Trifles

Trifles was definitely a short, but still intriguing, play written by Susan Glaspell depicting a woman whose husband is found dead. I think this play sort of delved into how little unhappy things in a person's life could have them acting unpredicatable and allowing bad things to happen. In Trifles, Mr. John Wright turns up dead in his home, and his wife is found in a far-off state, sitting in a chair and simply pleating her apron as she's questioned about where her husband is and how he turned up strangled without her noticing it at all. Upon first reading, I had no doubt that Mrs. Wright killed her husband and I felt no pity about her being in her distant state and hoped she'd be carried off and served her justice. But then, when Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters are talking about what happened and the circumstances, my opinion began to change. They talk about her fruit and how Mrs. Wright would be uspet if something happened to that, then they talk about quilting, and then they talk about whether or not she owned a canary upon discovering a birdcage. Upon them discussing these simple and trivial things, it becomes more clear within Glaspell's Trifles that little, ordinary things cane play a major role in someone developing unhappiness, especially considering that Mr. Wright wasn't the easiest man to live with. With all these constant, boring things becoming the center of Mrs. Wright's world, and mixed with her hard husband, I felt that it was no wonder everything negative built up until it finally exploded, resulting in Mr. Wright's death. I know me personally, although I certainly wouldn't resort to killing, or having someone kill for me, can understand how simple things can build up, annoy, and only increase the frustration. Especially if your forced to be around them every single hour of every single day. So after reading Trifles, my opinion definitely changed. I don't think that killing her husband was the answer to ending her unhappiness, but I do understand how maybe Mrs. Wright thought that the only way to escape her unsatisfactory, simple lifestyle was to get rid of the true source behind it all. That sort of thing happens frequently in today's time, where women see ridding themselves of their partners to be the only solution to the world they cannot escape. So, overall, Trifles was very much an accurate description of how ordinary things can escalate into ultimate tragedy.

Medea

After reading Medea, written by Euripedes, I was sort of confused about some points within the play, but I attribute that primarily to the way the play was written. I must say first, however, that I overall really enjoyed reading Medea and found the whole story intriguing, despite my confusions from the writing. Although I liked the play and its theme, I absolutely could not stand the way it was written. It seemed to me that Euripedes chose to write Medea in a type of poem form. I felt personally that this poetic format sort of took away from the drama of the play. If it was written more like Lysistrata, it would have been more captivating and I feel that the whole point of the play would've been more obvious. Besides my issue with the poem format, I thought that Euripedes's intent was too display women as conviving, manipulative, and scheming individuals. Might as well throw heartless in there too, since he has Medea kill her innocent children just to cause Jason immense pain. That is another point in the play that sort of puzzled me. Why did she chose to slaughter her children, if they were supposed to be in exile alongside her? To me, I feel that that would have been able to cause the same amount of pain that Jason would feel. He is still losing his children, just in another way. And Medea would have been able to reflect a hint of humanity within herself if she had not murdered her children. Aside from those negative qualities that Euripedes chooses to represent her with, Medea is also able to use what I would call a "woman's natural charm" to convince Creon to allow her one more day before her exile from Corinth to secretly plot her revenge on him, the princess, and Jason. Aside from him, she also manages to convince a travelling man from another city to allow her refuge in his home, simply by promising to help him and his wife conceive a child. To me, the character Medea is the perfect representation of how the sneaky woman would be portrayed. Although I didn't really like her character, I didn't dislike her either. I could see how it would make sense for Medea to want to get back at her husband, who left her for a "better match". But on the same note, I think she definitely took it to the extremes. Killing the other woman and her father, not to mention her own flesh and blood, seems way over the top just to spite the man that betrayed her. But then again, this play would not have been nearly as entertaining if all this drama didn't happen.

Lysistrata

Lysistrata was the name of the woman in Aristophanes play that sought to end the wars between areas like Greece and Athens. Her brilliant solution to go about bringing peace involved gathering a group of women and having all of them, including herself, refrain from sex with their husbands. From first reading this play I assumed that the women choosing to forgo sex was intended to symbolize the supposed strength that women possessed over men, or that's what I got out of it at least. Even though, the more I read, it seemed that most of the women (from the few that agreed and pledged to her idea) Lysistrata recruited came up with far out ideas to avoid participating in her plan and run off to be with their husbands. I started to rethink my idea about the play reflecting the strength of women until, for example, I reached the part near the end of the play with Myrrhine and her husband, Cinesias, who was desperate to be with his wife again. Not only was it entertaining to read, but it only went to prove what I initially thought upon reading Lysistrata. Some parts of the play I found comical, especially the concept that woman refusing to engage in sex with their husbands could be enough to end a war, but it wasn't until after our class discussion that I understood that that was what the majority of what Lysistrata was intended to be. There was a part in the play that I did not quite understand and that was the scene when Lysistrata and the other women of her entourage enter some sort of temple and I assume they chose the reside there until their husbands could come to peace with other feuding nations. I just overall couldn't understand if staying in that temple was supposed to convey some sort of message or something, but that scene just didn't seem to fit and flow with the rest of the play. Also during that scene was when these choruses of men and women began speaking during the play, which I thought sort of increased tension and bitterness between the sexes, which, for me, added to concept of what the play was supposed to reflect. Overall, I thought that Aristopanes Lysistrata was a good, although probably not accurate depiction during its time of production, reflection of what a strong woman could be and even how one woman could bring an end to war by the simple act of refraining from sex.