Trifles

7 Pages 1681 Words

Sitting Alone in Thought
The truth about male and female relationships really comes to life by author Susan Gaspell in “Trifles”. Gaspell examines male and female relationships, how a controlling spouse, and lack of communication can lead to the deterioration in relationships, which inevitably leads too a woman seeking change in her life.
Gaspell shows that some relationships are not warm and loving, but are dominated by a controlling spouse. The Author makes you feel that all John wanted to do was control someone’s life, exactly as he had been doing to Minnie. He controlled her life to the extent that he would not allow her to even have a “party telephone” (952) placed in their home, this would have allowed her access to the outside world, and he did not want that. It was apparent that John did not allow Minnie to have a social life, as she once had when she was Minnie Foster, the woman that sang in the “choir” (956). Minnie was isolated from the rest of the world; their house was “down in a hollow” (958) unable to be seen from the road. There house was a lonesome place where no visitors ever came, not even the people that knew they were there. Gaspell shows that Minnie was controlled by John so much that when she made the decision to buy a canary that “sang” (960) to her, he “choked the life out of it” (960), just as he had been doing for many years to Minnie. A controlling relationship never ends happily; at
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least that is how Gaspell perceived their relationship.
Besides a controlling spouse, lack of communication can be an oblivious reason for relationship problems. Gaspell examines this, and the result of what can happen in marriages and friendships that suffer when a communication breakdown occurs, she does this through three different couples. The first couple she examined was John and Minnie Wright who lived in “peace and quite” (952), they had no friends or visitors ...