In the play, “Trifles,” Susan Glaspell demonstrates the inequality that occurs between men and women during the 20th century. From the opening scene, the two women are not given much attention unlike the men, until they are separated from them and become the main characters. Although the women are seen as inferior to men, they prove that they are much more capable as they are the ones who solve the case by thinking outside the box. They find the real motive behind Mrs. Wright’s action and are able to understand her doing because of the way women were treated back then. Even though both women decide to defend Mrs. Wright by hiding the evidence, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters sympathize with her, but for different reasons.
Since the very beginning of the play, you can easily tell that the women do not hold the same authority as the men. The men immediately walk into Mr. Wright’s residence and make their way towards the stove to warm themselves up, while the women stand close together by the door. Even though the weather dropped below zero, the women insist they are not cold. It is through the body language of the women that we can recognize their inferiority. Even though it is not their home, the sheriff, county attorney and neighbor make themselves at home because they feel like they have power to do what they want, possibly because they are the ones whom are carrying the official investigation of Mr. Wright’s death. The women on the other hand just went for company, though they make their own observations of the case.
Once Lewis Hale finishes discussing what he saw after finding out about Mr. Wright’s death, all three men go to the bedroom where the crime took place. They passed over all the evidence that was displayed in the kitchen because they just thought of it as “nothing but kitchen things (776).” Women are known as the ones to maintain their homes, especially the kitchen since it is the place where women cook, make phone calls, and do their obligations. By overlooking the kitchen things, the men are dismissing all the hard work that women do every day.
They probably thought to themselves, “What use could these women things be to us?” Then again, men do not have the same way of thinking like women do because they dismiss all the trifles that women worry about. All they care about in looking for are the weapons used to commit the crime, rather than figuring out the motive of the crime. It is definitely ironic how it is in the kitchen itself where the women find the evidence, and it is the one place that the men overlook to search. We would have expected the men to find the evidence because they consider themselves superior, and perhaps more intellectual, but it is the women whom find it because of their attention to the little things.
Once the women are left alone in the kitchen, they begin to form a female to female bond. But before the investigation, the two women were never considered close friends. Mrs. Hale knew Minnie for many years and even grew up in the same area, while Mrs. Peters was a new friendly face. Luckily, it is in the process of solving the crime case that the two women unite, primarily because of their gender. Because they are both females, they are able to relate to one another somehow and can comprehend the troubles that Mrs. Wright had. By trying to understand and investigate Minnie’s motives, the two women form a friendship. We can see the bond between the two women when Mrs. Hale waits until the men are gone to discuss how she feels regarding the way that the men downgrade women in their ability in doing things. By waiting until the men are gone, Mrs. Hale is demonstrating her full trust towards Mrs. Peters.
As Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters become the two main characters during their investigation, Mrs. Hale recalls the good times of Mrs. Wright’s life. There was once a time when she was known as Minnie Foster. Minnie “used to wear pretty clothes and be lively-singing in the choir (778).” Before marriage, Minnie was an upbeat girl who took part in her community, but now, she does not even take part of the Ladies Aid. Unfortunately, once she committed to a marriage with Mr. Wright, Minnie changed her way of being, and it was not a good change for her persona. Her house was disheveled with unwashed things and she was not properly kept herself which shows to prove that she is not the lively girl she once was. She became a more reserved woman and seemed to not care about anything, though she was trying her best to survive by keeping busying with her quilt.
By this point, both women think about whether Minnie could have killed her husband, especially since she was living a miserable life with him. Could this have caused Mrs. Wright to kill her husband? After finding out from Mr. Henderson that there must have been some motive to cause the murder, Mrs. Hale begins to think of the possible motives. She begins to look around the kitchen for any evidence, and she successfully finds a piece of evidence as she puts her hand on the dish towel which lies on the table. She notices that “one half is clean, the other half messy” (779). Usually when people clean, they clean the entire area unless something comes up like an unexpected phone call or something more serious. For this reason, a half cleaned table is an evidence towards the case because something must have suddenly occurred to have caused Mrs. Wright to instantly stop what she is doing.
The next piece of evidence that the women find is the quilt that Mrs. Wright was sewing. As the women wonder if she was going to quilt it or knot it, the men over hear and criticize by laughing. This just shows to prove that the men think they are better than them. While the men spend their time criticizing, rather than finding clues, Mrs. Hale gets moving. She continues to try to look for any indications that could be the motive of Mr. Wright’s death. She notices that something is not right about the quilt as she takes a closer look at another block. By carefully examining the quilt that Mrs. Wright was sewing, she takes note that the quilt is “nice and even (780)” and then it just becomes all messy. That for sure would catch my attention. I mean, who would sew something so nice and take their time on it to eventually destroy it by making it all messy? Something must have definitely triggered Mrs. Wright to sew her quilt in an angrily way.
