SWA #7

“Trifles,” the play, written by Susan Glaspell, is remarkably different from the short story version of the same story, called “A Jury of Her Peers,” also written by Glaspell. These two tellings contain the same plot, setting, characters, and almost the exact same dialogue, yet they differ greatly because of their different forms. This exemplifies how two texts telling the same story can be interpreted, perceived, and analyzed in very different manners.
The play version, “Trifles,” is about a woman who is being accused of murdering her husband. The sheriff of the town, the county attorney, and a neighboring farmer, who found this woman’s dead husband ,go to the scene of the crime, accompanied by the wives of the sheriff and of the farmer. The two women go to retrieve some of the woman’s belongings to bring to her in jail, while the men are there to hear the farmer, Mr. Hale, rehash his story of finding the dead man, and to look for any evidence or clues to help solve the case. While the men search the house, the women are deeply disturbed by the untidiness and unfinished state in which the accused woman, Minnie, had to leave her house. While gathering her personal items, they come across a damaged bird cage and a dead canary, whose death had been caused in a very similar fashion as to that of Minnie’s husband. The bird’s neck had been wrung. The two women unspokenly agree to keep this discovery to themselves, as they do not want to give the sheriff the only thing lacking in convicting Minnie- motive.
“A Jury of Her Peers” has essentially the same plot, only it is told very differently. The short story is a bit longer than the play and begins with an introduction that is not included in the play. The same characters are involved in this version and everyone is at Minnie’s house for the same reasons they are in the play version. The two women search for some material to wrap up Minnie’s belongings and look for some sewing materials like they did in the play, and stumble across the dead bird. The women hide this from the men who are searching for evidence just like what they have uncovered in order to prove that Minnie is guilty of killing her husband. The bird had a wrung neck and Minnie’s husband died of a rope tied around his in his sleep. This would have been the perfect clue to connect Minnie to the murder of her husband, but the women take the bird and say nothing about it. The story ands just as the play does.
Despite the fact that the summaries of both stories are almost identical, they provide the reader with two completely different interpretations. “Trifles,” is a play, which includes stage directions and specific details about the scene in which the story occurs. This is a disadvantage in that the flow of the story is interrupted but it does allow for the reader to really picture Minnie’s kitchen because the details are described in such a way that someone could reenact the story. This provides a unique imagery that “A Jury of Her Peers” does not have. However, the perspective that “A Jury of Her Peers” is told from is much more enlightening than just getting the stage directions and dialogue, like in “Trifles.” Instead, “A Jury of Her Peers” is told from Mrs. Hale’s point of view. It is written in the third person, but the reader gets Mrs. Hale’s thoughts and personal emotions throughout the story. This is not the case in the play form. This has a very big impact on the story because it gives each of the characters more personality.
Not much of the story has been removed from the short story, but the parts that have make a difference. The introduction that is skipped in “Trifles” describes just how Mrs. Hale feels about unfinished work by showing her at her own house. Her guilt of not going to see Minnie more often is portrayed much more clearly in the short story because we get to actually see how badly she feels when the passage states that “the picture of that girl, the fact that she had lived neighbor to that girl for twenty years, and had let her die for lack of life, was suddenly more than she could bear (Glaspell, A Jury of Her Peers).” Because we get Mrs. Hale’s perspective, the readers are able to get this extra insight that the play does not reveal. Mrs. Hale says the same words in the play as she does in the short story, but this extra bit about her feelings gives the story much more depth.
Another aspect that makes “A Jury of Her Peers” a more illuminating version is the name of the story itself. The fact that the two stories have different titles is very interesting. There must be a reason for this naming technique. “Trifles” is a word that was actually used in the story, in almost an insulting manner toward the women, which is what makes it a good title. There is irony at play by naming the story after such a simple object, like that of a little sewing box that ended up holding a huge secret. The men think of the women in such a low standard in both versions of this story, so to name the story trifles, like something the women would fuss over is ironic because what the men do not see is how the women in the story have a lot more wit and daring and intelligence than they give them credit for. However, “A Jury of Her Peers” is also an interesting title for this story.
Naming the short story “A Jury of Her Peers” is effective because Minnie’s peers in this story turn out to be Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters who actually do play a huge part in determining her fate. The two women silently judged Minnie from what they knew about her and the bird that they uncovered. Even though the women did not discuss it, they both attempted to hide the bird from the men. They both chose to withhold very important evidence, and in doing so, became Minnie’s jury, who decided that she should not be convicted. The fact that the short story was given this name, as opposed to the play, again, I think had a lot to do with the extra information we are provided with in “A Jury of Her Peers.” The looks the two women exchange throughout the story and their personalities are not revealed as well in the play, so their intentions and their unique mutual understanding and agreement about Minnie and the bird did not make as big of an impact in the play. They did not seem as much like a jury making a final decision as they did in the short story. The two names fit the versions in very different ways and would not have been as effective if they had been interchanged.
There seem to be more advantages to the short story version of this text. The fact that the reader gets an inside perspective in a “A Jury of Her Peers” instead of just dialogue makes most of the difference. It even plays a role in how the short story’s title is a little more effective and provides a different element than that of “Trifles.” Seeing Mrs. Hale’s thoughts also makes the short story version a little easier to relate to cultural and historical analysis as well. We get a full sense of how she feels she is being treated, and the thoughts that bring out her witty personality are revealed in the short story, but not the play. This allows the reader to identify how women were treated in this time period, but also just how unfair this treatment was because, as Mrs. Hale proves, these women had a lot more to offer than the men gave them credit for. Considering these two versions seem so alike, they can provide the reader with a lot of differing ideas.