Gender Role in Triffles Essay

The roles and rights of women in the Victorian era up to nineteen hundreds differ drastically from where women stand today. In the play â€Å"Trifles† by Susan Glaspell, females are portrayed to be an insignificant part of society compared to the importance of males. Susan Glaspell’s play Trifles is a murder mystery type of play that discovers and analyzes gender roles and corrupt relationships due to the Victorian time period. The typical stereo type for women in the nineteen hundreds was being nothing but a housewife. A good house wife in this time was considered to have children, take care of the children and clean the house, and there not much more to it. In the nineteen hundreds women did not have many career options, they had almost none. Women’s education was not seen as an important thing to promote. Stated by Helen Nickson in the article Life of Women in the Victorian Era, â€Å"The only role of women in the Victorian era was to get married and look after the homely chores – The ladies did not do things themselves but told others what to do. They were just supposed to marry and raise children. The women of lower class worked in the factories, garment industries, laundries or various other jobs to support themselves.†. Women were treated more like an object or a servant rather than a person or spouse. One of the main characters in the play Trifles named Hale states a short simple statement that when looked into, states a strong opinion. Hale states to another male in the play, â€Å"Well, women are used to worrying over trifles.†. This statement shows how the men in this day thought women lacked common sense or intelligence. When trying to investigate the murder in this story, the men took no part of the women’s opinions. Women’s rights have come a long way since the Victorian Era. Women had little say in just about everything whether it had to do with marriage decisions or political things. Set up marriages were a common thing women had no say in. In today’s world women can vote, support themselves and choose who they marry. Some people wouldn’t believe the simple rights women have today were fought for way back when even in the nineteen hundreds. Women had little almost no career options in the Victorian Era. The few career choices were only for single women who needed to support themselves, if one was a house wife that was there life. Men had high expectations of their own wife’s classiness and manners in public places in the nineteen hundreds. Many males were very judgmental, much in like the play Trifles, of any opinion from a women back in the day. In an online article by Rachael Hurvitz, she states â€Å"For Victorians, divorce was not only extremely expensive, it was very hard to do. Women and men stayed in unhappy marriages for numerous reasons. Many stayed away from divorce because of the stigma attached to divorced women. It was also considered a societal taboo†. Women feared divorcing the one they were married to strictly due to the opinions of others in society. In Trifles a woman ends up murdering her own husband, rather than divorcing. The investigators don’t suspect her at first strictly because she is a wife and a female. When another female suggests that the husbands wife could be a possibility, the men just laughed to each another. Before women had fought for their rights, they lacked respect from society. Women have come a long way today, now having equal rights to anything men can do, including career choices and political voting. Works Cited Glaspel, SusanTrifles Literature: Eleventh Edition Nickson, Helen. â€Å"Life of Women in the Victorian Era.† Web.: http://ezinearticles.com/?Life-of-Women-in-the-Victorian-Era&id=2359711 Hurvitz, Rachael â€Å"Women and Divorce in the Victorian Era† http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/agunn/teaching/enl3251/vf/pres/hurvitz.htm