Place and Gender in Susan Glaspell’s Trifles and Woman’s Honor * Shih, Yi-chin **
臺大文史哲學報 第七十八期
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灣 大 學 文 學 院
Place and Gender in Susan Glaspell’s
Trifles and Woman’s Honor *
Shih, Yi-chin **
Abstract
Recognized today as the mother
of American drama, Susan Glaspell
(1876-1948) plays an important role in 20th-century American literature. Her plays were commercially and critically welcome by the people
of her time, but faded from public interest after her death. It is not until feminists in the second wave of the Women’s Liberation Movement that Glaspell finally reclaims her reputation. Glaspell, portraying the
Midwest in her works, is usually
labeled as a local colorist.
However, this paper re-reads Glaspell’s Trifles (1916) and Woman’s
Honor (1918) from the perspectives of place and gender in order to explore the
interrelationship between the two in
Glaspell’s works, such as how place identity is associated with gender
identity and how gender relations are constructed in
a place. In light of such a new reading,
Glaspell becomes a feminist
geographer.
Keywords: Susan Glaspell, Trifles, Woman’s Honor, sense of place, women and crime
* This paper
is a partial fulfillment of the
National Science Council research project “Place and Gender in Susan Glaspell’s Plays”
(NSC 100-2410-H-032-087-MY2). The author
expresses her thanks to the NSC for its
financial support. The author also would like to thank the two anonymous
reviewers for their insightful
suggestions and comments.
** Assistant Professor of English Language and Culture,
Tamkang University.
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1.
Introduction
Susan Glaspell (1876-1948) plays an important role in
20th-century American literature;1
particularly, her plays and theater,
Provincetown Players founded by her and her
husband George Cram Cook (1873-1924), are closely connected with the
Little Theatre Movement in America (Gainor, Susan
Glaspell 10-11). Recognized as “the first modern
American theater company” (Ben-Zvi 1), Provincetown Players, which was
influenced by European expressionism (Shafer 182), developed several significant
and pioneering modern playwrights in the history of American drama. Among them, Eugene O’Neill and Susan Glaspell
are the two most outstanding
dramatists. Their reputation and status in history are usually described as
“O’Neill was the undisputed father of American drama, Glaspell the mother” (Ben-Zvi 1). However, unlike
O’Neill’s popularity, it is not until the second wave of the Women’s Liberation Movement that Glaspell’s plays finally
gain considerable visibility (Ozieblo 14). In fact, her plays were commercially and critically welcome by the people
of her time, especially the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Alison’s House (1930), which solidified her status in the history of
American drama.2 Thanks to the feminists’ intention to
re-read and re-discover texts written by women in the 1970s, Glaspell’s works,
including plays, novels, and short stories, caught critics’ attention again.
Usually considered as a realistic playwright,
Glaspell, influenced by the landscape of her
home state Iowa in the Midwest (or the Middle West), is good at using the prairie and the flatness of the Midwest as the setting of her works.
Her plays are filled with a strong sense of
place, such as the Midwestern
local color in Trifles (1916), Close the
Book (1917), Woman’s Honor (1918),
and Inheritors (1921); therefore,
Glaspell is labeled as a local colorist or regional
writer (Alkalay-Gut 9). Since the 1980s, as Chris Barker observes, the relation
between space and place has been re-examined (SAGE 144); place is no longer a land to be merely described or drawn; rather, “a place is understood to be a
site or location in
1
Susan Glaspell’s birth
year is debatable. Some critics argue
that she was born in 1882; for example,
the editor of Drama for Students,
David Galens, states, “On July 1, 1882, Susan Glaspell was born in Davenport, Iowa” (217). However, according to new research, it is likely and believed that Glaspell was
born in Davenport, Iowa in 1876 (Bigsby 32).
2
Although Alison’s House won a Pulitzer Prize for Susan Glaspell in 1931, it is
considered by many critics not to be her best play (Ozieblo 19). In addition,
Glaspell is the second female playwright to receive the Pulitzer Prize, the
first one being Zona Gale (1874-1938) for her
work Miss Lulu Bett in 1921.
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Place and Gender in Susan Glaspell’s Trifles and Woman’s Honor 239
space constituted and made meaningful by social relations of power and
marked by identifications or emotional investments” (144).3
In other words, place is a field full of social power, human activities and
daily experience. In light of such an understanding of place, feminists, such
as Linda McDowell, propose a “feminist geography” to investigate the different
experience of men and women in place and the construction of gender in place
(McDowell 12). Enlightened by the new interpretation of place and feminist
geography, this paper analyzes Glaspell’s two one-act plays, Trifles and Woman’s Honor, to explain how the sense of place is associated with
gender relations and how gender relations are constructed differently in a
place.
The paper is divided into three parts. The first part
is devoted to an exploratory discussion of place and the Midwest of the United
States, and it claims that place is never an isolated, fixed and homogenous
location because “crime” obviously symbolizes transgression and destruction in
a place. Trifles and Woman’s Honor both involve crime cases.
