Trifles

Going into class on Monday, I had no idea what to expect regarding the content of the play “Trifles”. I found the play to be a bit hard to follow, but by the end of it, I got the message it was trying to send. The female actors did a nice job of showing us how women were expected to act and behave during that time, and the male actors did a good job of showing us how women were treated during the early 1900s, long before equality was ever an idea our society entertained.

Throughout the play, there are strong moments of sexism that stood out. I noticed that the only time the women really talked was when the men would leave the room. When a woman was standing next to her husband, she rarely spoke a word. There was also the blatant disregard for a woman’s opinion. Men did not seem to think a woman can look at the significant facts of the case. The whole time though, the women were much closer to solving the case than the men thought, and in the end they did. Another thing to look at is how the men underestimated the woman’s power. Mr. Henderson would not even think to consider Mrs. Hale a suspect, being typical to overlook the power of a woman at the time.

In today’s world, women are pushing boundaries and I like to think that our society has put the stereotypes we have seen in this play aside. While we used to think of women just as the quilters and cooks in the kitchen, we now have women who have roles such as Mr. Henderson's. Watching this play has really shown me how far we have come, in terms of gender roles, in 100 years, and I am curious to see if we can replicate that same amount of change in the next century.