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As a playwright, Glaspell was especially sensitive to the sound of human conversation. Most plays are created to be performed, and in modern plays, the way characters speak on stage typically replicates everyday speech, with its interruptions and pauses. A director can coach actors to deliver lines in a certain way or direct them to stay silent for a moment. But in a short story, readers must “hear” the characters’ dialogue and silences with that coaching. Glaspell’s solution to helping readers hear her characters is the dash, a punctuation mark she uses in line after line, to various ends. At the time she wrote, this use of the dash was innovative.
For example, a dash can indicate uncertainty or difficulty putting an idea into words, as when Mr. Hale describes Minnie on the morning he came to the Wrights’ home. She looked “kind of—done up.” It can suggest unwillingness to complete a thought, as when Mr. Hale, so overcome by the memory that he can hardly get the words out, describes finding Wright’s body: “There he was—lying over the—”
Dashes also suggest emotions or realizations so strong or disturbing that the character stammers a bit when expressing them. This occurs, for example, when Mrs. Hale describes the bird: “Its neck—look at its neck! It’s all—other side to.” An extreme example of this use of the dash happens when Mrs. Hale describes the young Minnie to Mrs. Peters as “kind of like a bird” and ends with a bitter acknowledgement: “How—she—did—change.”
Glaspell uses dashes outside of spoken words as well, to signal sudden changes in movement or action. But the use of dashes to direct conversation and to insert hesitations and silences is a signature of her stage-influenced style.