The investigation of the crime reveals how women are shaped and constructed by
social conventions in a place; therefore, the
following two parts study the two plays respectively in the hope of a
further understanding of the complicated
relationship between place and gender.
2.
Reconsiderations of Place and the Midwest
Susan Glaspell has been regarded as a realistic local
colorist, and critics admire her contribution
to “the canon of Midwestern American literature” and “her use of frontier
landscapes and elements of her Iowa
upbringing” (Trudeau 144). According to M. H. Abrams, the meaning of local
color is “[t]he detailed representation in prose fiction of the setting,
dialect, customs, dress, and ways of thinking and feeling which are distinctive
of a particular region” (145). From
this perspective, Glaspell indeed is a local colorist, who successfully
utilizes the life in the Middle West in
her works. While Trifles is
set in a remote rural farm in the Midwest and full of Midwestern dialect, Woman’s Honor depicts Iowan customs about a woman’s
reputation. The two plays display
a strong sense of the Midwest and
illustrate that Glaspell is a master of writing about this region.
Studying a
place by examining the specialty of a region, such as the Middle
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3
Chris Barker clearly explains the difference between
space and place. While space “refers to
an abstract idea, an empty or dead
space which is filled with various
concrete, specific and human places” (Cultural
Studies 292), places “are
discursive constructions which are the target of emotional identification or investment” (293).
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West in Glaspell’s works, is
usually called “a descriptive
approach to place” (Cresswell 51). Like the critics who celebrate Glaspell’s
usage of the characteristics of the Middle West in her works, the proponents of this approach are concerned
with “the distinctiveness and particularity of places” (51). This approach indicates the concept of place as “a unique and particular entity” (51). To emphasize the specialty of
a place is to highlight the homogeneity of a certain place and to exclude the other simultaneously. Place, in this way, is restricted within a certain region or a setting of an event; place is
enclosed and static. Then to conclude that Glaspell’s plays are full of Midwestern traits and a strong sense of
the Middle West is natural and
inevitable since she adapts the Midwest in her works. However, this approach
does not take the elements of social construction, such as power, gender, class, and religion, to
name but a few, into consideration in
the development of a region. This approach thus takes place for granted, viewing it as existing for itself.
In order to review the relation between gender and place, “a social
constructionist approach to place” (Cresswell 51) is helpful. As suggested by
the title, this approach considers
place as a social construction, which emphasizes human forces instead of nature. To describe a place as a social construct is to talk of
“the way we experience that place, the
meanings we ascribe to it” (30). It is humans who give the place meanings;
places do not have an inherent or essential meaning. Hence, when it comes to
defining places, it is important to decipher “how these places are instances of
wider process of the construction of place
in general under conditions of capitalism, patriarchy,
heterosexism, post-colonialism and a host of other structural
conditions” (51). Place, in this approach,
is a discursive construction which is
relative with social institutions and power.4
If place is created by people, then the sense of place
and the identity of place are also socially constructed and man-made. Gillian
Rose explicitly explains that “although senses of place may be very personal,
they are not entirely the result of one individual’s feelings and meanings; rather, such feelings and meanings are
shaped in large part by the social, cultural and economic circumstances in
which individuals find themselves” (89). That is to say, the sense of place
and the identity of place are not inherent
naturally; instead, it is people who produce
them through
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4 Cresswell explains three
approaches to place. In addition to “a descriptive approach to place” and “a
social constructionist approach to place,” he also points out “a
phenomenological approach of place,” which “seeks to define the essence
of human existence as one that is necessarily and importantly ‘in-place’”
(51). This paper intends to explore the relationship between place and gender,
so the phenomenological approach, which is interested in neither the
distinctiveness of places nor the social forces involved in the construction of
places, will not be discussed here.
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Place and Gender in Susan Glaspell’s Trifles and Woman’s Honor 241
interacting with power relations in social institutions, as Rose explains
that “senses of place develop from
every aspect of individuals’ life
experience and that senses of place pervade everyday life and experience” (88).
To emphasize place as a social construction has
multiple meanings. First, it helps to examine the interaction between people
and place, to discover the power relations under the everyday practices, and to
understand how regional ideology constructs people who live there. In addition,
this approach avoids understanding place as static site, which is limited
within boundaries. “It is socio-spatial practices that defines places,”
describes Linda McDowell, and “these practices result in overlapping and
intersecting places with multiple and changing boundaries, constituted and
maintained by social relations of power and exclusion” (4). Talking about a
place is not merely the description of the place or the distinctiveness and
specialty of it; rather, it is everyday practices that decide place and
simultaneously destruct the boundary of it. Interpreted in this way, it is no
wonder Cresswell claims, “Places are constructed by people doing things and in
this sense are never ‘finished’ but are constantly being performed” (37). The
process of creating place lasts forever; it is constantly produced by
generations following generations.
