Trifles Murder

First, looking around the kitchen, the women notice that Minnie had left a lot of things “half done.” There was a table with “one half… wiped clean, the other half messy,” and a bucket of sugar half-filled. Minnie must have kept getting interrupted from her work. Maybe it was her husband or maybe it was her own thinking. The women know that to leave something unfinished it must have been something very importimportantnt. The second piece of evidence the women find is the log cabin quilt that Minnie had been working on. All of the quilt squares are sewn “nice and even”, except for one. The square looks as if Minnie “didn’t know what she was about.” It seems as if Minnie was nervous while sewing it. The women find it weird that Minnie was so careless on that square, when she was so meticulous in sewing the others. The final, and possibly most important, piece of evidence is the dead bird that the women found in Minnie’s sewing basket. Mr. Hale, we assume, “wrung its neck,” and it was something that Minnie really cared about. Mrs. Peters remembers a time when, “ there was a boy (who) took a hatchet,” to her kitten. She knows what it feels like to want to hurt someone who hurt something you care about. In the end, the women decide to hide the evidence from the men. Susan Glaspell’s use of logos is

In the story, verbal and dramatic irony are used to show the woman’s superiority in analyzing the crime scene over the men’s analysis. The two women in the story, Mrs. Peters and Martha Hale, analyze the crime scene much better than the men because they see the struggle of Minnie’s rebellion from her husband. In the story, “Wives themselves, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters are able to determine Mrs. Wright’s frame of mind from

The play “Trifles” by Susan Glaspell is type of murder mystery that takes place in the early 1900’s. The play begins when the sheriff Mr. Peters and county attorney Mr. Henderson come to attempt to piece together what had happen on the day that Mr. Wright was murder. While investigating the seen of the murder, they are accompanied by the Mr. Hale, Mrs. Hale and Mr. Peters. Mr. Hale had told that Mrs. Wright was acting strange when he found her in the kitchen. After taking information from Mr. Hale, the men leave the women in the kitchen and go upstairs at seen of the murder. The men don’t realize the plot of the murder took place in the kitchen.

For while the men are looking actively for the "smoking gun," the women are confronted with more subtle clues in spite of themselves and even try to hide from each other what they intuitively know. But they do not fool each other for long, as Glaspell describes, "Their eyes met - something flashed to life, passed between them; then, as if with an effort, they seemed to pull away from each other" (295). However, they cannot pull away, for they are bound by a power they do not even comprehend: "We all go through the same things -  it's all just a different kind of the same thing!...why do you and I understand? Why do we know - what we know this minute?" (303). They do not realize that it is intuition they share, that causes them to "[see] into things, [to see] through a thing to something else...." (294). Though sympathetic to Minnie Wright, the women cannot deny the damning clues that lead them to the inescapable conclusion of her guilt.

Sheriff Henry Peters and county attorney George Henderson visit the Wright home to investigate the murder of John Wright. His wife, Minnie Wright, has been arrested for the murder, and the two men have come to collect evidence against her. To that end, they have brought Lewis Hale, Minnie Wright's neighbor, who was the first person other than Minnie to see John's dead body. Hale will be a witness for the prosecution at the trial. With the three men are Mrs. Peters, the sheriff's wife, and Mrs. Hale, Lewis's wife, who have come to collect some of Minnie's personal effects to bring to her in prison. The sheriff is the first to enter the Wrights' little farmhouse. He and the other two men gather around the hot stove for warmth while the women

The men were in command over the total life experience, until the man or husband cared for his children. The author gracefully applies the same characteristics to the key role characters during this time. The basic meaning of the following play is men strongly opposing the women. Being both knowledgeable (on figuring out the mystery of the murder) and authority wise (by the men searching in all places besides the cooking area- where the women mainly are). During this extent in time, the man of the house (or all men in general) considered themselves as educated in a higher manner during their efforts to determine the murder. SITE. In addition to this point in time, it’s made known that majority of the women have (or in this case will) spend their time in

She knew of no way to console Minnie because she herself answered to her own husband; there was no advice to provide. She couldn’t help remove a friend from a situation she herself was in, and so she avoided the instance altogether. After her presence in the John Wright case is requested by Mrs. Peters, Martha Hale finds herself standing in the kitchen of the Wright home filled with guilt even as she opens the door. Knowing the immense amount of unhappiness that resides within the home haunts her, but now it is too late. Mrs. Minnie had completed the task that she’d been working toward for years: escaping her overbearing husband.

