Inert Account of Intersectional Feminism

Part 1: What kind of person was Minnie Foster before she married? Find details in the play to back up your answer. How did her marriage to John Wright change her? Use specific examples and quotes from the book (and cite with page numbers). (5 pts.)

Before her marriage to Mr. Wright, Minnie Foster “used to wear pretty clothes and be lively”; she was “one of the town girls singing in the choir” (Glaspell, 1042). Someone with heart and a passion for life, Minnie Foster, “she was kind of a bird herself – real sweet and pretty, but kind of timid and – fluttery” (Glaspell, 1044). “I wish you’d seen Minnie Foster when she wore a white dress with blue ribbons and stood up there in the choir and sang” (Glaspell, 1046). We can infer by what immediately follows Mrs. Hale’s account of her friend’s fluttery nature, “How – she – did – change,” that Minnie’s animating qualities of life, her briskness and color, were drained when she married the cold-hearted Mr. Wright. “I wonder how it would seem never to have had any children around. (Pause) No, Wright wouldn’t like the bird – a thing that sang. She used to sing. He killed that, too” (Glaspell, 1045). She was relegated to being a most mundane of housewives, sans children and even a pet canary. Slowly her character waned and was replaced by the nothingness, the void, that her husband brought into her life. He in a sense sapped her of what made her alive, and she returned the favor. Maybe identical phonetically, Mr. Wright could not have been much more antithetical to “Mr. Right” for Minnie Foster.

Part 2: In the play, why do the men fail to see the clues that Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters discover? What do the men’s conversations and actions reveal about their attitudes toward women? Use specific examples and quotes from the book (and cite with page numbers). (5 pts.)

The men in the play are beyond inattentive in their oblivious, even overtly sexist, attitude toward women, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters certainly included. This veil of ignorance about feminine nature serves to obscure their perception of clues such as the box and canary coffin and loose threads on the quilt. Quotes the likes of “Held for murder and worryin’ about her preserves” and “Well, women are used to worrying over trifles” serve to illustrate to what degree these men view women as a flippant group whose minds solely belong to womanly duties (Glaspell, 1040). Their dismissive nature, which inhibits their critical eye for detail and evidence is further seen as the Sheriff scoffs and laughs with his men when Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale speculate as to the finality of the quilts design: “They wonder if she was going to quilt it or just knot it!” (Glaspell, 1043). The men sew their own fate in the matter by glossing over the women for talking over womanly things as they move to other parts of the house. Ironically, the women who reside in the kitchen and look through Mrs. Wright’s quilt scraps are those who solve the mystery at hand.

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