Feminists, taking this approach to study place, see
place as a social construction, and they assert a new approach to place called
“feminist geography.” Linda McDowell
explains the aim and the purpose of a feminist geography as the following:
The specific aim of a feminist geography, therefore, is to investigate,
make visible and challenge the relationships between gender divisions and
spatial divisions, to uncover their mutual constitution and problematize their
apparent naturalness. Thus the purpose here is to examine the extent to which
women and men experience spaces and places differently and to show
how these differences themselves are part of
the social constitution of gender as well as that of place. (12)
Briefly speaking, feminists care about the relationship between place and
gender, intending to uncover the taken-for-granted and seemingly natural
relation between the two. They believe that women’s and men’s experiences of
place are different and the differences constitute gender relations in society.
In other words, gender is constructed differently in place, and the
identification of place influences gender relations and interactions. Doreen
Massey also argues that “geography matters to gender” (177), and she claims
that “geography in its various guises influences the cultural formation of
particular genders and gender relations; gender has been deeply
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influential in the production of ‘the geographical’” (177). For many
feminist geographers, to deconstruct the ideology of spatial division of the
public and the private particularly is the main target. McDowell confirms that
“spatial division” is important “in the social construction of gender
divisions” (12). Therefore, gender should be taken into consideration of place
and vice versa.
Considering place as a social construction, this paper appropriates the feminist
geographers’ argument to discuss place from the perspective of gender. Through the lens of such an idea of place, the Middle West in Glaspell’s plays no longer serves as the background of the events, but instead
it is the main character, the protagonist,
who is connected with the developments of the story and characters and who is
an embodiment of social and cultural
conventions. The Middle West is
widely recognized as “the cultural core of the nation” (Shortridge 209), the “heartland” of the United States (209), “the most American part of America”
(213), and “the true heart of the
country” (213). Famous for treeless prairies, it is characterized as
“stability” and “prosperity” and seen as a “pastoral paradise” because of its
“ideal mixture of youthful (or Western) and
mature (or Eastern) cultural traits” (213). John Fraser Hart observes that
people who come to the Middle West are
“materialists” and they believe hard
work through farming is a virtue (265). Hart (281) and Shortridge (209) both notice
the trait of xenophobia in the Midwest, and Hart even further explains that the pressure of xenophobia forces the people there into a single homogeneous
life style (281). In addition to the physical homogeneity,
which is endless treeless prairies, the inner social exercise is highly
homogeneous, too. The homogeneity of the Middle West isolates itself, and isolation simultaneously keeps the place harmonious and peaceful without
the danger from the outside (281). Nevertheless, in Glaspell’s plays, this harmonious
place is destroyed by crimes, which are committed by women. That is to say, the closed, static and stable Middle West in fact is full of conflicts. The
female criminals also show that the gender
relations in the Midwest are challenged and shaken to be re-constructed.
Place is never static or immobile, and the explosion of crime represents the destruction and possibility of change
in a place. Although the Midwest is highly homogeneous, both environmentally
and socially, crime displays inner
conflicts beneath the harmonious surface. The bursting out of crime symbolizes
the break of the connection between
people and place and challenges people’s identity of place and their sense of place. Thus the events of crime explicitly illustrate what Massey claims,
place “is absolutely not static” (155) or what
McDowell argues, “places are contested, fluid and uncertain” (4). Cresswell
further points out that transgression itself manifests the unnatural and
man-made connection between people and place; as long as people lose the sense of identity of place, transgression, such as crime, explodes out. He
proposes that “people, things and practices were often strongly
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Place and Gender in Susan Glaspell’s Trifles and Woman’s Honor 243
linked to particular places and that when this link was broken—when
people acted ‘out of place’—they were deemed to have committed a
‘transgression’” (27). Glaspell’s Trifles
and Woman’s Honor are both crime
stories. In Trifles, a typical
Midwestern farmer dies and his wife is suspected to be the murderer. In Woman’s Honor, a man who is accused of
murder refuses to provide an alibi because he has to protect a woman’s honor.
The crimes in both plays give a sense of fluidity to the seemingly static
Middle West, and they indicate that women are no longer satisfied with the
positions and the identity that place gives them. Gender relations are then
questioned and deconstructed while “the Midwest” is deconstructed, too.
3. Trifles:
Female Murderers and Detectives in the Kitchen
Premiering in 1916, Trifles solidified
Glaspell’s reputation and status in the history of American drama.5 The story is based on a true event that
happened in Iowa, Glaspell’s home state, in 1900, when the dramatist worked as
a reporter for the Des Moines Daily News (Bendel-Simso
291). Trifles
is a murder story, and as
such is considered a part of the
detective subgenre by many critics (Gainor,
Susan Glaspell 44-45). In the story, John Wright is found dead in his bed,
and the major suspect is his wife, Minnie Foster Wright, because she does not wake up when
her husband is strangled to death beside her.
