Trifles
Help with trifles please
What is the setting? How does this add to the meaning of the play?
What is the setting? How does this add to the meaning of the play?
Trifles begins with stage directions that introduce the five speaking characters of the play as well as the dismal setting of the disheveled kitchen in a recently abandoned farmhouse. Susan Glaspell got her inspiration for Trifles from her real-life visit to the dreary kitchen of Margaret Hossack, whose trial for the murder of her husband formed the basis for the plot, and accordingly, the setting establishes the melancholy, thoughtful mood of the play. Furthermore, although Trifles is in essence a murder mystery, the play takes place in the kitchen instead of at the crime scene of the bedroom or in a more official domestic setting such as the police station. As a result, the play exists in a private, domestic, and female domain rather than what in the early twentieth century was the primarily male public domain, foreshadowing the focus of the work on the women.
http://www.gradesaver.com/trifles/study-guide/summary-part-i