Third Reading

The Revolt of “Mother”

Then she stood waiting. She was a small woman, short and straight-waisted like a child in her brown cotton gown. Her forehead was mild and benevolent between the smooth curves of her grey hair; there were meek downward lines about her nose and mouth; but her eyes, fixed upon the old man, looked as if the meekness had been the result of her own will, never the will of another.

This passage was the most important to me because it describes Sarah, the woman who becomes the main character, and it sets the stage for the rest of the tale. I think that it is very interesting that the reader doesn’t know the woman’s name until several pages into the story. It is the title and role of mother that distinguishes her from the other characters and it is this persona that allows her to come alive and create the crux of the story by asserting her desires and making them a reality. The images that I liked most in the paragraph were the description of the mother as child like. I think that it was also fitting to the story that she is a benevolent woman and not used to ruling her house as a dictator. The meek attribute I think is mentioned because it gives some control to the woman, she is humble by her own choice, not by her husband’s, which gives her the potential to control other things in the story which lend to foreshadowing. I liked this passage because it had a pleasant tone and introduced the mother in a way that made me respect her and understand her motives.

Trifles

MRS. PETERS: [To the other woman.] Oh, her fruit; it did freeze. [To the COUNTY ATTOURNEY] She worried about that when it turned cold. She said the fore’d go out and her jars would break.

I have read this short play in other classes and it is still one of my favorites. I think it is very appropriate for this class because it shows through speech and body language how women communicate and interpret each other, compared with how men bluntly interpret women. I really like this passage because it shows the caring that women have for things that men find silly, like what will happen to fruit when it becomes cold. I can picture Mrs. Wright as a woman who is very proud of her work and even without being close friends, these women immediately understand the trouble it is to keep a house clean and to put up cherries in the heat etc. I also like the story as a whole because of the irony of how the case is more or less solved. The two women get much more accomplished while speaking of quilting and what men would consider every day gossip, then the sheriff an attorney could imagine. This passage fits into the rest of the play because it outlines the understanding and connection between the women in the house and the woman in jail. It allows the plot to proceed because it establishes a state of mind that the women have that is completely different from that of the men.

As Children Together

I don’t know where you are now, Victoria,
They say you have children, a trailer
in the snow near our town,
and the husband you found as a girl
returned from the Far East broken
cursing holy blood at the table
where nightly a pile of white chavings
is paid from the edge of his knife.

This is the ending section of the poem and it strikes me as powerful because the sister is supposing how the other’s life is from stories she has herd. I think it is sad because the sister is unable to make a connection, and she outlines her sister’s life like the one she hated growing up. Victoria seemed like such a role model because she was older and more sexually mature, with dreams of going to exotic places and meeting exotic people. Now, at the end of the poem, her dreams have turned out to bite her in the butt and it is her little sister that modestly mentions having been in Paris. I think that though this poem is sad to me, it ends on a hopeful note and that is one in which the narrator has done unique things with her life and will possibly have the opportunity to shape her sister’s life in a better direction. The passage adds a lot to the poem because it is the progression of the biography and gives the reader a type of conclusion or idea of how the relationship between the women might grow and change, or not.