Three men, including a county
attorney, a sheriff, and a
neighboring farmer who finds the corpse, and two women, one Minnie’s friend and the other the
sheriff’s wife, come to the crime scene to investigate the case and to gather
some personal belongings for Minnie,
who now is in jail. Because of gender
differences and the men’s sexist
attitude, which looks down upon
women's everyday trifles, the men cannot find evidence or a motive. Meanwhile, due to sympathy and female bonding, the two women, becoming detectives,
successfully find the truth and hide the evidence from men.6
Critics find the play a good example to explain gender
difference and the importance of sisterhood. For example, Suzy Clarkson
Holstein suggests “two models of perception and behavior” (282) in the play;
Phyllis Mael describes it as
5
Trifles was staged in 1916, and then Glaspell rewrote it as a
short story “Jury of Her Peers” in
1917. The two works become a
classical one-act play and a classical short story,
respectively, in the history
of American literature.
6
The actual event
occurred on December 1, 1900 in
Iowa. Margaret Hossack was accused
of killing her husband, John Hossack, by an ax while he slept. Without enough evidence, Margaret was
eventually released (Stormer 510).
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“two different modes of judging” (283). As for the meaning of two women’s
decision at the end, Karen Alkalay-Gut asserts the significance of “the
community of women” (1); Ozieblo
names “the importance of women bonding” (66); Beverly A. Smith designates
“female bonding” (192). This paper,
however, claims that not every
woman can develop sisterhood or form
female bonding; instead, only women who have a similar geographical background
and a similar sense of place can
sympathize with each other and create a bonding. Therefore, due to the similar
frustration or dissatisfaction
arising from the patriarchal gender relations in the Middle West, the two women can recognize the clues
and further decide to hide the truth in order to challenge the male-centered
judicial system.
Trifles is a detective story; especially, the bleak and closed Middle West provides the crime with a stage.
Reading the play from L. David Allen’s five elements of a detective story, we realize that “the setting” is the Midwest, Iowa in
particular; “the victim” is John Wright, who is strangled to death; “the
murderer” is supposed to be John’s wife,
Minnie Foster Wright; “the suspect”
is Minnie; “the detectives” are two women and three men (5). Hence, as one of
the five elements of a detective story, the
setting is crucial. The best setting is “a closed society” because “all the members of the story are potential suspects” (5). In this way, the isolation of the Midwest offers a closed environment
for the setting of a criminal case. Also, because of xenophobia in the Middle West, the murderer is supposed to be
within society, which turns everyone
into suspects.
Trifles is
full of Midwestern color. Arthur E. Waterman delineates “the Midwestern
qualities of the play” as the following: “With its precise realism, exact
details, accurate dialogue, and conscious awareness of certain Midwestern
ingredients, it is local color on stage” (145). The stage is very Midwestern: a
gloomy kitchen, unwashed pans, unbaked bread, uncompleted work, an empty
rocking chair, a plain table, and a stove that does not work. All of them
represent the bleak, empty and closed geographical background of the Middle
West. Ozieblo explains that Glaspell is influenced by European expressionism,
so the stage is very expressionist, which conveys an idea of “concision” (63).
The concision of the setting in the play echoes the emptiness of the Midwest,
and the strong sense of place is thus created at the very beginning when the
curtain rises.
The Midwestern color is not only emphasized through
the stage, but also expressed through the description of John Wright, the
absent character who never appears on stage. John is a typical Midwestern
farmer, who earns his life by working on the family farm. Hart explains that
farming in the Middle West suggests “a Good Thing” (271) because it delivers an
idea that “hard work is virtue” (272), and more crucially this “family farm
ideology took root and flourished in the Middle West”
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Place and Gender in Susan Glaspell’s Trifles and Woman’s Honor 245
(272). John is thus a classical good Midwestern farmer. Mrs. Peters says, “They say he was a good man” (42),
and Mrs. Hale replies, “Yes—good; he didn't drink, and kept his word as well as most, I guess, and paid his
debts” (42). In addition, like the simplicity of the empty prairie, John
likes simplicity and silence. Refusing to share a telephone line with
neighbors, he prefers quietness. Mr. Hale
talks to County Attorney, “I spoke to Wright about it [sharing a telephone line] once before and he
put me off, saying folks talked too much anyway, and all he asked was peace and quiet—I guess you know about how much he talked himself . . .” (36). His
inclination to silence explains the reason why he kills Minnie’s singing canary.
Moreover, rejection of a telephone also symbolizes a voluntary isolation
from the others; he stays in a
simple, silent, and closed environment, which precisely represents the traits of the Middle West.
