In this paper, I discuss how for Susan Glaspell and Elena Ferrante, violence is how their female characters respond to attempted entrapment in a cage when they are offered no escape. Susan Glaspell’s plays “Trifles” and “The Verge” in comparison to Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet shows how women have had oppressive male forces acting upon them for decades. At times when feminists were campaigning for other issues, Glaspell and Ferrante advocated for proper divorce laws by showing the dark side of marriage through the physical and emotional abuse their brilliant female leads undergo alongside the female character’s resulting violence.
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