Critical Analysis of the Play "Trifles" by Susan Glaspell

The play trifles is a true murder mystery by Susan Glaspell. The setting is in a lonely, cold landscape of the Wright s kitchen, where the action of the play takes place. The kitchen is in disorder with unwashed dishes, a dirty dishtowel, and a loaf of bread sitting out. The scene gives the impression of a lonely household with little attention having been paid to cleaning up recently. Three men, Sheriff Peters, the court attorney Mr.Henderson, and the neighbor Mr. Hale, enter the house. Behind the men are two women. One is Mrs. Hale, the neighbors wife and Mrs. Peter s, the Sheriff s wife. Both women stand by the door while the men go over to the stove to warm themselves up. The fact that two women are behind the men is a way of introducing the fact that women are inferior to the men and are supposed to follow behind their husbands. The sheriff asks Mr. Hale to describe everything that he saw the morning he discovered Mr. Wright s body. He explains the events of his coming to the house and talking to Mrs. Wright. Throughout the play the dialogue between the men allows us to see the demeaning view the men have for women. Mr. Hale declares that "women are used to worrying about trifles" (Glaspell 940) In saying this he is demeaning the many tasks and details women are responsible for. This also shows his ignorance of how those duties are crucial in allowing a household to function smoothly, he implies their unimportance. When the men leave to investigate up stairs, the two ladies are left in the kitchen by themselves. Instead of focusing on the men in the case, the play concentrates on the women. They engage in small talk and without even knowing it, they use the tactics that a trained police officer would be using to figure out a mystery. They talk about how the kitchen was left after the murder. The reference to bottles of broken preserves shows how Mrs. Wright was much like these preserves. She herself stays on the shelf, alone on the farm, until the coldness of her marriage and her life breaks her apart. Mrs. Peter then notices that Mrs. Wright had been knitting a quilt. As the two women are wondering weather she was going to "quilt or knot it," the men come down and laugh, making fun of the women. The men have no idea that the women have made a very important discovery. Mrs. Hale resents the men s attitude and rips out the wrong stitches in the quilt and repairs them. The ladies also find another important clue, the dead bird. The women acknowledge that John Wright not only killed Mrs. Wright s canary, but her very spirit. Mrs. Wright "was kind of like a bird herself-real sweet and pretty, but kind of timid and fluttery." (Glaspell 945). Mrs. Wright understands her husbands action as a symbolic strangling of herself, his wife. It is not just because he kills the bird, but because she herself is a caged bird and he strangles her by preventing her from communicating with others. When the men return the lady s hide what they see as evidence of Mrs. Wright s guilt. It is realized at this point that she strangled her husband as retribution for killing her joy, the bird, and years of abuse by her husband.

The men in this story posses a shallow view of a women s intelligence and value. While the men were looking at the situation from an exterior perspective, the women were looking on the inside, at all the small things, the trifles to find the real evidence and motive. The play begins with three men and two women entering into the Wrights' farm house. They are Mr. Hale, a neighboring farmer, and his wife, Mrs. Hale; a sheriff, Mr. Peters, and his wife; and the county attorney, Mr. Henderson. Mr. Hale describes his arrival at the house the previous day, when he visited to ask if the Wrights wanted a telephone installed. He describes how he came upon Mrs. Wright rocking in her chair. Mrs. Wright told Hale that Mr. Wright was dead, by a rope slipped around his neck. Hale then describes finding Mr. Wright's body upstairs. The focus shifts to the set: the kitchen looks unkempt: pots, bread, and other items scattered about. Mrs. Wright's preserves have frozen and cracked, as Mrs. Peters says Mrs. Wright had worried about. Hale dismisses Mrs. Peters' comment, saying, "Well, women are used to worrying over trifles." The men go upstairs to investigate the scene and the women continue to go through things and discuss Mrs. Wright. The women look around the room and discuss Mrs. Wright, collecting some of Minnie's possessions to bring to her at the jail. They notice that many tasks in the kitchen are left half-complete, as if Mrs. Wright was interrupted by something. Mrs. Hale talks about how lively Mrs. Wright (calling her by her maiden name, Minnie Foster) used to be, and how her husband, John Wright, was a hard man. Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale then find some quilting that Mrs. Wright was working on, and a bird cage. They wonder if there was a bird until, upon looking for sewing supplies to take back to Mrs. Wright they stumble upon a small box, and inside is the bird, its neck wrung. As the two women look over the incomplete quilt Mrs. Wright was working on, the men pass back through the room to go to the barn, and laugh again at the women s conversation as they do. In the end the women hide the box with the bird from the men in order to hide her motive. The audience is left to understand that Mr. Wright had been abusive, smothering Mrs. Wright's youth and vitality, and that his killing of the bird had pushed his wife over the edge.[3] [edit]Feminist drama Trifles is seen as an example of early feminist drama, because it is two female characters', Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale's, ability to sympathize with the victim's wife, Minnie, and so understand her motives, that leads them to the evidence against her, while the men are blinded by their cold, emotionless investigation of material facts. The female characters find the body of a canary, which had its neck wrung, killed in the same way as the deceased (John Wright), thus leading them to the conclusion that Minnie was the murderer, and they appear to empathize with her situation. Clearly, the wife is symbolized by the caged bird, a common symbol of women's roles in society. The plot concludes with the two women hiding the evidence against Minnie.

The male characters are prejudiced in believing that nothing important can be discovered in areas of the house where Minnie spent the majority of her time. Their minds are clouded by the prejudice and disregard important clues as being mere "trifles" that women concern themselves with, searching the barn and the bedroom, places where men have dominance, rather than the kitchen, the only place where a woman would be in charge. One important line, spoken by the sheriff, says of the kitchen "Nothing here but kitchen things". This dismissal of the importance of the woman's life and the male reluctance to enter the "woman's sphere" is key in the men's failure to discover the crucial evidence for the case. The most important evidence, the dead canary that the two women find, was hidden in Minnie's sewing basket. The men scorn the domestic sphere, even kicking some of the items in contempt. The two women, having pieced together the murder, face the moral dilemma of telling the men about the motive or protecting Minnie, who they see as a victim. Their choice raises questions about solidarity among women, the meaning of justice, and the role of women in society as a source of justice. [edit]Symbolism The bird in the play is a symbol of Mrs. Wright. As the women note, she used to sing before she married John Wright. After her marriage, she was prevented from singing, or doing anything else which would have yielded her pleasure, by her husband. Minnie's plight is represented as a spiritual death, symbolized in the strangling of her songbird companion. Minnie is embodied in her kitchen and sewing things. The cold weather freezes and breaks her preserve jars, symbolizing the cold environment of her home breaking her spirit, as well as the coldness which causes the characters to fail in human empathy towards each other. The bare kitchen can be seen as symbol of the lives of the former inhabitants. The male characters are clear symbols of "law" and cold rationality, while the women display an intuitiveness representative of the psychoanalytic movement, evoking an interrogation of the value of superficial rational thought.