Doreen Massey argues that geography matters to gender
and vice versa, and examining spatial
division is a good approach to explore gender development and gender relations in a place (179). Linda McDowell also expresses, “But gender
relations are also of central
concern for geographers because of the way in which a spatial division—that
between the public and the private, between inside and outside—plays such a central role in the social construction of gender divisions” (12). Thus, studying the spatial segregation in Trifles reveals
the uneven power relations between the two sexes. While John enjoys the
reputation of “a good man” in public,
Minnie is restricted within the private without a social life. According to
Mrs. Hale, Minnie’s friend since
childhood, Minnie did not communicate with people nor did she join Ladies’ Aid.
She used to sing in the church choir, but she became completely limited to
the house after marriage. What was worse was that John refused to share a
telephone line, so she was isolated in the large and empty Middle West. It is obvious that Minnie, without
children, is confined to the house alone, and the spatial division further
limits her social life and changes her personality.
As Mrs. Hale observes, “How—she—did—change” (43).
For many
critics, home “is an exemplary kind of place
where people feel a sense of attachment and
rootedness” (Cresswell 24), but “home as a fundamental place has been
questioned by feminists” (25). Usually considered as women’s sphere, home can be a place of abuse and drudgery. Minnie’s home is a good example to show that home is a place of
psychological and physical abuse for some women. First, restricting Minnie
within the house without a social life is a kind of psychological abuse.
Although the spatial division is a convention in the patriarchal society, John makes this segregation stricter.
He, refusing to have a telephone and killing
Minnie’s pet canary, requires absolute quietness at home. Mrs. Hale seldom
visits Minnie because she explains: “It never
seemed a very cheerful place”
(39), and “I don’t think a place’d be any cheerfuller for John Wright's
being in it” (39). It
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is apparent that Minnie suffers from her husband’s psychological abuse at
home, but more shockingly, Smith claims there is “the possibility that John
physically battered Minnie” (195). The reason that Minnie does not join the
church choir or Ladies’ Aid may be because battered women tend to isolate
themselves from others to avoid revealing how they really live (196).7 All in all, Minnie, a rural Midwestern
woman, is confined to the house; worse, home cannot provide her with safety.
If the Middle West is
a closed and static place, then Minnie is “doubly” isolated due to the reason
of the isolation of Iowa and her isolation
within the house. Place matters to gender; the place of the Middle West gives Minnie a strong sense of alienation,
which is shared with rural Midwestern women. Unlike Mrs. Hale who has known Minnie since childhood, Mrs. Peters
did not know her before but she gradually understands Minnie when she finds the
clues that Minnie leaves in the kitchen. Discovering the strangled canary, Mrs. Peters thinks of her kitten which was violently killed
by a boy, and cries, “When I was a
girl—my kitten—there was a boy took a hatchet, and before my eyes—and before I could get there—(covers her face an instant) If they hadn’t held me back I would have—(catches herself, looks upstairs where
steps are heard, falters
weakly)—hurt him” (43). She understands
the anger that would lead people to hurt the perpetrator. Furthermore, when
Mrs. Peters realizes Minnie’s lonely life, she also understands the strong
sense of loneliness and isolation
because of the memory of her dead son. She explains, “I know what stillness is. When we
homesteaded in Dakota, and my first
baby died—after he was two years old, and me
with no other then—” (44). This sense of loneliness is shared with rural
Midwestern women, and due to a similar experience in the same place, Mrs.
Peters, the sheriff’s wife who is married to the law, finally decides to hide the evidence
and cover up the truth.
As Cresswell comments, “transgression” occurs when the
link between people and place is broken and when the sense of place is no
longer identified by people (27). Similarly,
the crime that Minnie commits symbolizes the connection between her and the Middle West is cut off. Minnie’s
transgression indicates that the sexist gender relation in the Midwest is
challenged. Using murder, “the most
dramatic way to disrupt the society” (Allen 5), Minnie accuses the patriarchal
society in the Midwest, and her violence
symbolically destroys the seemingly static and highly homogeneous society. More importantly, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters’ identification with
Minnie’s crime manifests not only the sense of
isolation arising from place but also a sense of sisterhood developed from similar experiences in the same
place. Mrs.
7
There is no direct and crucial evidence in the play to
show that Minnie was physically abused by John, but in the actual case,
Margaret Hossack suffered from her
husband’s physical violence (Stormer 510).
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Place and Gender in Susan Glaspell’s Trifles and Woman’s Honor 247
Hale regrets not having visited Minnie, weeping, “I might have known she
needed help! I know how things can be—for women. I tell you, it’s queer,
Mrs. Peters. We live close
together and we live far apart. We all
go through the same things—it’s all
just a different kind of the same
thing” (44). Like Mrs. Peters who understands Minnie’s
anger and loneliness, Mrs. Hale also suffers from “the same things” but in different kind of ways. These three
women, therefore, in a way are the same.
Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters could also potentially commit the same crime Minnie
commits. Due to similar experiences, the two
female detectives hide the dead canary, which
serves as an important piece of evidence suggesting a motive for murdering
John, and conceal the truth to help the murderess, Minnie. Hence, the
sisterhood or woman bonding is
created by the same sense of place, which provides women with a similar sense of alienation, the pressure of spatial division, and an inferior
status in the social gender hierarchy.
Trifles is
rediscovered in the second wave of the women’s movement, and it is usually used
as an example of “how the bonding between women can combat injustice and
domestic violence” (Ozieblo 14). Sisterhood, thus, is a slogan in this feminist
movement. Nevertheless, reading Trifles from
the perspective of feminist geography reminds us of a significant element in
creating woman bonding: a similar sense of place for a group of women. It is
now well-known that the differences in sisterhood are class, race, and sexuality
(hooks, Feminist 61), but Trifles suggests another disparity:
place. Place is characterized by its specialty, like the isolated Middle West;
nevertheless, place is never static, and the gender relations developed from
place could be challenged and even deconstructed by human effort. Sisterhood
shows women’s dissatisfaction with the sexist and patriarchal society and their
determination to shake the social system. However, the precondition of woman
bonding lies in the same sense of place.
4. Woman’s Honor: Female Suspects in the Room
In Trifles, two female detectives, Mrs. Hale and Mrs.
Peters, based on the similar experience in the Midwest, challenge patriarchal
gender relations by hiding crucial evidence from men. In Woman’s Honor, six unnamed madams, based on the same Midwestern
custom, question the meaning of honor by admitting to doing things
dishonorable. Like Trifles, Woman’s Honor is about a crime adapted from an actual event.8
A man, called Gordon Wallace, is accused of murder.
He refuses to
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8
In 1915, Joseph Hillstrom (Joe Hill) was executed for murder, but historians find
that “Hill may possibly have been wrongfully convicted because of his refusal
to name—and thereby slander—the
(probably married) woman whom he was with at the time of the
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248 臺 大 文 史 哲 學 報
give an alibi because he
believes that he would destroy a woman’s honor
by doing so. Without telling Wallace, the Lawyer, Mr. Foster, releases the news to the press in the hope of saving Wallace’s life. Surprisingly,
many women are willing to provide Wallace
with an alibi despite the fact that they must sacrifice their honor to
do so. Glaspell played Mrs. Hale at the premiere
of Trifles 1916; similarly, the
dramatist played one of the women,
the Cheated One, when Woman’s Honor
was first staged in 1918.
Unlike Trifles which clearly is located in
the Midwest, Iowa in particular, Woman’ Honor
occurs in “a room in the sheriff’s house which is used for conferences” (121). However, Woman’s Honor is also
one of the plays that Glaspell
writes for her home state Iowa, and it is also influenced by her experiences as a reporter for a local
newspaper in Iowa. This play is based on an Iowan law, which claims that women in Iowa must maintain their
“reputation,” virtue in other words, in order to keep their social status.
Gainor in “Woman’s Honor and
the Critique of Slander Per Se” explains,
In the latter half of the nineteenth century, the Iowa courts entertained
a series of cases where female plaintiffs sought redress for slanderous
accusations of sexual immorality. The judgments made clear that in Iowa,
respectability in women was tied to sexual reputation and that “married women
needed to maintain such reputations” to retain their social standing and
community membership. (75)
Therefore, the sense of place in Woman’s
Honor is generated from the custom of women’s reputation in Iowa, and
simultaneously this man-made custom forces local women to identify with it.
“Women’s honor” is a male-centered idea, and it turns out to be a false
consciousness, which local women believe is true, and to generate a strong
sense of place for Midwestern women.
As the first part of the paper explains, place is a
social construction by human beings, and by implication, the sense of place and
place identity are also socially and culturally constructed. Gillian Rose notes
that the sense of place is “shaped in large
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murder”
(Gainor, “Woman’s Honor” 68). Critics are not one-hundred percent sure that
Glaspell’s Woman’s Honor is based on
this piece of news, but it is certain that Glaspell’s plays reflected social
and cultural trends of her time (67). That she would have known of the incident
when writing the play is not unlikely (68-69). Meanwhile, it is certain that
Glaspell’s Trifles is adapted from
the murder case committed by Margaret Hossack, as Glaspell mentions in her
works (Ozieblo 60-61).
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Place and Gender in Susan Glaspell’s Trifles and Woman’s Honor 249
part by the social, cultural and economic
circumstances in which individuals find
themselves” (89, emphasis added). Rose’s
comment reminds us of Louis
Althusser’s explanation of ideology. Althusser
describes ideology as “a material existence” (165). Performed by people’s
actions, ideology exists in behavior, practices, activities or customs. When people are doing or acting, they are “hailed” or “interpellated” as subjects (173). In
other words, when women adhere to the custom
of maintaining their reputations in
Iowa, they are “hailed” as Iowan women and they “find themselves” in the gender
hierarchy in Iowa. Thus, the sense of place
becomes a kind of ideology that restricts women’s
behavior and shapes women as men wish,
yet the “subject” of being a woman
in Iowa is in fact an “imaginary” identity, because Althusser explains,
“ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real
conditions of existence” (162). Thus, women
in Woman’s
Honor live in an ideology
of a socially constructed sense of place
by adhering to this custom in Iowa.
