Review of Related Studies

20 CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY

A. Object of the Study

The object of the study is a play script by Susan Glaspell entitled Trifles. It is a one act play-script released on January 7, 2004 and updated on March 17, 2011. Trifles is released at gutenberg.org with other Glaspell’s play script. There are Trifles, The Outside. The Verge, and Inheritors. The e-book was produced by Suzanne Shell, Sandra Brown and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. Trifles is a firstly played by Princetown Players at Wharf Theatre, Provincetown, Mass., August 8, 1916. There are seven characters but, only five characters plays in this story. The two characters are Minnie Foster and John Wright. They are a married couple. Both of them are not shown in the story. The readers know them from the description of other characters and the author’s statement. The five characters are those who came to the house of Minnie Foster to looking for the evidence to show the motive of the murder of John Wright. They are Mr. Henderson as a County attorney, Mr. Hale as a farmer neighbor and his wife Mrs. Hale, Mr. Peters the sheriff and his wife Mrs. Peters. The whole story takes place in the kitchen. The place reflects the role of women in that story. Susan Glaspell is a feminist writer and she carries a message to not underestimate women in her story. The kitchen and how the women show her ability is completely shown in this story. This one-act play script tells about the struggle of motive disclosure. In this play the characters sems like divided into two groups, the men and the women. It is about the struggle of men characters to find the motive of the murder. Finally the motive is found but instead of the men, the women find it out. Glaspell’s Trifles shows the reader that women also has power to find the “Trifles”, the thing that is considered as unused thing by the men, which is actually the motive of John Wright Murder.

B. Approach of the Study

Writer use new criticism to analyze Trifles. New criticism is a literary theory that focuses on the work itself without considering other elements outside the work. New Criticism is an approach that is established as a reaction to liberal humanism. It is firstly invented by T. S. Eliot, an American poet who settled in London. They firstly invented New Criticism as a way of seeing literature separated from other element such as social condition which is mainly discussed in that time. The New Criticism brings new way of seeing work of literature. It sees the more aesthetic aspect of the literature and concern only with the work itself. T. S. Eliot considers that literary work, especially poetry, the genre he most interested in, is impersonal. He does not deny that poet cannot express their feeling through poetry but according to him it is more important to focus on the poetry itself then other aspects. In “Tradition and the Individual Talent’, for instance, we find him claiming that the poet has ‘not “a personality to express, but a particular medium’ Eliot[1919] 1972: 75. Eliot’s main aim, however, is to deflect his readers’ attention from everything he considers of at best secondary importance—the poet’s personal or social circumstances, and so on—and to get the poetry itself centre stage.Hans, 2003:12 The attention of the reader is expected to focus on the poetry itself. The elements inside the poetry such as the diction, rhyme, metaphor, etc will leads to the reaching of the feeling or emotion as a result of reading the literary work. Eliot use the words “objective correlative” to stands for the reaction of the reader after reading the poet that stimulate their emotion toward the poetry. What the poet needs to look for, Eliot tells us in ‘Hamlet’ another essay from 1919, is an ‘objective correlative’: ‘a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion’ Eliot [1919] 1969:145. Emotion must be conveyed indirectly. The poet’s emotion should be invested in such ‘objective correlative’, Hans, 2003: 12

