NASCIMENTO FILHA, Maria do.
Abstract:
The objective of this monographic work is to analyze Triffles (1916), a play by the
American writer Susan Galspell (1875-1948), from a feminist perspective. It is known
that Literature worked as an important mean by which women, in their condition of
alleged inferiority, used to criticize their place in society, since it was dominated by
patriarchal ideologies. It is important to mention that those women did not occupy a just
space in social life, but through many attempts throughout the 19th and 20th centuries,
specially, they were able to conquer the desired space, either in or out of the literary
universe. In relation to Glaspell’s play, it shows a kind of case study on gender relations
in denouncing the conditions of life for the female sex, all these through Mrs. Hale and
Mrs. Peters behaviors towards the opposite sex, and vice versa, since they were women
placed in an inferior position, silenced, and scorned in that historical environment where
the predominant law was that of men. Different from what was expected by the
investigators, Minnie’s husband murder is discovered by them, although both women
hide all the truth. This analysis will also highlight Mrs. Peters discovery of her
subjectivity, since she had been totally submissived to the social law imposed on her as
a woman. Thus, in other to support this research, which is of bibliographical nature,
both critical and theoretical basis will come from Woolf (2004), Zolin (2005a e 2005b),
Sander (2005), Gilbert and Gubar (1996), among others.
