And the Victim is...

Blanche and Stanley are victims of each other. Stanley is victimized by Blanche's superiority complex. She just showed up on his doorstep one day and ruined the status quo of Stella and his life. Blanche was full of lies and never told Stanley the truth. He was the last person she wanted to confide in. Blanche came in and took over his house by redecorating and drinking all of his alcohol. She provided no fiscal help to the household so she ended up being another person that Stanley had to support, against his will for a long period of time. He thought that he lost his share of money from Belle Reve due to Blanche's extravagant spending habits and felt left out of some fortune because Blanche had mismanaged everything making him a victim of Blanche's inability to manage money. Once she came in she made no effort to leave quickly and was not at all nice to her host. From day one, she berated Stanley and dismissed him as someone of an inferior class, a "Polack". Blanche created a lot of unnecessary drama in Stanley's house and she was unwilling to face her own reality, even though she saw herself as inferior to Stanley she was in no way better than him.

Even though Blanche saw herself as a superior being, she was a victim to her own lack of self control, which ended up being Stanley's primary tool against her. She lost everything. She lost the house that she grew up in that had been in her family for generations. Blanche lost her husband and her job. She ended up being kicked out of the town that her entire life had been based in. Blanche's lack of understanding made her feel like a victim when her marriage was slightly off and her husband killed himself. She did not know how to help him or herself and she let her life fall apart around her. There was no one to support her lavish habits and she lost Belle Reve for financial reasons. Blanche then went on to make other people her victims to maintain her sense of superiority, but while doing that she made herself seem more awful, thus victimizing herself further. By sleeping with her seventeen year old student, she used him and would normally be thought of as a suspect, but it caused her to lose her job, so she once again became the victim. Blanche prostituted herself at the Flamingo where she could hide from the socialites who knew her, but that only lasted so long as her reputation ended up getting her kicked out of town. She showed up on her sister's doorstep and Stanley did not welcome her at all. She was a bit of an instigator as she called him inferior names, but he ended up living up to those names throughout the story. Stanley verbally tortured her to get the truth out of her because he never believed her and then when he found out the truth from someone he worked with he thought that to be valid over what she said. Blanche was having a fine time with Mitch when Stanley ruined their relationship. Blanche's victimization can most easily be seen at the end of the story when she was raped by Stanley and then taken to a mental institution. He used and abused her, regardless of how much stress she might have caused him as an awful houseguest, that left him no right to live up to his brute reputation and rape her. Shortly after that, a doctor and nurse came in to take her to a mental institution. She was clearly unstable and was being dragged off to a foreign place by strangers. Blanche victimized herself and Stanley made her even more of a victim while suffering through Blanche's presence and the insecurities she inflicted on him.

Southern Belle turned to Fear

Blanche is more than just a delusional, aging debutante. Her relationship with Mitch exemplifies her desire to settle down and be taken care of. Even though that may come with age, it also comes with the fact that she has just lost everything and needs to be dependent on someone other than a family member. Her dependence on Stella comes from the fact that she has relied on someone or something in her family her entire life. Initially she relied on her father and her husband and then Belle Reve and now that she has lost both she turns to another family member, which also shows that she has not "always depended on the kindness of strangers" (1602). Her losses show a streak of bad luck paired with unnecessary behavior that ended up burning a lot of bridges.

Blanche's attitude towards life reflects more on bad decisions and fear than delusionalness. Even if someone was delusional, it is unlikely they would sleep with someone half their age, especially if that happened to be a student, making the consequences far more severe. She also happened to be obsessive. Both her obsessiveness and her inappropriate behavior are reflections of her fear of aging, but aging was not necessarily a dominant force behind her actions. Blanche showed her obsessiveness by constantly taking bathes and repowdering her face. She was hypersensitive to dirty things. Her hypersensitivy was probably a means of washing away her past. She was clearly stuck in a rut as she spoke of Shep Huntleigh and her glorious life at Belle Reve. She was unable to accept the present and throughout the story she exists in a constant state of denial. Blanche also frequently acts out of fear. She has a fear of growing older, so she lives in the dark; she has a fear of being alone so she moves to New Orleans to be with Stella and instantly gravitates toward Mitch. Blanche is also afraid of her past coming back to haunt her, she left Laurel for a reason, even if it was that she was kicked out, she left it behind. When she got to New Orleans, she was not sleeping around as much as she had been, so she clearly fears the consequences of past actions. Blanche lives in a constant state of fear that she will not be accepted and taken care of.

Drama vs. Narrative

Susan Glaspell wrote a narrative and a play that tell the same story. One of the key differences between "Trifles", the drama and "A Jury of Her Peers", the narrative is the separation of action from language in the play. This basic difference is seen in the format of a play as oppposed to that of a narrative. A play is written with the character's name and then their dialogue with some action interspersed throughout; whereas a narrative has a character's dialogue in quotations and there is usually more of a focus on the action than the dialogue. As in all plays, the action is written in parentheses, but it allows for differentiation among the characters. It is easier to recognize a character's personality through their dialogue in a play, especially when it is acted out by a certain individual, than it is to recognize their personality in a narrative where all of the characters tend to blend together. The actions in a narrative are included throughout the story and don't cause the reader to stop to address them. The actions connect the dialogue and help the story to flow in narrative. The written layout of the story is a main difference between a narrative and a play, but just as significant is the difference in narration between the two.

Another key difference between narrative and drama is the narrator. In many plays there is a narrator to set the scene and establish the characters. In Glaspell's "Trifles" there was no narrator so the characters established themselves and spoke in first person. In "A Jury of Her Peers" there was a third person narrator who spoke for the characters part of the time and seemed to discreetly introduce and explain the action after it had occured. There was some suspense for the characters as to who killed John Wright in "A Jury of Her Peers", but the play was more suspenseful as the women's findings were pieced together before their very own eyes. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters were constantly in defense of Mrs. Wright in the narrative as the name suggests. They tried to back her as they found several pieces of evidence indicating that she was guilty of the crime. The women saw her as one of their own and pitied her for her situation. In the play there was more of a sense that Mrs. Wright and her bird were unimportant, so the women hid the bird. They did not want the men to know and have a solid reason to imprison her. The men made a mockery of the women and what they were doing while the women were the ones who actually technically solved the case by finding the bird. The women misled the men which explains why the play is called "Trifles". Although the story had different titles and was written in different forms, the titles essentially say the same thing, that the women knew what was going on and tried to protect her. Although there are many differences between narratives and plays, Glaspell's "Trifles" and "A Jury of Her Peers" were more similar than different as they told the same story in different forms.