C. Method of the Study

Writer use library sources to do this study. Some of the important books that writer use are Edgar V. Robert and Henry E. Jacob’s Fiction: An Introduction to Reading and Writing , Raman Selden, Peter Widdowson, Peter Broker’s A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory: Fourth Edition , Hans Bertens’ Literary Theory : The Basics, and Roger B. Henkle’s Reading the Novel : An Introduction to the Techniques of Interpreting Fiction. Beside that, writer also had taken some of the writing and theory from credible website. The theories in those books are applied to analyze the play script. First, writer used theory of character and characterization to analyze the nature of man character in Trifles. With theory of character and characterization writer got the natures of men by looking for the evidence of men natures through the men utterances, attitude, or other character’s utterances. After the nature found then, by using theory of plot by Fretag, writer analyzed the flow of the story. The plot is about how the story constructed. It is important to know the plot because plot is the way from the beginning of the story until the end. When the plot is gotten it is possible to know how the story end up and what is the aim of the story. Then, writer analyzed both characters and what happened to them by the time the story flow. In this part, it is also important to get how the characters react against condition that is happened. Finally, the reason of men failure to disclose the motif of the murder is revealed. 24 CHAPTER IV ANALYSIS This analysis starts from the nature of male character using theory of character and characterization. Writer uses the theory by Roger B. Henkle, Edgar V. Robert, and Henry E. Jacob. The next analysis is about plot of Susan Glaspell Trifles. Writer uses theory of plot from the book by Edgar V. Robert and Henry E. Jacob. The plot here is how the story flows from the beginning until the end. The last analysis is about the relation of the nature of male character with the failure of motive disclosure. Writer relates the nature of male character in a subchapter I to the Plot of the play in chapter II. It is about how the male characters react toward events which happened in the play that finally lead to the failure of motive disclosure.

A. The Natures of Male Characters

In this part the nature of male characters are explained one by one. Using theory of character and characterization and relate it with setting of the play

1. Mr. Lewis Hale

The first approach to know about character is by seeing what is stated by the narrator. At the beginning the narrator stated about the age of Mr. Hale. It is stated; the sheriff and Hale are man in middle life. From that line we can assume that Mr. Hale age is about 40 up to 50 years old. The other way to see the characters’ personality or nature is by examining their action or utterances. COUNTY ATTORNEY: How did she seem to feel about your coming? HALE: Why, I dont think she minded—one way or other. She didnt pay much attention. I said, How do, Mrs Wright its cold, aint it? And she said, Is it?—and went on kind of pleating at her apron. Well, I was surprised; she didnt ask me to come up to the stove, or to set down, but just sat there, not even looking at me, so I said, I want to see John. And then she—laughed.” lines: 52-57 From the answer of Mr. Hale to Mr. Henderson as a county attorney the nature of Mr. Hale can be revealed. He is a naive person. He honestly answers the question complete with the details. He also said who was saying this and that and also stated what is exactly Mrs. Foster did when she answer the question. Mr. Hale keeps answering the question about what was happened when he came to Mrs. Wright’s house the day before. He answers it one by one as clear as possible. He followed all instructions that Mr. Henderson and Mr. Peter gave. Besides those personalities, Mr. Hale is also just like Mr. Peters and Mr. Henderson. He underestimates women and considers the thing that women worried about is trifles. SHERIFF : Well, can you beat the women Held for murder and worryin about her preserves. COUNTY ATTORNEY: I guess before were through she may have something more serious than preserves to worry about. HALE : Well, women are used to worrying over trifles.lines: 104- 108 From conversation above Mr. Hale used to think that women usually worrying over trifles. It means that not only at that time he thinks about that, but many times before he found women worrying over trifles. At the very first part of the play in the cast list there stated Mr. Lewis Hale is a farmer neighbors. From that information and from the setting which is stated in the first sentence of the play we can conclude that Mr. Hale was living in a farmer society. Mr. Hale and Mr. Wright who was murdered is a fellow farmer. As a farmer they usually have to work hard every day. Sometimes farmers have a party telephone. It is stated by Mr. Hale while he is explaining what happened at the first time. HALE: Harry and I started to town with a load of potatoes. We came along the road from my place and as I got here I said, I’m going to see if I can’t get John Wright to go with me on a party telephone. I spoke to Wright about it one before and he put me off, saying folks talked too much anyway... line: 30-33 Mr. Hale is naive or just being what he really is. He also always obeys what is asked by Sheriff or County Attorney. He must respects County Attorney and Sheriff as they are from upper class. On the other hand, the respect toward women is the same with other men in the play. From those analyses it is derived that Mr. Hale is a middle-aged farmer, honest, naive, and underestimating women.

2. Mr. Henry Peters Sheriff

Mr. Peters is a sheriff and he came to the house with his wife. He is in his middle of age just like Mr. Hale. We can found it in the text stated by the narrator. “The sheriff and Hale are men in middle life, The County Attorney is a young man; all are bundled up and go at one to the stove. They are followed by two women- the Sheriff wife first..” line: 6 PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI