The Glory of the Conquered: Speaking Silence of Women’s Space in Susan Glaspell’s ‘A Jury of Her Peers’

English (OpenAlex)

Glaspell had a prolific career with groundbreaking plays such as The Verge (1921), Inheritors (1921), or her one-act play The Outside (1917), just to name a few.These three plays, together with Trifles (1916), are part of the renowned collection Plays by Susan Glaspell (1987) by C.W.E Bigsby, which remains a primary source of Glaspell"s works.Despite Glaspell"s extensive writing and production of plays, she is still widely known as the author of Trifles and her short story adaptation "A Jury of Her Peers" (1917).Nowadays, Glaspell"s plays are present in most university theater departments.However, Glaspell"s works were neglected until the 1970s, when some feminist critics rediscovered her plays and claimed them as palimpsests of women"s struggle in patriarchal society.Dealing with the isolation of rural life, abuse, and the power of women bonding, Trifles is a referent of early twentieth-century issues that are still relevant for contemporary society.Glaspell laid the foundations of modern American theater as a reaction against the disappointing mass-marketed theatrical scene of the time.