Themes In Trifles

She had got the canary a year ago. When her husband killed the canary it was like killing her last connection to her old world. She snapped and started planning his murder, she saw how the bird’s neck was broken and she broke his. Mrs. Peters says that “somebody-wrung- its-neck.”

In the play, the county attorney stumbles upon Mrs. Wright?s preserves. Due to the frigid temperature, most of her preserves held in glass jars had broken. Only one jar ? a jar of cherries ? manages to survive. The fruit possess much symbolism as well. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters feel very sorry that Mrs. Wright had spent much ?hard work in the hot weather? in order to have her preserves. She had saved the fruit so that one day she could enjoy them. However, this was not the case. All of her hard labor was shattered as a result of the temperature. Similarly, Mrs. Wright was shattered by her husband killing her canary bird. The broken jars and spoiled fruit also resemble Mrs. Wright. They are both contained in this ?cold? atmosphere and sooner or later break. The one jar of cherries that manages to survive suggests Mrs. Wright?s character. Despite all the negative influences around her, she will not meet her demise and she has to do the only thing that would keep her from vanishing? that is, murdering Mr. Wright.

The third piece of evidence, the mutilated canary, shows the motive for Mrs. Wright to kill her husband. In the story the women find a beautiful box and in the box wrapped in silk was the dead bird which then by closer examination they found had its neck snapped. Based on the box and the silk we can infer that Mrs. Wright loved her bird and would not of broke its neck so that leaves Mr. Wright to do so. Silk is an expensive fabric and usually you put you most prized possessions in it, and the beautiful box also shows that Mrs. Wright loved her canary.

The men were still looking for evidence, but women are replaying the scene of murder in there minds. They conclude that Mrs. Wright was sewing in kitchen, when Mr. Wright came into the kitchen and saw the bird. This explains why Mrs. Wright was sewing nervously. I assumed that Mr. Wright didn’t like birds, because they are very noisy referring to conversation with Mr. Hale about the joining party phone line. Mr. Wright must have seen the birdcage with the bird. He must have broken the birdcage and broke the bird’s neck. This was enough of a motive need for Mrs. Wright to kill her husband. The

“You’re Convinced there was nothing important here…Nothing that would—point to any motive?” (Glaspell, pg. 5, 1908). In 1916, Glaspell worked for Des Moines daily news as a reporter where she later met her husband George Cook who was a play director. Together they wrote and produced plays, two of which are Trifles and Jury of Her Peers which are based off a crime scene she encountered while being a reporter. Glaspell’s plays are on the feminist side focusing on the roles women are forced to play in society and their relationships with men. Motive is the overall theme found in both versions of Glaspell’s story and is evidenced through the Wright’s relationship, the anger portrayed in various ways, and finally, regret found in Mrs. Wright.

Susan Glaspell’s one-act play, Trifles, weaves a tale of an intriguing murder investigation to determine who did it. Mrs. Wright is suspected of strangling her husband to death. During the investigation the sheriff and squad of detectives are clueless and unable to find any evidence or motive to directly tie Mrs. Wright to the murder. They are baffled as to how he was strangled by a rope while they were supposedly asleep side by side. Glaspell artfully explores gender differences between men and women and the roles they each fulfill in society by focusing on their physicality, their methods of communication and vital to the plot of the play, their powers of observation. In simple terms, the play suggests that men tend to be assertive,

Susan Glaspell's play Trifles explores male-female relationships through the murder investigation of the character of Mr. Wright. It also talks about the stereotypes that women faced. The play takes place in Wright's country farmhouse as the men of the play, the county attorney, the sheriff, and Mr. Hale, search for evidence as to the identity and, most importantly, the motive of the murderer. The attorney, with the intensions of proving that Mrs. Wright choked the husband to death, was interviewing Mr. Hale on what he saw when he came in to the house. The women, on the other hand, were just there to get some clothing for the wife who was in jail for suspected murder of her husband. However, the clues which would lead them to the answer

While the canary was incredibly lively and sang beautifully, so did Mrs. Foster. John Wright was awfully abusive towards Mrs. Wright, in the means that he required her to live her life comparable to a caged bird. He obtained her freedom from the outside world, in return, explains why she recognized herself in the bird. This explains for the reasoning of their house being far set back into the woods and having no telephone service. She ventured out, only when she was allowed, and assuming that John also did not allow her to have friends, this led to the killing of the canary.

