T R I F L E S

 

 

'TRIFLES' is always in the curriculum of DRAMA ANALYSIS CLASS that I handle in the even semester.

 

PLOT

 

This one-act drama written by Susan Glaspell tells us about a murder of a husband, John Wright. His wife, Mrs. Wright -- her maiden name was Minnie Foster -- was the suspect since she was the last person seen when a neighbor -- Mr. Hale -- found Mr. Wright dead in his house. The following day after the finding, Mr. Hale came back to the house together with the Sheriff and County Attorney to gather evidence -- either to make themselves convinced that Mrs. Wright was the murderer or on the way around: they might find fingerprints of the 'real murderer'. These three men were accompanied by Mrs. Hale -- the wife of the neighbor -- and Mrs. Peter -- the wife of the Sheriff. The two women were about to collect some personal belongings of Mrs. Wright who apparently was already in custody; these personal belongings were, among other things. clothes, some stuff to quilt, etc.

 

Glaspell intentionally showed the contradictory traits between men and women: the  three men paid more attention to anything 'big' or 'serious' to collect evidence, because the crime done was also a serious one: murder. On the contrary, the two women took a very close look at some 'trivial things (alias 'trifles') such as, preserves, bread set, a large sewing basket and a piece cloth Mrs. Wright was quilting. In the end, it turned out that the women even found the evidence that strongly showed Mrs. Wright was the murderer from those trifles, while the men did not find any. However, to show 'loyalty to the same gender' -- as accused by the County Attorney when Mrs. Hale defended Mrs. Wright when the County Attorney said bad things about how messy the kitchen of Mr. Wright's house was -- the two women kept the evidence for themselves. 

 

DESPERATE HOUSEWIFE -- an analysis

 

From the conversation between Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, one can conclude that John Wright had a contradictory trait from his wife, Minnie Foster. Before marrying John, Minnie was a very cheerful girl, singing in a choir, wearing pretty dresses as well as colorful ribbons on her hair. Meanwhile, John belonged to a very quiet man. He refused the offer of Mr. Hale to 'go on a party telephone' by saying that 'folks talked too much'. Apparently he didn't like noise at all.

 

Because of that, it can be concluded that during their marriage -- for about thirty years -- Minnie was forced to be someone else who was not herself in the past. She could not sing, she could not enjoy having a company -- let us say when a neighbor dropped by at her house. Mrs. Hale herself as a neighbor said that she did not really like visiting the Wrights' house since John did not like it.

 

When the two women found a dead canary hidden inside a box in the sewing basket, they directly drew a conclusion what made Minnie killed her husband. John killed Minnie's only entertainment. (Mrs. Hale said that only a year ago Minnie bought the canary, 29 years after the wedding, after 29 years living in a quietness and being repressive.) It can be interpreted that John killed Minnie's soul. No longer could Minnie control her emotion, she killed her husband.

 

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

 

The choice of 'kitchen' as the main setting by Glaspell refers to the setting considered as the only women's sphere in that era. 'Trifles' was written in 1916, the decade considered to be important before American women got their right to vote in 1920 after struggling to get it since the first summit in 1848. Despite the fact that women had spent some decades for that demand, the government did not really pay attention to it.

 

Through this play, Glaspell wanted to criticize the government that it was high time for them to give right to women to be involved in 'men's spheres'. Although 'only' gathering evidence through trivial things -- homemaking stuff -- in the so-called unimportant setting, the two women found evidence as well as the motif why Minnie Foster killed the husband.

 

A woman indeed will be able to do anything that people might think impossible when she is cornered, when she is forced.

 

PT56 21.24 220411

T R I F L E S

 

'TRIFLES' is always in the curriculum of DRAMA ANALYSIS CLASS that I handle in the even semester.


