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peter decided to hide the evidence that may connect Mrs. Wright to the murder of her husband. Glaspell’s audience of 1916 is likely to feel different from the modern ones due to the shift in societal norms in understanding gender-related behaviors. The 1916 audience existed in a dominant patriarchal society that disregarded such issues as a criminal investigation to be men’s job, and any contribution from women was irrelevant and easily dismissible. Therefore, the 1916 audience ignored the women’s decision s to hide the evidence from men and treated such a scenario as irrelevant, unlike the modern society where women empowerment has fundamentally achieved gender equality in the community. A modern audience will treat both Mrs. Hale’s and Mrs. Peter’s decision as an act of criminal indulgence by helping a suspect evade the offense committed hence unethical in the contemporary world.
How Does Glaspell Condition the Audience to Accept the Final Decision of The Women at The End of The Play?
Throughout the play, Glaspell portrays women characters as experiencing a different kind of injustices from a society that treated men to be convincing. Men’s decision, in most scenarios, seems to undermine the presence of women subjecting them to certain forms of inequalities. For instance, the incidence in the kitchen, the sheriff dismisses the possibility of any evidence since only utensils are in the sight of a lamentation that exhibits gender prejudices (Glaspell). Glaspell convinces the audience of oppression women to suffer from the men. For instance, Mrs. Peter and Mr. Hale convinced that Mr. John Wright mistreated Minnie Wright, who seems innocent, an event that may have led to her d=murder act. In the end, the audience may approve the women’s motive to hide the evidence so that Minnie Wright could go free of the murder she committed.
Work Cited
Glaspell, Susan. Trifles. Boston: Baker’s Plays, 2010. Print.
