ENGL 4603/5413, AMST 5833: American Drama

Northeastern State University, Broken Arrow, Oklahoma

John M. Mercer, Professor of English

Study Guide 1: Trifles and Desire under the Elms

Setting of Trifles

1. This one-act play was first performed in 1916. Although the play does not tell us in what year it is set, what clues does it provide? In approximately what year does the action appear to take place?

2. What is the social, legal, and electoral status of women in the world of the play?

3. Why does Glaspell limit the setting of the play to Mrs. Wright’s kitchen?

4. Does the scene description at the beginning of the play suggest that this supposed to be a realistic setting? In other words, is this supposed to look like a real kitchen?

5. What adjectives would describe this kitchen? What effect might this setting have on the audience? How does the appearance of the kitchen relate to Mrs. Wright’s motive for the murder?

Plot of Trifles

1. What is the purpose of the men’s investigation?

2. Why are the women present?

3. What significance do Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters attribute to each of the following discoveries they make in the kitchen?

a. The bread has been left out of the breadbox.

b. Only half of the table has been wiped.

c. A block of quilt has been sewn crazily.

d. A bird-cage with a broken door is in the cupboard.

e. The sewing basket contains a box with the remains of a bird whose neck has been wrung.

4. Which of the discoveries listed above is the crisis or turning point of the play’s plot, the moment when the play’s action changes direction? Before this moment, what problem do the women try to solve? After this moment, what problem do the women have to solve?

5. The disposition of the dead bird is the climax of the play, the most exciting moment for the audience. What happens to the bird? What do we assume will happen to it afterwards?

6. How did Mrs. Wright kill Mr. Wright? Why did she use this means?

7. In the last line of the play, what does Mrs. Hale mean when she says that Mrs. Wright was going to “knot it [the quilt]”? Through dramatic irony, what do we understand that the men in the play do not?

Conflict between Men and Women in Trifles

1. What is the men’s attitude toward the women’s ability to help them solve the crime? Why do they feel this way?

2. What does each of the following statements reveal about the conflict between men and women in the play, or about relationships among women?

a. Sheriff: “Nothing here but kitchen things.”

b. Mr. Hale: “Well, women are used to worrying over trifles.”

c. County Attorney: “[A] sheriff’s wife is married to the law.”

d. Mrs. Hale: “I know how things can be—for women. . . . We live close together and we live far apart. We all go through the same things—it’s all just a different kind of the same thing.”

3. What is the significance of Mrs. Peters telling about each of the following?

a. How she felt when a boy took a hatchet to her kitten

b. How she felt when her first baby died at age two

4. How do the women conspire to hide the truth from the men concerning each of the following?

a. What happened to the bird that must have been in the bird-cage

b. The last piece of evidence the women find

5. What is the play’s ideology concerning the conflict between the women and the men? Does the play take sides? How can you tell? Is this a feminist play? Why or why not?

Symbols in Trifles

What does each of the following symbolize? That is, what does it mean beyond what it literally is?

1. Mrs. Wright’s rocking chair

2. The songbird that has been killed

3. The canary’s wrung neck

Differences between Trifles and “A Jury of Her Peers”

The year after Susan Glaspell wrote Trifles, she used the same plot in her short story “A Jury of Her Peers.” Taking into account the differences between drama and fiction as genres, explain the following differences between the play and the story:

1. The play has only one setting; the story adds a scene in Mrs. Hale’s kitchen at the beginning.

2. The play does not reveal the inner thoughts of any of the characters; the story reveals the thoughts of Mrs. Hale.

3. The play does not seem to have just one main character; in the story, Mrs. Hale is clearly the main character.

4. The play is much shorter than the story--less than half as long.

5. In the play Mrs. Wright has failed to put a loaf of bread in the breadbox; in the story Mrs. Wright has transferred only half of the sugar from a bag into a canister.

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Background for Desire

1. What was the Provincetown Playhouse? What was Eugene O’Neill’s relationship to the Provincetown Playhouse?

2. What was Eugene O’Neill’s relationship to Susan Glaspell, the playwright who wrote Trifles?

3. In general, O’Neill’s plays were not great popular successes but were critical successes.

a. What is meant by the term “popular success”? What indicates that a play is a popular success?

b. What is meant by the term “critical success”? What indicates that a play is a critical success?

c. Why were O’Neill’s plays in general not popular successes?

d. Why were O’Neill’s plays in general critical successes?

