Susan Glaspell’s play, Trifles, was written in 1916, and
reflects the author’s preoccupation with culture-bound notions
of gender and sex roles. As the title of the play by Susan
Glaspell, “Trifles” (click here for a full plot summary)
suggests, the concerns of women are often considered to be mere
trifles, unimportant issues that bear little or no importance to
the true work of society, which, of course, is being carried out
by men. Glaspell questions, and in so doing calls the reader or
viewer to also question, the relative value of men’s and women’s
perspectives and work by setting up a tension-filled drama that
unfolds through the development of two distinct narratives, one
male and one female. As Holstein argues in her essay, however,
the questioning Glaspell provokes is not necessarily only about
women’s roles in society, but rather how knowledge and
perspective are valued or devalued within specific contexts.
Holstein contends that the two parallel narratives of Trifles
are built upon “the differences