Tiffles Annotated Bibliography - 1375 Words

Trifles Annotated Bibliography Alkalay-Gut, Karen. Jury of Her Peers: The Importance of Trifles. Studies in Short Fiction 21 (Winter 1984): 1-9. In this deeper look into Trifles, Karen goes through the plot and discusses what you should pay more attention too. She describes the symbolism in some of the objects as well as explain the scenes and their little details. Karen finds the difference between male and female perceptions of judgment to be central to the play. She explains that you need to follow the storyline of the women to help solve the case and discusses the differences between a man and a womans world in this time period. Karen shares that she believes the women are going about the case better than the men and she†¦show more content†¦The bond between the women is like a knot just like the knot tied around Mr. Wrights neck when he was strangled and also how the women will knot tell even through they solved the murder. This theme of the knot is crucial to the plot of the play. The other helpful explaination was of the preservative jars. I thought of the obvious symbolism behind it but Smith discusses how t here is one jar left like the remaining secret of the motive. The specific pages I listed for this work were definitely the most helpful. Ben-Zvi, Linda. Murder, She Wrote: The Genesis of Susan Glaspells Trifles. Theatre Journal, 44 (March 1992): 141-62. Linda Ben-Zvi takes on a different approach to Glaspells play. She asserts that Trifles is less a comment on standard gender disparities than on assigned gender roles. Suggesting that their common erasure provides the incentive for womens actions, not womens natures, she believes the question of guilt or innocence are irrelevant. She focuses more on Minnies cruelties rather than seeing her as a victim. I felt differently about the play than Ben-Zvi did for certain topics so it wasnt much help for writing my paper, but I think that hearing an opinion from the opposite side did have an impact on my thoughts. However, I did find some of her findings interesting. I thought that the last name Wright was kind of ironic when I first read the play.