Trifles Review Essay

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.

Mr. Hale was not the only male character who demonstrated arrogance and insensitivity toward women. The Sheriff who was investigating Mr. Wright’s murder also demonstrated arrogance and insensitivity, hindering his ability to tie Mrs. Wright to

Trifles was written in the early 1900's by Susan Glaspell. This occurred far before the women's movement. Women were generally looked upon as possessions to their husbands. Their children, all wages, and belongings were property of their husbands. In Glaspell's story it is easily depicted as to what role the men and women portrayed in society at this time.

Hale, and Mrs. Peters. Mr. Hale was the first one to visit the Wright home after the murder, so the sheriff immediately questions him. Because this is a play the actors have to talk to each other, so the audience knows what’s going on. Another way that the play goes into an action way is the aloofness of Mrs. Wright. Whenever Mr. Hale was being questioned he mentioned his encounter with Mrs. Wright saying that he would ask where her husband was, and she wouldn’t respond and just sit there in her chair and knit. The men then go on to criticize Mrs. Wright’s housekeeping, after the men leave the women say, “I’d hate to have men coming into my kitchen, snooping around and criticizing” (561). The short story has the same sentence except the short story surrounds that statement with an explanation of some of Mrs. Hale’s thoughts. For example, Mrs. Hale is described as having felt a strange feeling “then, as if releasing something strange, Mrs. Hale began to rearrange the dirt pans under the sink” (573). The play cannot provide description of emotions but shows them through action. “A Jury of her

As the women walk through the house, they begin to get a feel for what Mrs. Wright’s life is like. They notice things like the limited kitchen space, the broken stove, and the broken jars of fruit and begin to realize the day-to-day struggles that Mrs. Wright endured. The entire house has a solemn, depressing atmosphere. Mrs. Hale regretfully comments that, for this reason and the fact that Mr. Wright is a difficult man to be around, she never came to visit her old friend, Mrs. Wright.

Murder, torture, and mayhem are merely three of the unique problems that can be found throughout the one act play Trifles by Susan Glaspell. The writer opens up the story by explaining the situation of Mrs. Wright, a middle aged woman who is being accused of murdering her husband. The crime scene is a mess. A sheriff, the prosecuting attorney and their wives are looking in to the gruesome death that occurred upstairs in the Wright household. It is immediately found that the men focus their attention to the area around the body of Mr. Wright in search of evidence. However, it is the women begin to stumble across the clues that may lead to Mrs. Wright’s persecution. As more evidence is found we are lead to believe that Mrs. Wright did, in fact, kill her husband. By the end of the play the reader is still left wondering, why? Was it a case of self-defense, or is there something much deeper going on? Once a full understanding is reached, it becomes apparent that the only basis that should be used for dropping the charges of this case should be built on the notion of mental insanity. Mrs. Wright clearly demonstrates psychological tendencies that are symptomatic of Dissociative Disorders (Ben-Zvi, 145). With an evaluation of her past life, her behavior immediately after killing her husband, and evidence that is later found by the women, it becomes clear that Mrs. Wright was stricken with a Dissociative Disorder.

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,

Wright. Mrs. Hale knows that even if Mrs. Wright murdered her abusive husband who was "like a raw wind that gets to the bone" (Glaspell 1298), the wife will not receive a fair trial. Mrs. Hale is aware the laws are made and carried out by men. In addition, she knows "juries when it comes to women" (Glaspell 1300). With this in mind, Mrs. Hale hides all incriminating evidence to prevent Mrs. Wright from having to face a judge and jury composed of biased men. Both women defy the rule of the land to prove the law is defective. This is where their similarities end. They both break laws for good reasons.

“Trifle” happens in the rural part of Iowa during the winter month in 1900’s, an era where women possessed little voice in the affairs of men. The play took place in an interior of the Wright’s kitchen, which is a confined private space. The landscape of a rundown farmhouse owned by the victim of an illusive strangulation. The mood is dark, deadness and depressing whereas the only music is a canary song, mysterious and silence.

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.

Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters both understand and get to know each other by piecing together the crime scene and also looking at Mrs. Wright’s empty house. By the women noticing details and Mrs. Wright’s living conditions, they can see how sad and what little enjoyment Mrs. Wright had in her home. Mrs. Hale says, “It never seemed a very cheerful place," and later on she says, "But I don't think a place would be any the cheerfuller for John Wright's bein' in it.", she is revealing the atmosphere that the home had (Glaspell 5). The home was certainly not cheerful, but not

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

Finally, the reader is introduced to the character around whom the story is centered, the accursed murderess, Mrs. Wright. She is depicted to be a person of great life and vitality in her younger years, yet her life as Mrs. Wright is portrayed as one of grim sameness, maintaining a humorless daily grind, devoid of life as one regards it in a normal social sense. Although it is clear to the reader that Mrs. Wright is indeed the culprit, she is portrayed sympathetically because of that very lack of normalcy in her daily routine. Where she was once a girl of fun and laughter, it is clear that over the years she has been forced into a reclusive shell by a marriage to a man who has been singularly oppressive. It is equally clear that she finally was brought to her personal breaking point, dealing with her situation in a manner that was at once final and yet inconclusive, depending on the outcome of the legal investigation. It is notable that regardless of the outcome, Mrs. Wright had finally realized a state of peace within herself, a state which had been denied her for the duration of her relationship with the deceased.

     Detectives are always looking for little pieces of evidence when investigating a crime. After all, it is this evidence that can turn a trial around, whether be it for the good or bad. This is especially the case in Susan Glaspell's Trifles. When Mrs. Hale comes across little pieces of evidence, she passes them off as being "trifles", hiding them from the detective. She is the sole reason that very little evidence is collected that would convict Mrs. Wright, and can be believed to have some sort of involvement in the murder of John Wright.

Glaspell develops the theme of gender roles by what Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters fret about at the crime scene. For instance, the first concern that Mrs. Peters voices revolves around Mrs. Wright’s fruit preserves and implies that the women are housekeepers. Both the Sheriff and Mr. Hale remark about how the women are “worryin’ about her preserves” and “worrying over trifles” (Glaspell 3). Later, when the men go upstairs to look for evidence, the women decide to bring Mrs. Wright’s apron, fruit, shawl, and quilt for her in prison. To further establish Mrs. Wright as a domesticated housewife, Mrs. Peters suggests that Mrs. Wright wants her apron “to make her feel more natural” (Glaspell 5). Because of what Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters discuss at the crime scene, Glaspell verifies that the women play the role of housekeeper and cook.