These two ladies begin to realize that there is a high likely chance that Mrs. Wright committed the crime of killing her husband, but are not so sure. What they know for sure is that Mrs. Wright must have been nervous about something to cause her to sew “all over the place” (780). Although Mrs. Peter does not yet know what Mrs. Hale is up to, Mrs. Hale attempts to undo the crime by immediately beginning to pull out the knot and rip the bad stitching to hide the evidence of the messy sewing. While Mrs. Peters is there to unknowingly help, Mrs. Hale further helps Mrs. Wright out of the crime by cleaning up her mess and making the sewing nice and neat again. By redoing the stitches, they are destroying a great piece of evidence that links Mrs. Wright’s motive to the death. But as Mrs. Peters goes to find the material to sew, a bird cage is revealed.
This birdcage may not be much evidence as of now because they do not know for sure if Mrs. Wright had a bird or not, but they see that the hinge is broken. Someone or something must have been rough with it to have pulled it apart. This someone could have been Mr. Wright as he was always seen as a tough man. As they suspect that Mr. Wright had something to do with the birdcage, both women agree that they do not like being in The Wright’s residence, primarily because Mrs. Hale never felt comfortable. Even though Mrs. Hale was their neighbor, she always avoided visiting for many reasons.
For starters, she never felt welcomed into The Wright’s Residence by Mr. Wright. It always felt lonesome and not very cheerful when she would infrequently visit. Mrs. Hale begins to feel guilty for not visiting Minnie more often. If Mrs. Hale had visited her, Minnie probably would not feel so depressed and lonely, especially since the house was silent as she never had any children. Minnie could have had Mrs. Hale as a female companion to talk about her life situations instead of just having to go through the misery of living with Mr. Wright every day. Because of this, Mrs. Hale feels guilty because she knows the struggles that Minnie went through, and she could have stopped her from having a mental breakdown.
As the two women continue looking around, they discover the most unexpected thing. They find a dead canary. That birdcage they had found must have belonged to the dead bird. Since Mr. Wright was probably the one who broke the hinge, he probably also “broke” the bird by wringing its neck. To the women’s surprise, both the bird and Mr. Wright died in the same way, with its neck wringed. The women start to put the puzzle pieces together and come to realize that it was Mrs. Wright whom killed Mr. Wright. Mr. Wright perhaps got annoyed with all the noise that the bird was creating, and just snapped its neck.
Just how like the bird’s neck was snapped, Mrs. Wright herself snapped at that moment too. She had enough with everything she put up with, and reached her limit when Mr. Wright killed her bird. Mrs. Wright knew at that moment that she had to do something about it. Both women understood the motive for killing Mr. Wright and make the decision to hide the last and most important piece of evidence from the men. Although Mrs. Peters thinks that the law is the law and that they should give any evidence to the men, her opinion changes as the play progresses. She goes along with Mrs. Hale to hide the evidence when she mentions to the men that the cat must have eaten the bird.
We get a hint as to why Mrs. Peters eventually decides to defend the poor Mrs. Wright. She tells us a story from her childhood on how her kitten was killed. “There was a boy who took a hatchet, and before my eyes- and before I could get there- (782).” Because Mrs. Peters’ cat was killed, she finds that she is able to empathize to Mrs. Wright emotionally. The pet animals of both Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Wright were taken away from them tragically. Just how like Mrs. Peters cat was important to her, the bird was of great importance to Mrs. Wright too. Mrs. Peters can relate to Mrs. Wright because she felt like she had to hurt the boy and revenge on him for killing her cat, except in this case, Mrs. Wright actually did decide to take matters into her own hands. For this reason, Mrs. Peters defends Mrs. Wright on her actions because she knows how it feels to want to get back at someone for killing a loved pet.
While Mrs. Peters recalls her childhood memories with her cat, Mrs. Hale continues to go back and forth on how she still wishes she would have visited Minnie more often. She regrets making excuses for not visiting because she could have if she had just not paid mind to the bad aspects of visiting The Wright’s residence. If she had come to visit once in a while, she would have realized that Minnie needed some help. Minnie was suffering within her own home; the one place where people should feel most comfortable at. Mrs. Hale believes that she could have saved her from committing the crime of killing Mr. Wright, a man. Killing is one big crime, but killing a man is even worse because of their authority in society at the time. Although the two ladies had different reasoning’s in defending Mrs. Wright, they both joined in together to help her because they knew that her punishment was not going to be anything easy.
By the end of the play, the readers have an understanding as to why both women decide to conceal evidence, even if it is illegal to do so. Both women took a risk in getting caught to help the poor Minnie Wright. I know for sure that I would never put myself at risk just to help another friend, especially if I did not have anything to do with the crime. In defense, both women help Mrs. Wright because they can relate to her. Their reasoning’s go beyond that though. For Mrs. Hale, she primarily helps get Mrs. Wright out of this situation because she feels guilt. She feels guilty for not visiting because she thinks she could have prevented this situation from even occurring. While on the other hand, Mrs. Hale decides to help Mrs. Wright because she can empathize with her on what happened to her bird. In the end, both women’s feelings play a role in deciding to defend Mrs. Wright by hiding the evidence.
