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...