PLOT


This one-act drama written by Susan Glaspell tells us about a murder of a husband, John Wright. His wife, Mrs. Wright -- her maiden name was Minnie Foster -- was the suspect since she was the last person seen when a neighbor -- Mr. Hale -- found Mr. Wright dead in his house. The following day after the finding, Mr. Hale came back to the house together with the Sheriff and County Attorney to gather evidence -- either to make themselves convinced that Mrs. Wright was the murderer or on the way around: they might find fingerprints of the 'real murderer'. These three men were accompanied by Mrs. Hale -- the wife of the neighbor -- and Mrs. Peter -- the wife of the Sheriff. The two women were about to collect some personal belongings of Mrs. Wright who apparently was already in custody; these personal belongings were, among other things. clothes, some stuff to quilt, etc.


Glaspell intentionally showed the contradictory traits between men and women: the three men paid more attention to anything 'big' or 'serious' to collect evidence, because the crime done was also a serious one: murder. On the contrary, the two women took a very close look at some 'trivial things (alias 'trifles') such as, preserves, bread set, a large sewing basket and a piece cloth Mrs. Wright was quilting. In the end, it turned out that the women even found the evidence that strongly showed Mrs. Wright was the murderer from those trifles, while the men did not find any. However, to show 'loyalty to the same gender' -- as accused by the County Attorney when Mrs. Hale defended Mrs. Wright when the County Attorney said bad things about how messy the kitchen of Mr. Wright's house was -- the two women kept the evidence for themselves.


DESPERATE HOUSEWIFE -- an analysis


From the conversation between Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, one can conclude that John Wright had a contradictory trait from his wife, Minnie Foster. Before marrying John, Minnie was a very cheerful girl, singing in a choir, wearing pretty dresses as well as colorful ribbons on her hair. Meanwhile, John belonged to a very quiet man. He refused the offer of Mr. Hale to 'go on a party telephone' by saying that 'folks talked too much'. Apparently he didn't like noise at all.


Because of that, it can be concluded that during their marriage -- for about thirty years -- Minnie was forced to be someone else who was not herself in the past. She could not sing, she could not enjoy having a company -- let us say when a neighbor dropped by at her house. Mrs. Hale herself as a neighbor said that she did not really like visiting the Wrights' house since John did not like it.


When the two women found a dead canary hidden inside a box in the sewing basket, they directly drew a conclusion what made Minnie killed her husband. John killed Minnie's only entertainment. (Mrs. Hale said that only a year ago Minnie bought the canary, 29 years after the wedding, after 29 years living in a quietness and being repressive.) It can be interpreted that John killed Minnie's soul. No longer could Minnie control her emotion, she killed her husband.


HISTORICAL BACKGROUND


The choice of 'kitchen' as the main setting by Glaspell refers to the setting considered as the only women's sphere in that era. 'Trifles' was written in 1916, the decade considered to be important before American women got their right to vote in 1920 after struggling to get it since the first summit in 1848. Despite the fact that women had spent some decades for that demand, the government did not really pay attention to it.


Through this play, Glaspell wanted to criticize the government that it was high time for them to give right to women to be involved in 'men's spheres'. Although 'only' gathering evidence through trivial things -- homemaking stuff -- in the so-called unimportant setting, the two women found evidence as well as the motif why Minnie Foster killed the husband.


A woman indeed will be able to do anything that people might think impossible when she is cornered, when she is forced.


PT56 21.24 220411

The Zoo Story (2)

 

Several weeks ago I assigned my class to read THE ZOO STORY, one-act play written by Edward Albee. This was written in 1958 in New York but its premiere performance was occurred at the Theater Werkstatt in Berlin on September28, 1959. It was performed on Broadway on January 14, 1960. The story is about two characters, Peter and Jerry, who meet accidentally in one bench in The Central Park. The main conflict is built while the two are talking to each other. What happens at the end of the play oftentimes startles the audience.

 

To dissect the play together in my class, I gave four questions to lead the discussion.

 

1. What is the main conflict of the story?
2. What kind of personality traits do the two characters have?
3. How do their family backgrounds differ from each other?
4. What is your reaction when coming to the end of the play?

 

At first one student complained to me, “If you categorize this play into comedy, I don’t think I find funny aspects in it. Or is it due to my low capability in English?”

 

When I asked her how she perceived the story of the play, she simply said, “The story is very weird.”

