Trifles Analysis

At the beginning of the short drama, “Trifles,” Mrs. Peters, the sheriff’s wife, is painted as timid and submissive wife. She willingly submits herself to the responsibilities she has as a wife. As the play unfolds, Mrs. Peter’s submissiveness begins to diminish. Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale work together to uncover the murder of Minnie Wright’s husband. When the women find the evidence, they refuse to share it with the men. Mrs. Peter’s character transforms into a more confident individual over the course of the play.

Trifles, Susan Glaspell’s play written in 1916, reveal concerns of women living in a male dominated society. Glaspell communicates the role that women were expected to play in late 19th century society and the harm that can come of it to women, as well as men. The feminist agenda of Trifles was made obvious, in order to portray the lives of all women who live oppressed under male domination. John and Minnie Wright are two main characters who are never seen; however provide the incident for the play. In this play women are against men, Minnie against her husband, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters against their husband’s, as well as men in general.

In some instances, the women conform to and depart from the assumptions made by the men. Mrs. Hale has found an important piece of evidence, a dead bird. The ladies decide not to allow the men to know of the true reason for the bird's death. As concerns the loyalty of one woman to another, evidence is found in line 366 that seems to allude to such a bond. Line 366 begins:

In Trifles, Susan Glaspell debates the roles between men and women during a period where a debate was not widely conducted. Glaspell wrote Trifles in the early 1900s—a time when feminism was just getting started. In this play, Glaspell shows us her perspective on the roles of men and women and how she believes the situation would play out. Trifles seems like another murder mystery on the surface, but the play has a much more profound meaning behind it. Glaspell presents the idea that men and women analyze situations differently, and how these situations are resolved based on how we interpret them. Research shows that women’s brains “may be optimized for combining analytical and intuitive thinking.” On the other hand, male brains are predominately “optimized for motor skills and actions” (Lewis). In the play, this research shows true when the women, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, analyze details rather than looking at the apparent, physical evidence, and they find out the motive of the murder. The men, on the other hand, look at broader evidence that does not lead to any substantial conclusion. When Glaspell was writing this play, she wanted the women to be the real instigators, the ones that would end up solving the mystery. While the men in the story laugh at the ‘trifles’ that women worry about, these details mean a great deal in Glaspell’s eyes. Glaspell presents the idea what men and women are different in the way they live their lives through detail.

Susan Glaspell’s one-act play “Trifles” was written in 1916. It was written based on real events. When Glaspell was a reporter, she covered a murder case in a small town in Iowa. Later, she wrote this short play which was inspired by her investigation and what she observed. Glaspell used irony, symbolism, and setting in her creation of the authentic American drama, “Trifles”, to express life for women in a male-dominated society in the early nineteen hundreds.

As the ladies examine the house, while the men are other places, picking clothes and an apron up for Mrs. Wright, Mrs. Hale gains sympathy for her until finally she starts to take action. When they find the block of quilting that has stitching askew, she starts to fix it, perhaps to cover for Mrs. Wright?s distraught state of mind. While Mrs. Hale is finding sympathy for Mrs. Wright, Mrs. Peters offers a counterpoint that tries to justifies the men?s viewpoints and actions. Her comments to Mrs. Hale?s resentful musings on Mrs. Wright?s unhappy life and on the actions of men in regards to women in general all seem to be rote answers programmed into her by society and a desire not to cause any trouble. This all changes as soon as Mrs. Peters finds the bird.

In “Trifles”, a division between the two sexes is quickly established as the men enter the house and huddle by the stove while the women remain still by the door. As the men start their detective work the women wander around the house to gather some of Mrs. Wright’s belongings. While searching for her belongings, the women discover an empty birdcage and find a dead bird in a “pretty box” (Glaspell, 956) inside of Mrs. Wright's sewing basket. Mrs. Hale jumps at the sight of the bird’s neck and Mrs. Peters points out how “somebody-wrung-its-neck” (Glaspell, 957) similar to the way Mr. Wright was found earlier. Mrs. Wright's murder of her husband can be seen as an act of feminine revolt against the male-dominated society. Another example of women defying against patriarchy is of Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters hiding the evidence that can prove Mrs. Wright to be guilty of her husband’s murder. Before their departure from the Wright’s house, as the men are returning, the sheriff suggests that the county attorney take a look through the items Mrs. Peters had collected for Mrs. Wright. However, he decides that anything collected by the women cannot have much significance and overlooks it. His assumption that the women would have came forward if they saw any possible evidence costs him. The sheriff’s belief is that women derive their identity solely from their relationships with men; the dominant gender.

