"A Different Kind of the Same Thing": Narrative, Experiential Knowledge, and Subjectivity in Susan Glaspell's Trifles and Sharon Pollock's Blood Relations

This essay uses theories of narrative to examine how Susan Glaspell's Trifles and Sharon Pollock's Blood Relations reflect and resist the ability of narratives to construct identities, create moral meanings, and impose truths. It also explores the dramatisation of experiential knowledge as a means of building communities. Blood Relations ' meta-theatrical self-consciousness, resistance to moral meaning through a refusal of narrative closure, and ambivalence towards the representative nature of personal experiences, in contrast to Trifles ' naturalism, narrative conclusion, and confidence in the assumption of shared women's experiences reflect changes in feminisms, theoretical understandings of experiential knowledge, and strategies for the stage representation of women. L'essai fait appel aux theories de la narration pour examiner comment Trifles (Susan Glaspell) et Blood Relations (Sharon Pollock) correspondent aux capacites de la narration et y resistent a la fois en vue de construire des identites, creer des sens moraux et imposer des verites. Il examine egalement la dramatisation de la connaissance experientielle comme moyen de construction des communautes. La conscience de soi meta theâtrale faisant partie de Blood Relations , la resistance a la signification morale par le refus d'une fermeture sur le plan narratif et l'ambivalence a l'egard de l'aspect representatif des experiences personnelles contrastent avec le naturalisme que propose Trifles , sa conclusion narrative et la confiance en la supposition voulant que les experiences partagees par les femmes correspondent aux changements du feminisme, aux comprehensions theoriques de la connaissance experientielle et aux strategies de representation sur scene de la femme.