 

The play is indeed weird; that’s why literary critics categorized it into ‘absurd play’. The word ‘absurd’ itself means “plainly not true, logical, or sensible; so contrary to reason that it is laughable; foolish; ridiculous.” The story to some extent is also pathetic.

 

Another student then said that probably this kind of story was very much impossible to happen in Indonesia but it was absolutely possible to happen in America.

 

“Why is that? Which part of the story do you think is impossible to happen here?” I asked her.

 

I suspected that she didn’t finish reading the whole story so that she answered my question just by mentioning the fact that Peter’s family had two cats and two parakeets. “It is indeed a common thing for Indonesian people to have pets. But you know, pets in Indonesia are just pets. Animals. They don’t really mean a lot. In America, as far as I know there is always a very strong emotional relationship between people and their pets.” Meanwhile I expected that she would answer my question by appointing the weird conversation between Jerry and Peter.

 

Let’s take one example. After a little bit ‘small talk’ about going north, Jerry asked Peter, “Do you mind if we talk?”

 

In Indonesia, especially in small towns, when two people meet accidentally in a park, or anywhere else, they will just talk, without asking, “Do you mind if we talk?” They will just talk casual things though, to show hospitality. However, as some critics have said, at the very beginning of the time when Albee had this play published, they did not understand what Albee actually wanted to convey to public.

 

In the following discussion, we talked about different family backgrounds Peter and Jerry had. Peter was married, had two daughters, and had an established job in a publishing company. On the contrary, Jerry was single, no steady job, living in an indecent tenement with an abusive landlady who had a crazy dog that liked attacking Jerry playfully. Jerry also came from a broken unhappy family.

 

This contradictory family background absolutely made them have different personality traits. Peter was an established man, educated, able to control his emotion quite well. Jerry seemed somewhat insane with his almost unbelievable story about his landlady and the crazy dog. Therefore I understood when my students said that Jerry seemed to envy Peter’s seemingly happy life.

 

No one expected to find someone dying at the end of the story because from the very beginning, the play just showed two men talking about unimportant things in their life. My students said that Jerry was too much to provoke Peter so that Peter lost his common sense in facing him although he seemed careful.

 

The first question—about the main conflict of the story—was not answered in the discussion. I opined that in fact Jerry was already desperate about his unhappy life. He needed someone to “help” him commit suicide. Peter was just the right person on the wrong place. Jerry succeeded in provoking Peter so that he did what Jerry ‘planned’: to hold the knife on his hand, enabling Jerry to impale on it.

 

Why did Jerry need someone else’s help to commit suicide? He wanted to share his unhappiness to someone else he assumed to have a happy life—in that decade, to be married, have kids and a good job were ‘requirements’ to be lead a happy life.

 

Peter’s life would never be the same again as before he encountered a crazy, desperate man who involved him in his death.

 

What did Albee want to convey to the audience? I assume that he wanted to criticize American values that started to worship wealth and did not care of the neighborhood.

 

PT56 13.33 190608

LYSISTRATA

 

Lysistrata, written by Aristophanes in 411 B.C, is considered as one of the best comedies in respect to dramatic structure. At the moment of its publication, Athens’ fortunes were at their lowest point: the disaster of the Sicilian Expedition in 413 had stripped the city of a large part of its manpower, many of the strongest allies had revolted, the Spartans were striving for control of the Aegean Sea with Persian support, and internally the city was on the verge of a revolution. In the midst of this situation Aristophanes produced Lysistrata as his last ad best plea for peace. The plot of this comedy is simple: the women of Greece, led by the Athenian Lysistrata, unite and agree on a sex-strike to force their husbands to make a just and reasonable peace.

 

When discussing how Lysistrata convinced her folks—both from Athens and Spartans—to refuse their horny husbands to have sex, my students laughed. One female student said, “Nowadays, if a woman refuses to have sex with her husband, it will not frighten him. I think the husband will easily say, “What? You don’t want me to make love to you? Fine! There are many other girls out there. I don’t need to worry about that.” LOL.

