1. FEMINIST LITERARY CRITICISM TRIFFLES BY SUSAN GLASPELL

2. Aristotle’s declaration : “ The female is female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities ” St. Thomas Aquinas's belief that woman is an " imperfect man."

3. Aristophanes's comedy Lysistrata, "which is about how women achieved social change by withholding sexual favours from their men“ Aeschylus's trilogy, The Oresteia, where Athena wins over Apollo's argument that the mother is no parent to her child. are among the earliest examples of literary criticism.

4. FEMINIST THEORY Literature, in literate cultures, is a part of reality. It creates the real, reflects the real and it offers alternatives to real. A focus on women. Women are troubled by structures of oppression like: Social deprivations specific to women (poor access to education and well-paid work) Physiological oppression (bearing children and rearing them is “women’s work”, women are physically less powerful than men and can be subjected to violence and rape) Cultural oppression (women are devalued into cultural objects rather than valued as subjects)

5. Psychological oppression (where women are denied masculine status and often believe in their own inferiority because they lack masculine bodies and minds)

6. Feminist theory identifies patriarchy at work, in the home, in the state, the church or other religious systems, the law, education systems, in culture. It claims that these structures of oppression generally rebounds more on women than on men.

7. Feminist literary theory started with looking at the images of women in literary texts. They were largely male-authored, and the women in them were generally stereotypically represented either as ideal (virginal, beautiful, passive, dependent, nurturing) or monstrous (whorish, independent, dangerous) Sex v.s. Gender ?

8. Lisa Tuttle has defined feminist theory as asking " new questions of old texts." She cites the goals of feminist criticism as: To develop and uncover a female tradition of writing to interpret symbolism of women's writing so that it will not be lost or ignored by the male point of view to rediscover old texts to analyze women writers and their writings from a female perspective to resist sexism in literature to increase awareness of the sexual politics of language and style

9. Starting with 19th century’s women authors like George Elliot and Kate Chopin Basic themes were: Inequality of the sexes Inability of women to live their own lives without reliance on men

10. SUSAN GLASPELL A founding member of Heterodoxy, a radical group of women activists who were prominent in the feminist movement in NY in 1910-1920. In this atmosphere, she decided to create female characters who desired to free themselves from the stereotypical roles into which they had been cast. The story in Trifles is based on an actual murder case that she covered while she was working as a journalist.

11. SETTING Kitchen (a very domestic place) The story revolves around the lives of women