Forgotten Feminist?

Have you ever heard of Susan Glaspell?  I hadn’t until our Play Reading group read her one act play “Trifles”.  Its themes include domestic violence, coercive control, and sisterhood.   With her husband Susan founded the Provincetown Players, the first modern American theatre company, where “Trifles” was first performed in 1916.  Susan was an actor, playwright, novelist and journalist, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1931 for “Alison’s House” a play loosely based on the life and family of Emily Dickinson.

“Trifles” was written for the Provincetown Players in just ten days.  A year later Susan rewrote it as the short story “A Jury of Her Peers”.  The play and the story were inspired by a murder that she covered while working as a reporter for the Des Moines Daily News.  Although “A Jury of Her Peers” concerns a murder investigation, the story is not a whodunnit as much as it is a mystery of motive.  As the women in the story discover the motive by paying close attention to “women’s trifles”, the theme of the story is revealed.  When “A Jury of Her Peers” was first published, it was considered controversial and disturbing.  I can see parallels with the discussions over Helen and Rob of “The Archers”.

“I hadn’t heard of Ms Glaspell
and like her writing very well.”