A Servility of Peers, Research Paper Example

Minnie Wright once sang. Her pet canary once sang. John Wright viciously silenced them both, before she did the same to him, or so the story partially unveils. In Silent Justice in a Different Key: Glaspell’s “Trifles,” Suzy Clarkson Holstein reconsiders the idea of ‘provocation’ and ‘truth’ developed through the lens of both traditional legal arguments, and from the perspective of feminist theory. Investigation of the murder of John Wright foreshadows culmination of the inference to the plot: that historically, for some women, the only device for subduing abusive male authority was by way of homicide. The foregoing essay explores the storyline of Glaspell’s Trifles as site of discourse analysis, and as a vehicle for reconstituting Holstein’s rather insightful, yet mistaken apprehension of the distinctions between law and notions of ‘social justice’ as a model for efficacy and ‘truth.’

Dependent upon partial truths, the thickening of the plot is contributed to both the traditional strict rule application of male law enforcement, in a series of narrative recollections transmitted amongst female friends as they revisit the memory of Minnie Wright. Holstein’s analysis of Glaspell bespeaks of feminist intransience into a landscape of query traditionally reserved for scientific observation. Devolution of this argument is relocated in the realm of French feminist thought, where psychoanalytic theories remap deductive logic through binary attributes of masculine sight, and feminine listening. Retention of patriarchy is at every turn, as the mind’s eye of Plato’s Cave finds recapitulation in the Manichaean separation of gendered spheres of reason.

Apparent from the outset, the play’s male characters believe that they have the situation at hand. As law enforcement officers, they are concerned with legal fact: evidentiary proof that will either provide black-and-white basis for allegations to the crime. The search is precise in the sense, that the commission of the crime of murder must contain the two required rule elements: 1) an Act of leading to homicide of the victim; and 2) Mens Rea, or mental state ranging from seriously reckless conduct to malicious intent to harm. For conviction of the defendant, Minnie Wright, to Murder in the First Degree as it is understood in common law nations the prosecution must prove the latter. Hence, the narrow scope of the investigation of the homicide of Mr. Wright follows rules to the crime of murder as they have been understood for several centuries.

Holstein’s ‘real life’ assumption in social analysis of Trifles misses the mark for the aforementioned reason. Citing a long trajectory within U.S. feminist studies – where there might be a separate female understanding of ‘justice’ accorded to personal and social forces—she follows this impulse throughout her revision. Perhaps more cogent in her argument, where she draws parallels between the actual legal discovery and the memory based discourse of Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters as they travel through their history with Minnie Wright as acquaintances and friends, is the convergence of those psychological processes into a narrow scope of conclusion.

Counter to Holstein’s rather simplistic insights, Leonard Mustazza’s (nd.) Generic Translation and Thematic Shift in Susan Glaspell’s ‘Trifles’ and A Jury of Her Peers, he makes comparative analysis of the logic presented by the women  with Mrs. Wright’s defense counsel and jury. Culpability of Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters’ inaction and distance from their once-sunny neighbor, Minnie Wright is put into question (Mustazza 490). Yet there is no ‘duty to a reasonable standard of care’ in a murder case, unless the query is directed at tortious negligence to a professional relationship (i.e. physician-patient) or caretaker of a designated “vulnerable person” (i.e. parent-child), where the “incompetent” (or incoherent) party has suffered from malpractice or alternative disregard to safety.  In law incompetency is defined as the inability to care for oneself based on unreasoned decision making, or alternatively intoxication either by medical or self-induced means.

Discovery of evidence in the case from this looser perspective retracts the idea that ‘social justice’ is worked out through ‘alternative women’s voices,’ so much so, that a return to strict interpretation offers the only way out. Priveé to the discussions of the officers, the women, in fact, find their best resource in listening, rather than remembering. This is Holstein’s strong suit, as she articulates the empowerment of women’s inaction at times when men think they are not able, or not willing to fully understand. While Mrs. Wright fidgets with the preserves, Mr. Hale observes that the “women are used to worrying over trifles.”

The very ‘trifles’ which are supposedly the formative realm of feminine activities, serve as a sort of timeline of events for the women; a bond of ‘sisterhood’ in common struggle, which substitutes facile thought with each woman’s authority to offer “educated” reflection on Mrs. Wright’s actions (Crocker). Furthermore, were they considered in equity with men during this period, the women, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters would have obligation to speak out about Minnie Wright’s involvement in her husband’s death.  However, “Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters ultimately find power in being devalued, for their low status allows them to keep quiet at the play’s end” (Holstein 284). The protagonist, the victim, the perpetrator, and the absentee character, the protagonist becomes herself as the ultimate symbol of the female empowerment in silence. Succinct in early twentieth-century convention, the suffrage of Minnie Wright in relation to her lawful husband, John Wright is replaced by the patriarchal authority of the State (Smith).

Holstein’s argument stems from a belief in the efficacy of Feminist Theory as an actual praxis for employment within professional considerations outside of the parameters of academic scholarship, or in direct correlation with activist agendas that pertain specifically to women’s rights as applied statute. The distinction between legislative policy, and codified law varies according to national contexts, however, and the play is derivative of a more general field of thought, which reaches back to a priori foundations of classical social contract political philosophy, and contemporary critiques of those ideas as ‘masculinist,’ in that they offer foundation to law in democratic states.

If we are to “recognize Glaspell’s women” as actors “constructing an alternative paradigm of justice and care,” posited against traditional interpretations of individual rights, and legal rules from which enforcement is applied, those standards are of a problematic nature and to be classified as ‘dominant culture’ rather than  a sphere of practice. Holstein is affected Carol Gilligan’s (1993) theoretical tendencies, and reveals her incapacity to think through the implications of deploying social research perspectives as directives for “rethinking” the practice of law. For Gilligan, and for Holstein, the “ethic of care” and “the notion of responsibility” that supposedly exists as an inherent aspect of all relationships, should take precedence in construction of relationships of “fact” over strict formulations of justice based on precise reciprocity.

Works Cited

Crocker, Lisa. Studies in Liminality: A Review of Critical Commentary on Glaspell’s      Trifles, 1996. Web.

Gilligan, Carol. In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993.

Glaspell, Susan. 1916. Trifles. Responding to Literature (4th Ed.).  Stanford, Judith A. New York:  McGraw Hill, 455-67, 2003. Print.

Holstein, Suzy. Silent Justice in a Different Key: Glaspell’s ‘Trifles.’ Midwest Quarterly. 282-290, nd. Web.

Mustazza, Leonard. Generic Translation and Thematic Shift in Susan Glaspell’s “Trifles” and “A Jury of Her Peers”: Studies in Short Fiction. 489-496, nd. Web.

Search, Rebecca. Analysis of the Setting in Trifles, nd. Web.

Smith, Nicole. Analysis of the Play “Trifles” by Susan Glaspell, Article Myriad, nd. Web.