Woman’s Honor, like Trifles, is a crime story, and appropriating Cresswell’s
explanation of “transgression” in place, the behavior of committing crime could
be understood as a break of connection
between place and people who live in it (27). Also, crime symbolizes the
bursting out of the inner conflicts
beneath the seemingly peaceful society, and
it manifests place never be a fixed, static
and homogenous region. Using a very different tone from Trifles, Glaspell hilariously portrays two
different attitudes toward crime committed by women in Woman’s Honor. Like the absent character, Minnie in Trifles, the absent but centered character in Woman’s Honor
is the woman who spends the
night with Wallace. In order to
shield her honor, Wallace, holding a
romantic and chivalric spirit, refuses to tell her name despite the fact that he would die for his decision. However, Wallace’s silence
is thought “old-fashioned” and “quaint” by his lawyer (121). Mr. Foster
releases the news to the
press because he expects: “Wives—including, I hope, juror’s wives—will cry, ‘Don’t let that chivalrous young man
die!’ Women just love to have their
honor shielded. It is very touching to them” (124). The contrast between romantic Wallace
and misogynic Foster is not merely a comic effect in the play, but it shows the two attitudes in
fact are the same. The two attitudes reflect two images of women in a
male-dominated society. As described
by bell hooks, women are “madonnas or whores”
(Feminism 85). Because women are
madonnas, Wallace has to protect the
lady; because women are whores, Mr. Foster has to find her out in order to punish
her. Their attitudes toward women’s honor are different, but both are
derived from patriarchal ideology.
Unexpectedly, six women are willing to provide Wallace
an alibi, and their decisions seem hilarious but not without meaning. Although
they have different reasons at the beginning, they finally realize that “the
concept of woman’s honor is a
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250 臺 大 文 史 哲 學 報
way to limit and dehumanize women” (Makowsky 173). Different from the men who have names in the play, these women are nameless and only
can be identified by their
characteristics: the Shielded One, the Motherly One, the Scornful One, the
Silly One, the Mercenary One, and the Cheated One. Their names might be
“expressionistic” (Shafer 185) or “allegorical”
(Ozieblo 37), but it is clear that the names suggest different femininities
that patriarchal society conceives. They come
to save Wallace’s life at the price of women’s honor by pretending they are the one whom Wallace spent
the night with. The comic effect is generated from the arguments that the six
women all want to be the one. The Motherly One claims, “You see, I’m in the habit of trying to save lives” (136). The
Scornful One proposes that “if the sacrifice of a woman’s honor is going to save a man’s life, let me,
who have none, nobly sacrifice mine” (138). Meanwhile, the Silly One, in order
to fulfill her romantic fantasy
toward love like the Shielded One, confuses the lawyer with Wallace, hilariously hugging the lawyer
and hysterically shouts, “Darling! I cannot let you die for me!” (131). The Mercenary One even indicates that Wallace can buy an alibi from her by saying, “A
business proposition is a business proposition. What a man needs and can pay for –”(142). The sixth woman, the Cheated One, explains that she wants to be the one for her personal experience of being cheated. Every woman is eager and
anxious to be the woman who loses honor to save Wallace.
It is not until the Scornful One and the Shielded One
ask what woman’s honor is that the other women start to redefine it, and
then they further form a female bonding. Precisely,
when women begin to question the custom in Iowa, they sense that they
are performing the ideology of women’s
honor, which in fact is a
patriarchal convention instead of an essential element of femininity. Pointing out the difference between a woman’s honor and man’s honor, the Scornful
One asks the other women: “Did it ever strike you as funny that woman’s honor is only about one thing, and
that man’s honor is about everything
but that thing? [After waiting for the
answer which does not come.] Now woman’s
honor means woman’s virtue. But this lady for whom you propose to die
has no virtue” (134). The Scornful One is aware of society’s double standard for the sexes: woman’s honor means woman’s virtue only, but
man’s honor is multiple. As the Iowan
custom defines, a woman’s “respectability”
refers to “sexual reputation” only (Gaino, “Woman’s Honor” 75). Realizing social hypocrisy and the sexist idea of woman’s honor, the Scornful One concludes, “Why, woman’s honor
would have died out long ago if it hadn’t been for men’s talk about
it” (139).