Desire as a Realistic Drama

1. One of the characteristics of literary Realism is the depiction of unpleasant truths that other writers might avoid. What are some of the unpleasant truths in this play?

2. O’Neill intends for the play’s dialogue to sound realistic.

a. What aspects of the play’s dialogue reflect the dialect of rural people in nineteenth-century New England (especially Maine)?

b. What aspects of the characters’ dialect especially reflect the characters’ relatively low social class and lack of education?

c. Because it is realistic, the play’s dialect can be difficult to read. What is the meaning of each of the following lines:

i. “Ay-eh” (repeated throughout the characters’ dialogue)

ii. “S’well fust’s last! Let’s light out and git this mornin’.” (964, col. 1)

iii. “Likker don’t pear t’ sot right.” (965, col. 2)

d. What other lines of dialogue do you find especially difficult to understand?

Title of Desire under the Elms

1. What different types or objects of desire do the characters demonstrate? What are some specific examples of each type or object of desire? How do these types or objects of desire relate to the American Dream?

2. Some of the characters’ desires in the play involve incest. What specific examples of incest relate to each of the following characters:

a. Min

b. Abbie

3. At what point in the plot does Eben go to Min’s house? What is the significance of the timing of Eben’s decision?

4. What desire does Eben believe motivated Ephraim to marry Eben’s mother?

5. What desire motivates Eben to buy Peter’s and Simeon’s shares of the farm?

6. What one adjective do several different characters use to describe the appearance of the farm? How does the appearance of the farm relate to several characters’ desire for it?

7. What does the scene description at the beginning of the play say about the elms? What other references to the elms appear in the script of the play?

8. Why does O’Neill include the elms? What do the elms symbolize? That is, what do they suggest beyond what they literally are?

Settings of Desire

1. What significant information about each of the following components of the setting appears in the scene description at the beginning of the play?

a. the farmhouse

b. the stone wall

c. the upstairs bedrooms

2. How does the layout and use of the two upstairs bedrooms help to emphasize each of the following aspects of the play:

a. Eben’s lack of freedom and independence on the farm

b. The attraction between Eben and Abbie

3. O’Neill wrote the play in 1924 but set it in 1850. Why might he have chosen to set the play in 1850 rather than in the present?

4. Why does Ephraim frequently go to the barn? Why does he feel more comfortable in the barn than in the house?

5. What contrasts does the play emphasize between the New England farm and California?

a. Which place is associated with hard work? Why? Which is associated with easy money? Why?

b. Which place is associated with servitude? Why? Which is associated with freedom? Why?

Old Testament References in Desire

1. Taking into account the factual information provided below, explain the appropriateness of the name of each of the following characters:

a. Ephraim means “fruitful.” In the Old Testament, Ephraim is the younger son of Joseph.

b. Eben means “stone” in Hebrew.

c. Eben is short for Ebenezer. In the Old Testament, the prophet Samuel places a stone and names it Ebenezer, which means “stone of help” in Hebrew, in token of God’s help.

d. Peter means “rock” in Greek.

e. Simeon means “obedient” in Hebrew. In the Old Testament, Simeon is one of the 12 sons of Jacob.

2. What kind of God does Ephraim believe in? What adjective does he repeatedly use to describe God? How does Ephraim’s concept of God reflect stereotypes of the God of the Old Testament?

3. In what sense is Ephraim himself like an Old Testament prophet?

4. What situation in the play is comparable to the Old Testament account of Jacob’s tricking his brother Esau into selling his birthright for a “mess of pottage” or bowl of stew?

Character of Eben

1. For what actions in the antecedent action (backstory) does Eben resent Ephraim? Is this resentment reasonable?

2. Why does Eben resent his brothers? Is this resentment reasonable?

3. What adjective does Ephraim critically apply both to Eben and his mother? To what extent, if at all, is this an accurate description of Eben?

4. What trait do Eben’s brothers say Eben shares in common with their father? To what extent, if at all, is this an accurate description of Eben?

Significant Moments in the Plot of Desire

1. What lie does Abbie tell Ephraim about Eben (2.1)? What does this lie suggest about Abbie’s desires? How does this lie become a self-fulfilling prophecy?

2. What statement by Ephraim makes Abbie want to become pregnant (2.1)?

3. After Abbie kisses Eben, where does Eben go to “court” Abbie (2.2)? What is the significance of Eben’s courting her in this place?

4. At what point does Eben’s mother’s ghost depart the house to rest in peace (2.3)? Why does her ghost supposedly want vengeance on Ephraim in the first place? Which characters in the play believe in the existence of this ghost?