 

What can we conclude from this? People in modern times no longer consider sex as a sacred action that is supposed to be done only with the spouse.

 

When the first time Lysistrata proposed her idea of sex-strike to end the war between Athens and Spartans, all women showed their open disagreement, without feeling shy. Below are some responses of Lysistrata’s idea:

 

MYRRHINE: I won’t do it. Let the war go on.

CALONICE: Nor I! Let the war go on. Anything else you like. I am willing, even if I have to walk through fire. Anything rather than sex. There’s nothing like it, my dear.

LAMPITO: ‘Tis cruel hard, by my faith, for a woman to sleep alone without her nooky; but for all that, we certainly do need peace.

 

When I asked my students whether the idea of sex-strike is proposed in the modern times like now (especially in Indonesia) to end something villainous, will women react like those women in LYSISTRATA in that ancient time, or will they easily approve the idea; meaning they don’t mind at all, no need a complicated argument or debate. My students answered that Indonesian women (perhaps also in some other areas) possibly choose the latter.

 

“Do you know why?” I asked them.

 

No one came up with satisfying answer. Well, at least satisfying for my common sense. LOL.

 

“It is because we have been ‘taught’ that sex only belongs to men. Women just serve their husbands in bed, for their husbands’ satisfaction, and not for themselves. Besides, sex has been considered as personal affair. It is taboo to talk about sex publicly. Like what Michel Foucault stated in his book THE HISTORY OF SEXUALITY volume 1:

 

At the beginning of the seventeenth century a certain frankness was still common, it would seem. Sexual practices had little need of secrecy; words were said without undue reticence, and things were done without too much concealment; one had a tolerant familiarity with the illicit. Codes regulating the carce, the obscene, and the indecent were quite lax compared to those of the nineteenth century. … it was a period when bodies “made a display of themselves.” …

 

But twilight soon fell upon this bright day, followed by the monotonous rights of the Victorian bourgeoisie. Sexuality was carefully confined; it moved into the home. The conjugal family took custody of it and absorbed it into the serious function of reproduction. On the subject of sex, silence became the rule.” (1990:3)

 

 

 

“Women are also worried if they are categorized as bitches if they are open about sex. They had better choose to appease their passion very strongly rather than to be called as bitches. For Indonesian people who most of them claim as religious, being very sexual can be considered sinful because it means they just follow Satan’s desire. And they do believe that women were created with low passion. Therefore, they would rather become hypocrite about sex.”

 

Being more open about sex for both men and women, does it mean that people in ancient Greece are not misogynist?

 

The answer can be seen in the following utterances in the drama:

 

LEADER OF MEN: No poet is more clever than Euripides: “There is no beast so shameless as a woman.”

…

MAGISTRATE: Oh, damn it all! I’ve run out of policemen. But women must never defeat us.

…

LYSISTRATA; … Now, if you’re willing to listen to our excellent proposals and keep silence for us in your turn, we still may save you.

MAGISTRATE: We men keep silence for you? That’s terrible; I won’t endure it!

LYSISTRATA: Silence!

MAGISTRATE: Silence for you, you wench, when you’re wearing a snood? I’d rather die!

 

Referring to what Rosemary Ruether wrote in her book NEW WOMAN NEW EARTH, that the root of the misogynist was firstly moulded in the early first millennium B.C. in Hebrew and Greek cultures (1995:13) certainly misogynist culture already existed when Aristophanes wrote LYSISTRATA. Nevertheless, I must admit that I give him two thumbs up with his idea in LYSISTRATA: women held a very important role in reconciling two opposing countries. Lysistrata even gave command to men involved in the war to make truce and find a way out for both countries’ satisfaction.