In the play, Mrs. Peters is one of the women who supports in the hiding of the evidence that will evidently prove Mrs. Wright’s motive for murder. The plays revolves around theme that is associated with the title, Trifles, wherein the irony of it is the women meddling in their trifle things find the motive. Mrs. Peters is a dynamic character that sees the most change, from siding with the men and making excuses for them to hiding the cutting piece of evidence for the case, being the wife of the sheriff she faces conflict in helping Mrs. Wright however in the end it is her trying to hide the bird in her pocket that triggers Mrs. Hale to take action in the end, her character turns from a woman “married to the law” to an a criminal by withholding evidence. All these triggers of Mrs. Peter’s

In Susan Glaspell’s play Trifles, written in 1916, two female characters are left in the kitchen of a house where a murder has been committed, while the menfolk search around for clues. The men largely ignore the women and are mocking of them and their petty concerns on the occasions that they do speak to them. While the men are about looking for the “cold hard facts” of the murder, the women are in the kitchen bothering with “trifles” that display all of the details about the wife’s life and, most probably, her motivation for the murder. In this play, Susan Glaspell has written male characters that clearly display the “Ethics of Justice”, a sort of right is right and wrong is wrong view; while the women clearly embody the “Ethics of Care”, a view that takes relationships and feelings into account when judging the morality of actions.

Susan Glaspell uses a variety of symbols in her play to demonstrate the stereotypical view and treatment of women by men during the start of the twentieth century. She intricately portrays the female characters in her story as intelligent, but passive due to the fact that males dismiss their ideas and conversations as unimportant. The play, Trifles, uses multiple symbols to show how men fail to recognize the intelligence of women, and oppress the feminists’ way of thinking throughout society.

"Trifles," a one-act play written by Susan Glaspell, is a cleverly written story about a murder and more importantly, it effectively describes the treatment of women during the early 1900s. In the opening scene, we learn a great deal of information about the people of the play and of their opinions. We know that there are five main characters, three men and two women. The weather outside is frighteningly cold, and yet the men enter the warm farmhouse first. The women stand together away from the men, which immediately puts the men against the women. Mrs. Hale?s and Mrs. Peters?s treatment from the men in the play is reflective of the beliefs of that time. These women, aware of

The protagonist, Mrs. Wright, is trying to keep from being accused of murder and this is why she hides the dead bird. The two women, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, begin to warm up to what really has happened and throughout the story continue to grow more sympathetic towards Mrs. Wright. The suspense is built up very well trying to figure out whether or not she will get convicted. In the climax, the two women find Mrs. Wright's dead bird and realize what has happened. They are faced with the dilemma of whether or not to turn her in for what they now know she is guilty of. The reader does not find out what happens but is left to assume the best ending. Although the plot of this story is not very exciting, it does achieve its central purpose of showing the women leaving the men out in the cold and uniting together. Throughout the plot and structure they were some instances of irony that were used very well.

The women empower themselves through silence, particularly in the kitchen communicating and reflecting upon things around them in the limited space they were given. The men dismiss the kitchen finding nothing that is relevant to the murder case. The men keep crisscrossing through the kitchen, ignoring and not realizing they could find the vital evidence through trivial details. Even though they were having difficulty in finding clues that lead to the murder. While the women were alone looking through Minnie’s kitchen they found the most valuable evidence the “missing piece to men’s puzzle” (Holstein 283). Mrs. Hale found the dead bird strangled in the sewing box telling “Mrs. Peters-look at it! Its neck! Look at its neck!” (782). Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters recognize the bird was strangled brutally “their eyes meet. A look of growing comprehension, of horror” (Glaspell 782). Both of them realized the bird was killed the same way as Mr. Wright with the rope around their neck. The strangled bird represents Minnie Foster how her freedom and joy was strangled to death. When the men came in the kitchen, the county attorney noticed the bird cage, wondering if the bird flew away, but Mrs. Hale lied and said “we think the- cat got it” ( Glaspell 782). The county attorney seek only visible evidence for murder he was wasn’t thinking critically what it may mean. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters covered the evidence keeping it between themselves for their own knowledge. They

    Even so, the domestic system the men have set up for their wives and their disregard for them after the rules and boundaries have been laid down prove to be the men's downfall. The evidence that Mrs. Wright killed her husband is woven into Mrs. Hale's and Mrs. Peters's conversations about Mrs. Wright's sawing and her pet bird. The knots in her quilt match those in the rope used to strangle Mr. Wright, and the bird, the last symbol of Mrs. Wright's vitality to be taken by her husband, is found dead. Unable to play the role of subservient wife anymore, Mrs. Wright is foreign to herself and therefore lives a lie. As Mrs. Hale proclaims, "It looks as if she didn't know what she was about!" (1177).