The play Trifles is a world-famous production written by Susan Glaspell in 1916 during the women’s suffrage movement. The women’s suffrage movement was a point in U.S. history when rights for women, like voting and gender equality, were greatly stressed to be enforced. Glaspell’s involvement in the movement did not go unnoticed. Today Glaspell’s plays are famous worldwide for her feministic and socialistic views on legal reform, and involvement in the women’s suffrage movement. However, the play Trifles stands out amongst her others due to it being based on a true murder story she covered as a reporter. The play is about a man named Mr. Wright who is discovered by his neighbor, Mr. Hale, with rope around his neck murdered. Upon discovering Mr. wright, the county attorney and sheriff get involved, along with Mr. Hales wife, Mrs. Hale, and the sheriff’s wife, Mrs. Peters. Throughout the investigation at the Wright residence, the women are not asked for help, and are looked down upon by the men. While the men seldom ask the women for their opinion on the murder, the case unfolds right in front of the two wives’ eyes. Like the women in the play, Glaspell was unable to play a significant role in the murder case she was involved in, and her observations over small and minor details she thought may be of importance went unnoticed by the men. Throughout the play, Trifles, Glaspell symbolizes the conflict of men versus women seen during this period through recognition, the

The play Trifles takes place in a rural area and centers around a woman, Mrs. Wright, who has been accused of killing her husband by strangling him. The act starts off in Mr. and Mrs. Wright’s home on a cold, winter morning the day after Mr. Wright’s body was discovered by the neighbor; the county attorney, the sheriff and his wife and the neighboring farmer and his wife are all inside the

A trifle is something that has little value or importance, and there are many seeming "trifles" in Susan Glaspell's one-act play "Trifles." The irony is that these "trifles" carry more weight and significance than first seems to be the case. Just as Glaspell's play ultimately reveals a sympathetic nature in Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale, the evidence that the men investigators fail to observe, because they are blind to the things that have importance to a woman, reveals the identity of the murderer and are, therefore, not really "trifles," after all. Thus, the title of the play has a double-meaning: it refers, satirically, to the way "trifling" way some men perceive women, and it also acts as an ironic gesture to the fact that women are not as "trifling" as these men make them out to be. This paper will analyze setting, characters, plot, stage directions, symbolism, themes and genre to show how Glaspell's "Trifles" is an ironic indictment not of a murderess but rather of the men who push women to such acts.

Throughout the play there are three main symbols; the bird, the bird cage and the jar of preserves. The bird symbolized Mrs. Wright and how she loved to sing because the bird was always singing. As the play progresses Mr. Wright grows annoyed with the bird and kills it. The canary’s death represented how Mrs. Wright is dead inside from her neglectful marriage. The bird’s cage symbolized the cage of a marriage Mrs. Wright was in. She felt trapped by her husband’s emotional abuse. When the bird cage broke, it represented the death of Mr. Wright and the freedom that Mrs. Wright felt after breaking free from her long, painful marriage. The last jar of cherry preserves symbolized how Mrs. Wright was still standing. After a failed marriage and losing her bird, which was the one thing she cared most about, Mrs. Wright managed

The setting of the play which takes place in the early twentieth century has established the theme that women have been looking down by men. ‘Trifles’ that is used as the title of the play has further foreshadowed the theme of the play in which discrimination of women will happen in the play. During the investigation of Mr Wright’s death, the men that involved in finding out the murderer have despised

Have you ever wondered what people say about you behind your back or what they think of you what you're not there? This book strongly shows what other people think of Minnie Wright and their true opinions come through. Trifles is a play written by Susan Glaspell. It is a murder mystery about who killed John Wright. Towards the end of the story, we come to the conclusion that the murderer was Minnie Wright, John wrights wife. Minnie Wright took her own husband's life because he had killed the one thing that she had loved most, her bird. She thought as if she needed revenge on him for doing what he did, this being said she killed him in the same way that he had killed her beloved bird; a rope around the neck. Susan Glaspell decides to tell this story mainly through the eyes and minds of Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale. While the main plot of the story is about Minnie Wright and her actions, she never appears in the story because well, she doesn't have to. Susan Glaspell chiefly relies upon the characters in the story to give the readers and audience a sense of what type of person Minnie Wright is. Readers can sense her presence through the way she and her house are described. The characters say things like, “here is a nice mess (referring to her house)” (118.) or “she looked queer” (116.) These small statements can help us form an image of what Minnie Wright is like when she is not even present. Minnie Wright’s absence also allows the women to sympathize with her and therefore makes the women feel obligated to keep her secret.