The men, though, laugh at the women's wonderings about the quilt. To them it is of little importance. Likewise, the bird and its cage are easily dismissed. In fact, the men just as easily believe a lie about this bird and cage. When the cage is noticed, its broken door overlooked, the county attorney asks, "Has the bird flown?'" Mrs. Peters replies that the "'cat got it'" (360). There is actually no such cat, but the men do not know that and never question the existence of it. The bird, however, is vital to the case. Mr. Wright killed the bird, Minnie's bird, which may have provoked her to then kill him. In addition, the strangling of Mr. Wright, a form of murder which perplexes all when a gun was handy, is reminiscent of the strangling of that bird. It is another answer to the men's questions, but an answer they never find. The women, on the other hand, take note of all they see. They notice not only the bird, the cage, and the quilt but other things that the men call "trifles," like Minnie's frozen preserves and her request for her apron and shawl. These women are united; it seems, not only as country wives or as neighbors but on the basic level of womanhood. This is apparent from the start of the play. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters "stand close together near the door," emotionally bonded throughout the play and, here, physically, in a way, too. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters also have a kinship to Minnie, just as to each other. They respect her work as a homemaker. Mrs.

One critic, Leonard Mustazza, argues that Mrs. Hale recruits Mrs. Peters “as a fellow ‘juror’ in the case, moving the sheriff’s wife away from her sympathy for her husband’s position and towards identification with the accused woman” (494). Though this is true, Mrs. Peters also comes to her own understanding. What she sees in the kitchen led her to understand Minnie’s lonely plight as the wife of an abusive farmer. The first evidence Mrs. Peters reaches understanding on her own surfaces in the following passage: “The sheriff’s wife had looked from the stove to the sink to the pail of water which had been

The men?s prejudice is blatant and although it was easy for Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters to pick up on it, they react to it in a variety of ways. Defensively, Mrs. Hale, replies rigidly to the County Attorney?s remark by stating that "there?s a great deal of work to be done on a farm," (958) offering an excuse for Minnie?s lapse in cleaning. Later, he brushes her off when she explains that John Wright was a grim man. To the County Attorney, the women are just there to collect personal items for Minnie, they are not going to give him any valuable insight into the murder. To their credit, the women do not force their thoughts or feelings on the men when biased statements are made in their direction. They hold back and discuss the remarks later after the men go upstairs. Mrs. Peters observes that "Mr. Henderson is awful sarcastic in a speech and he?ll make fun of her sayin? she didn?t wake up" (960). The fact that she believes the men would laugh if they heard the two women discussing the dead canary reveals how sure she is that the men think of them as concerned with the

The audience and characters assume that Minnie is guilty, but with due motivation. “Two housewives, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, accompanying their husbands who are investigating the murder of a man by his wife, discover in the kitchen the clues which indicate the motive of the murderess” (Alkalay-Gut 1). The audience assumes that Minnie’s solitude, imposed on her by her husband, has lead her to be depressed. “Alienated from her husband, powerless and silenced by the circumstances of her marriage, and isolated from her neighbors, Minnie is an unseen woman long before she murders John Wright” (Noe 16). What if Minnie’s solitude was self-inflicted? Just as Mrs. Hale could have visited Minnie, Minnie could have visited Mrs. Hale and other women in the area, but chose not to. The audience assumes that John Wright treats Minnie coldly or harshly. Mrs Hale says, “No, Wright wouldn’t like the bird—a thing that sang. She used to sing. He killed that, too.” (Glaspell 1391). “Her life has been made miserable by an individual who has complete control of her” (Alkalay-Gut 3). What

The quilt is one major clue as to how Minnie killed her husband. The women were trying to figure out if she was going to sew or not the quilt. Well, Mr. Wright was strangled in a strange manner, just how the knot was messed up in red string. The men laughed it off butt Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters knew what had happened.

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

Minnie Wright not being present in the plot allows the woman to solve the mystery on their own. It also allows them to connect with her more as well as connect with her state of mind. Mrs. Hale says “Not having children makes less work - but It makes for a quiet house, and Wright out to work all day, and no company when he did come in” (122.) This quote shows how Mrs. Hale is feeling, she is realizing that Minnie wright must have been very lonely sitting in her house all day with no one and nothing to do. A few pages later she says “Oh, I wish i’d come over here once in a while! That was a crime! That was a crime! Who’s going to punish that?” (125) In this moment Mrs. Hale in strongly