 

PT56 12.25 080607

The Zoo Story

 

Pertama kali membaca THE ZOO STORY, naskah drama tulisan Edward Albee tatkala duduk di semester 2 American Studies Graduate Program, Universitas Gadjah Mada, dalam mata kuliah “The Comparative Literature” dengan Pak Bakdi Soemanto, salah satu budayawan terkenal yang tinggal di kota gudeg, Jogjakarta. Atau mungkin Pak Bakdi juga sudah memperkenalkan karya Albee ini tatkala aku menjadi salah satu mahasiswa S1 di jurusan Sastra Inggris UGM? Aku lupa. Kalaupun sudah, tentu topik utama diskusi berbeda, karena waktu aku duduk di S1, THE ZOO STORY dibahas sendiri, sedangkan dalam kuliah “The Comparative Literature”, kita membandingkan karya yang bisa dimasukkan ke dalam kategori absurd ini dengan salah satu karya Putu Wijaya (I am sorry, I forgot the title :( ) yang juga bisa dikategorikan karya absurd.

Semester ini untuk pertama kali dalam sejarah karier-ku mengajar TELAAH DRAMA, LOL, aku membahas THE ZOO STORY—yang aku kategorikan ke MODERN COMEDY work—sebagai karya bandingan LYSISTRATA—yang masuk kategori CLASSICAL COMEDY work.

THE ZOO STORY ditulis oleh Edward Albee pada tahun 1958. Meskipun di awal sejarahnya, THE ZOO STORY kurang laku di Amerika, sehingga pementasan pertamanya dilakukan di Berlin Jerman pada tanggal 28 September 1959, akhirnya THE ZOO STORY pun dipentaskan di Broadway pada tanggal 14 Januari 1960.

Untuk membahas THE ZOO STORY, aku memberikan 4 pertanyaan kepada para mahasiswa:

1. What is the main conflict of the story?
2. What kind of personality traits do the two characters—Jerry and Peter—have?
3. How do their family backgrounds differ from each other?
4. What is your reaction at the end of the play?

Konflik utama dari THE ZOO STORY adalah dampak modernisasi sebuah masyarakat yang membuat orang-orang menderita “penyakit” alienasi; keterasingan pada kehidupan yang mereka miliki. Latar belakang Jerry dan Peter yang bertolak belakang membuat mereka berdua memiliki sisi kepribadian yang berbeda pula. Jerry yang hidup seorang diri—di sebuah rumah susun yang kumuh, dengan landlady yang abusive dan anjingnya yang gila, menurut Jerry—plus tidak memiliki pekerjaan yang tetap nampak cemburu pada Peter yang memiliki kehidupan yang ‘utuh’, menikah, punya anak, yang masing-masing punya binatang kesayangan (satu hal yang jelas membedakan kultur Indonesia dengan Amerika—komentar salah satu mahasiswa, yang sehari sebelumnya kehilangan anjingnya. Di Amerika, seekor binatang kesayangan bisa dianggap sebagai salah satu anggota keluarga, sedangkan di Indonesia, seekor binatang peliharaan ya hanya dianggap sebagai seekor binatang belaka), dan memiliki pekerjaan yang ‘terhormat’ yang memberinya penghidupan yang mapan.

Jerry merasa asing dengan kehidupan Peter yang nampak hanya ada dalam buku-buku dongeng, sedangkan Peter pun merasa asing ada seseorang ‘gila’ seperti Jerry, yang tiba-tiba muncul dalam kehidupannya, dan hidup di sebuah rumah susun kumuh yang menurut Peter “It doesn’t sound like a very nice place ... where you live.” (1963:22)

Menilik masa lalu mereka berdua yang berbeda, tentu tidak aneh jika kepribadian mereka pun sangat bertolak belakang. Peter berasal dari ‘middle-class society’ (satu kelas sosial ‘favorit’ di Amerika) sedangkan Jerry dari kelas ‘poor white trash’. Peter yang well-educated, dari cara dia berbicara, dan Jerry yang not-educated, dari cara dia memprovokasi Peter, agar kehilangan kontrol emosinya.
Mengenai akhir cerita, tak satupun dari mahasiswaku yang ‘mengharapkan’ THE ZOO STORY akan berakhir setragis itu, Jerry mati, bunuh diri, menggunakan pisau yang dia bawa sendiri, meskipun pada waktu itu, pisau berada di tangan Peter.

LL TBL 11.46