MAJOR PLAYWRIGHT : SUSAN GLASPELL

Susan Glaspell was born on 1 July 1876 in  Davenport, Iowa. The only daughter of Elmer and Alice Gaspell couple, she received her degree in philosophy from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa and began to write for the Des Moines Daily News in 1899. She also did  wrote short stories for Youth's Companion, selling a total of forty-three stories over the next two decades, many of which were set in Freeport, the fictional version of Davenport. She married George Cram Cook in 1914 who was the theatrical director. This couple managed to form a theatrical group named Provincetown Player which became the most influential group in American drama. Susan was well known as the woman who rebelled against society’s expectations of women. In 1931 Glaspell won the Pulitzer Prize for her play Alison’s House

 Among of her famous works are Fidelity, in 1915,Trifles (1916) The Outside (1917), Inheritors (1921), Woman’s Honor (1918) Suppressed Desires (written with Cook in 1915), and  The Verge (1921). Talk about her most famous play,Trifles she wrote this play in 1916, basing this brief, one-act play on the murder of the sixty-year-old John Hossack, which she had covered extensively during her stint as a journalist with the Des Moines Daily News. Trifles was about the murder of John Wright and the men who involved in the investigation could not find any hint or clues related to this case. This play also exposed that the women, Mrs. Hale and Mrs.Peters ,that always been looked down by the society especially the men managed to find the clues even from small thing which men assumed them as kitchen things and accused women to worry over the trifles. The major themes in this play is men do not appreciate women which can be seen the men in this play  think they are tough, serious-minded detectives, when in truth they are not nearly as observant as the female characters. Their pompous attitude causes the women to feel defensive and form ranks. Not only do Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters bond, but they choose to hide evidence as an act of compassion for Mrs. Wright. Stealing the box with the dead bird is an act of loyalty to their gender and an act of defiance against a callous patriarchal society.

Susan Glaspell died on July 27, 1948 due to a pulmonary embolism at the age of 66. Susan wrote nine novels, fourteen plays, countless short stories and articles.