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Audiobook edition · 6 h 50 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if the things everyone dismisses hold the truth about a woman's life?
Susan Glaspell's four plays bring you into rooms where women's views meet resistance. In Trifles, John Wright is found dead, and Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters notice what the men overlook in his kitchen. In The Outside, sand presses against an old Cape Cod life-saving station, where Allie Mayo keeps the world away with silence.
The Verge moves into Claire Archer's greenhouse, where she tries to breed plants unlike anything that grows before. In Inheritors, Madeline Morton must decide whether to defend the ideals behind her family's college. From a farmhouse to a school, these plays ask who decides what matters—and what happens when a woman refuses to accept that judgment.
What you’ll discover
- A kitchen worth noticing Enter Trifles, where everyday objects offer clues to Minnie Wright's lonely life.
- Duty against sympathy Follow Mrs. Peters as loyalty to the law meets concern for an accused woman.
- Silence on the dunes Step into The Outside's wind-blown station, where Allie Mayo holds the world at a distance.
- Life beyond familiar forms Meet Claire Archer in The Verge, pursuing plants that break every known pattern.
- A promise under pressure Discover Inheritors, where Madeline Morton faces a choice about the ideals her family abandons.
Who will love it
You will love these plays if you enjoy short, sharp drama, strong women at center stage, quiet mysteries, and ordinary people facing a question of conscience.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Trifles begins in a cold abandoned kitchen
- The women read the kitchen like a letter
- A buried station and two women hiding in it
- Allie Mayo breaks twenty years of silence
- Claire runs a laboratory disguised as a greenhouse
- Locked doors, a daughter, and a torn vine
- Claire pushes against love, family and words
- A pioneer decides to give away his hill
- By 1920 the college bends to money and fear
- Madeline weighs family love against her conscience
Who’s who
- Mrs HaleA farm wife who remembers Minnie Foster as a singer and grows determined to understand what her old neighbor's silence means.
- Mrs PetersThe sheriff's wife, torn between the law she is married to and her sympathy for a woman she barely knows.
- Allie MayoA Provincetown woman who has kept silent for twenty years since her husband was lost at sea, and who finds her voice.
- Mrs PatrickA New York woman who buries herself in an abandoned life-saving station and wants her house, and her grief, to herself.
- Claire ArcherA plant breeder who wants to create what has never existed and to escape every form that confines her.
- Tom EdgeworthyClaire's closest friend, who loves her apartness and plans to leave for India, believing distance is the way to keep her.
- Silas MortonA pioneer farmer who never finished school and decides to give his hill to found a college for the children of the cornfields.
- Madeline MortonSilas's granddaughter, a student who defies her uncle, her aunt and her college to stand up for strangers.
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Obras de teatro: Trifles, El exterior, El límite, Los herederos
Two farm women find a birdcage in a dead man's kitchen while the men search for a motive upstairs.
Medium level5–10 hours to readEspañol
Excellent
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In short
Two women stand in a cold farm kitchen while the men tramp upstairs hunting for a motive. The women notice a loaf outside the breadbox, a crooked line of stitching and an empty birdcage.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Trifles begins in a cold abandoned kitchen
Trifles takes place in one room, the kitchen of John Wright's farm. John Wright lies dead upstairs, strangled by a rope in his own bed. His wife Minnie is in the county jail. The sheriff, the county attorney and a neighbor come back to search the house.
The county attorney wants a motive, something that shows anger or a sudden feeling. The neighbor, Lewis Hale, tells how he found Mrs Wright rocking in a chair and pleating her apron. She told him in a flat voice that her husband was dead of a rope around his neck.
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Which edition is right for me
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas of the whole book in about 14 minutes. A good first look, or a refresher.
Details
- Language
- Español
- Reading time
- 4 h 25 min
- Level
- Medium level
Cite this edition
Glaspell, Susan. Plays: Trifles, The Outside, The Verge, Inheritors. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/plays-trifles-the-outside-the-verge-inheritors.
Glaspell, S. (2026). Plays: Trifles, The Outside, The Verge, Inheritors. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/plays-trifles-the-outside-the-verge-inheritors
Glaspell, Susan. Plays: Trifles, The Outside, The Verge, Inheritors. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/plays-trifles-the-outside-the-verge-inheritors.
@book{glaspell2026plays,
author = {Glaspell, Susan},
title = {Plays: Trifles, The Outside, The Verge, Inheritors},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/plays-trifles-the-outside-the-verge-inheritors}
}
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Questions about Obras de teatro: Trifles, El exterior, El límite, Los herederos
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What are Trifles, The Outside, The Verge and Inheritors about?
Trifles is about women who read a murder scene better than the men. The Outside is about a silent woman and a grieving one on the Cape Cod dunes. The Verge is about a plant breeder who seeks otherness. Inheritors is about a college and a family conscience.
What does the title Trifles mean in Susan Glaspell's play?
The title echoes the men's belief that women's concerns are small things. The clues themselves, such as bread, stitches and a birdcage, are small and ordinary yet vital to understanding what happened in the Wright house.
Is Trifles based on a true story?
Glaspell wrote Trifles after reporting on a murder trial in Iowa as a young journalist. The play is her own invention, but it borrows the farm setting and the question of how a lonely wife's life was seen by neighbors.
The author
Susan Glaspell
1876–1948 · American playwright and novelist
Susan Glaspell was an American playwright, novelist, and Pulitzer Prize winner who co-founded the Provincetown Players, the company that launched Eugene O'Neill. Her one-act Trifles remains a staple of the American stage and a pioneering work of feminist drama.
More by Susan Glaspell
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