In addition, the Shielded One, declaring that women
are tired of having their honor saved, encourages the other sisters to give up
the male-centered idea of woman’s honor. She asserts, “Oh, I hope you women can
work out some way to free us from men’s noble feelings about it! I speak for
all the women of my—[Hesitates]
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Place and Gender in Susan Glaspell’s Trifles and Woman’s Honor 251
under-world, all those others smothered under men’s lofty sentiments
toward them! . . . After all [Growing a little wild] are we not your sisters? Our honor has
been saved so many times. We are
tired” (146). The Shielded One
reveals women’s hypocritical
self-sacrifice due to fulfilling the femininity that men require, and her argument is a demand of a “female bonding”
(Gainor, Susan Glaspell 85). Particularly, she states, “Oh, is it true
that women will not help one another?” (151), all the while knowing the answer is
“No.”
Based on the same convention in a place, women
unconsciously exercise the ideology of women’s honor. Only when a crime occurs do women start to think of the meaning
of the custom and the gender identification developed by their sense of place.
Like the women in Trifles, the
women in Woman’s Honor also form a sisterhood, a female bonding, which
is due to the similar experience in the same place. Gainor comments, “It is
here that Glaspell reveals the patriarchal constructs underlying the
convention; honor, like other
aspects of women’s identity, is a male creation foisted upon
women but one that they accept begrudgingly or
even embrace unquestioningly within male-dominated society” (Susan Glaspell 85). Women start to question the convention,
but men in Woman’s Honor still maintain their superiority in gender
relations, unwilling to give up the
male-centered custom. Wallace would
rather die than discuss or redefine
the meaning of women’s honor with
the six women. He ends the play by concluding, “Oh, hell. I’ll plead guilty” (156). For him, the absent woman is supposed to be absent forever; otherwise,
he cannot fulfill his chivalric
romance and the role of savior. He does not redefine the meaning of woman’s honor because he agrees with the only meaning of woman’s honor, that is, woman’s virtue.
5.
Conclusion
Of the seven one-act plays Glaspell wrote, Trifles is
“one of the most frequently
anthologized American dramas” (Smith 192) while Woman’s Honor is “the
most broadly comic of her plays” (Gainor, Susan Glaspell 82). One deals with the
Midwest, and the other describes a convention in Iowa. Both plays deliver a
strong sense of place, and the crime stories in them reveal that place is full
of inner conflicts. There exists the possibility of change by man-made effort and social construction instead of being static or descriptive only. Due
to similar experiences by each in Iowa,
the female detectives in Trifles find
out the truth and challenge the
patriarchal judicial system; similarly, because
of suffering from the same sexist custom of woman’s
honor in Iowa, voluntary female suspects in Woman’s Honor redefine
the meaning of honor to question patricidal society.
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252 臺 大 文 史 哲 學 報
From this perspective, place and gender interact in
Glaspell’s plays, and Glaspell’s
reputation as a local colorist or regional
writer should be reconsidered in a new and thorough way. Kent C. Ryden explains that because of insufficient history of the
Middle West, the Midwestern regional
writer is writing place and history at the
same time (513). He further proposes the importance of regional writers
in two ways. First, “such a writer takes the
region as his or her subject matter, with region construed not simply
as territory but also as the prevailing, defining histories which lend identity
to that territory” (523). Glaspell, in this light, does not merely describe the place of the Midwest, but she also
writes history in order to create a sense of
regional identity in the Midwest. Second, regional writers give place
meanings “through reconfirming readers in what they already think they know
about a region” or “through
challenging their assumptions” (523). From this point of view, Glaspell
challenges the reader’s assumptions of the
Middle West by uncovering the complex
relationship between gender and place. Therefore, Glaspell is a regional writer
who cares about how gender is constructed in a place and how place is gendered.
Trifles
and Woman’s Honor clearly manifested her feminist geographical idea in the early 20th century.
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Place and Gender in Susan Glaspell’s Trifles and Woman’s Honor 253
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256 臺 大 文 史 哲 學 報
蘇珊．葛列絲貝的《瑣事》
與《女性的名譽》中的地方與性別
施 懿 芹
摘 要
被視為是美國戲劇之母的蘇珊．葛列絲貝（Susan
Glaspell 1876-1948） 在二十世紀的美國文學占有重量級的地位。她的作品在她在世時受到學界與市場的雙重歡迎，但是卻在她過世之後乏人問津。直到第二波女性主義運動，葛列絲貝的作品再度受到重視。擅長描寫美國中西部的人文地方風景，葛列絲貝常被認為是地方色彩濃厚的的寫實主義者。然而，本文將從
「地方」與「性別」的角度重新閱讀葛列絲貝的《瑣事》與《女性的名譽》，
試圖探索劇作家如何處理地方與性別的交互關係，例如地方的認同如何與性別認同互動，而性別關係又如何在地方中被建立。這樣的閱讀方式說明葛列絲貝是位女性主義的地理學者。
關鍵詞：蘇珊．葛列絲貝
《瑣事》 《女性的名譽》 地方感 女性與犯罪
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