5. During the kitchen dance celebrating the baby’s birth, what do we learn about the neighbors’ knowledge of and attitude toward Ephraim, Abbie, and Eben (3.1)?

6. What does Ephraim say that causes Eben to turn against Abbie (3.2)? In what sense is this the crisis or turning point of the play, the moment at which the plot changes direction?

7. How does Abbie get the idea to kill her baby (3.2)? Why does she do it?

8. How does Eben initially respond to the knowledge that Abbie has killed their baby (3.3)?

9. After his initial response to Abbie’s killing of the baby, how does Eben change his attitude toward Abbie (3.4)? Why?

10. How does Cabot respond to what Abbie tells him about the baby? What does he say he’s going to do (3.4)? Does he do what he says he will?

11. How is Eben and Abbie’s situation at the end of the play similar to that of Adam and Eve at the end of Milton’s Paradise Lost?

Influence of Greek Tragedy on Desire under the Elms

1. In constructing the plot of Desire, O’Neill uses the Greek myth of Hippolytus and Phaedra. In this myth, Hippolytus, the adolescent son of a difficult, larger-than-life father, Duke Theseus, is accused of committing incest with his step-mother, Phaedra (pronounced “FEE-druh”).

a. How do the actions of the characters in Hippolytus, an ancient Greek tragedy by Euripides, compare to those in O’Neill’s Desire?

b. How do the actions of the characters in Phaedra, a French neoclassical play by Racine (1677), compare to those in O’Neill’s Desire?

2. In constructing the plot of Desire, O’Neill is conscious of the classical unities of time, place, and action.

a. What is meant by the unity of time? How, if at all, does Desire observe the unity of time?

b. What is meant by the unity of place? How, if at all, does Desire observe the unity of place?

c. What is meant by the unity of action? How, if at all, does Desire observe the unity of action?

3. In constructing the plot of Desire, O’Neill is conscious of the traits of ancient Greek tragedy as described by Aristotle in The Poetics.

a. Who, in your opinion, is the tragic hero (main character) of O’Neill’s Desire? Is it Ephraim? Eben? Abbie? All of the above?

b. Aristotle says that the tragic hero is noble by birth and in character. Is this true in Desire? If not, why might O’Neill deliberately violate this element of classical tragedy?

c. Aristotle says that the tragic hero falls from happiness to misery. Is this true of the main character(s) in Desire? How?

d. Aristotle says that the tragic hero’s fall is the result of his or her own actions. Is this true in Desire? If so, what is the tragic hero’s hamartia (imperfection or tragic flaw) that causes his or her fall from happiness to misery? What actions, traits, and/or emotions lead to the fall of all the main characters in the play?

e. Aristotle says that the tragic hero suffers one or more moments of reversal, when something that he or she thinks will be positive turns out to be negative. What reversal(s) does the tragic hero experience in Desire?

f. Aristotle says that the tragic hero experiences a moment of recognition (an epiphany). What moments of recognition can you identify in Desire?

g. Aristotle says that the plot of a tragedy must be probable (believable), with each action leading to the next in a chain of cause and effect. To what extent is this true in Desire? What elements of the plot, if any, do you find to be improbable?

h. Aristotle says that a tragedy causes the audience to experience a catharsis (purging) of the emotions of pity and fear. Why might the audience of Desire feel pity for the main character(s)? Why might audience members feel fear for themselves?

i. Aristotle says that the end of a tragedy should be uplifting rather than depressing for the audience? What if anything is positive about the end of Desire?

Differences between the Play and the 1958 Film

The 1958 film starring Sophia Loren, Anthony Perkins, and Burl Ives was shown on the first night of class.

1. What scene that does not appear in the script of the play is added at the beginning of the film? Why would this scene have been added? To what extent do you find this addition to be effective? Why?

2. What is Ephraim’s first appearance in the play? What is his first appearance in the film? Why would this change have been made? To what extent do you find this change to be effective? Why?

3. How is Abbie different in the film than in the play? Why would these changes have been made? To what extent do you find these changes to be effective? Why?

4. What scene involving Abbie and the parlor is added to the film? Why would this scene have been added? To what extent do you find this change to be effective? Why?

5. What action involving Eben’s brothers is added to the film? Why would this action have been added? To what extent do you find this addition to be effective? Why?

6. What scene in the hay loft is added to the film? Why would this scene have been added? To what extent do you find this change to be effective? Why?