Comparing Relationships in Susan Glaspells Trifles and Cherrie Moraga

Female Relationships in Susan Glaspell's Trifles and Cherrie Moraga's Giving Up the Ghost The plays Trifles, by Susan Glaspell, and Giving Up the Ghost, by Cherrie Moraga, focus on women's interaction in various contexts. Despite the seventy-eight years between their performance dates and the drastic difference in settings and narrative content, the main female characters are comparable, as Mrs. Hale, in Trifles, points out, "We all go through the same things -- it's just a different kind of the same thing" (Norton Anthology of Literature by Women, 1359). These plays show the varying degrees of closeness women can have in female relationships, and the role circumstances play. When Trifles opens, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters do not know each other, and Mrs. Peters does not know Mrs. Wright; initially establishing the women's familiarity is important as they are essentially strangers. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters are immediately grouped together by the men in the play, who subtly consider them and their concerns insignificant; Mr. Hale notes, "Women are used to worrying over trifles" (Glaspell 1353). The irony of the women finding what the men can not, Mrs. Wright's motive, emphasizes their importance in the play; the men failing to recognize this also creates dramatic irony. Mrs. Hale having known Mrs. Wright before she was married and having not visited her in over a year is significant as she illustrates Mrs. Wright's transition from a social to an isolated woman as a result of her marriage to John Wright. As she has children, Mrs. Hale can understand the importance of Mrs. Wright's canary, which served as the role of her child; similarly, Mrs. Peters can rela te to Mrs. Wright, whose only company in her quiet, empty house was ... ...en. Probably the most striking commonality is how women relate through those by which they are haunted: just as Marisa recalls her cousin Norma who was committed to a mental hospital, Alejandro's death seriously impacts Amalia; Mrs. Peters recalls her dead baby in an effort to relate to Mrs. Wright, and Mrs. Hale remembers the woman Mrs. Wright was before her marriage. Both Glaspell and Moraga explore the universal theme of isolation and how relationships can create, in the case of Mrs. Wright, or diminish it, as with Marisa and Amalia. Works Cited Gilbert, Sandra M. and Teresa Sullivan. The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women. New York: Norton, 1985. Glaspell, Susan. Trifles. The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women. New York: Norton, 1985. Moraga, Cherrie. Giving Up the Ghost. The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women. New York: Norton, 1985.