Zsuzsanna Benk¿

Feminine Trifles: the Construction of Gender Roles in Susan Glaspell's Trifles and in Modern English and American Crime Stories Zsuzsanna Benk¿

Crime stories offer a great opportunity to observe gender confrontation in the issues of identifying and interpreting facts, and the questions of justice and morality. How women and men interpret actual situations is influenced by their learned behavioural patterns that subscribe to their stereotypical roles defined by their social realities, which inherently generates presumptions and the imposition of pre-existing patterns on the other gender. By examining Susan Glaspell¿s Trifles,the works of Wilkie Collins and Agatha Christie, and 21st century adaptations of Miss Marple, it can be seen, that women and the concept of trifles are linked in(detective literature. In these crime stories female and effeminized characters are associated with definite personal characteristics, attitudes and behaviour, because of gendered stereotypes and culturally ascribed roles. Stereotypical gender differences are comprehensively presented in these works, and they illustrate the evolution of the concept of the female detective triggered by the changes in stereotypical gender roles.