This section contains 12,003 words (approx. 41 pages at 300 words per page) |
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SOURCE: "'Murder, She Wrote': The Genesis of Susan Glaspell's Trifles," in Theatre Journal, Vol. 44, No. 2, May 1992, pp. 141-62.
In the essay below, Ben-Zvi investigates a murder trial that Glaspell covered as a reporter as a likely basis for Trifles.
In the preface to her book Women Who Kill, Ann Jones explains that her massive study of women murderers began with a quip. After working through a reading list which included The Awakening, The House of Mirth, and The Bell Jar, a student asked her: "Isn't there anything a woman can do but kill herself?" Jones responded, "She can always kill somebody else."1
Women killing somebody else, especially when that somebody is male, has fascinated criminologists, lawyers, psychologists, and writers. Fascinated and frightened them. Fear is the subtext of Jones's book: "the fears of men who, even as they shape society, are desperately afraid of women, and so have...
This section contains 12,003 words (approx. 41 pages at 300 words per page) |
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