Susan Glaspell’s Trifles

Notes:

This play is not about murder so much as marriage

Its focus is on the differing male and female reactions as they search for a motive

Glaspell contrasts male and female perspectives throughout the play and engages our sympathy firmly on the side of the women

Men -- vainly seek signs of violent rage

Women -- with growing empathy are able to recognize the signs of quiet desperation under which many women of their time were forced to live

We are asked to witness Mrs. Wright’s life rather than Mr. Wright’s death

We are shown that the true “crime” has been the way she was being subjugated and “destroyed” by her marriage

We never see Minnie Wright -- we only learn about her through others’ comments -- this dramatic method serves the dual function of (1) allowing her to avoid particularity and so serve as a symbol of all women trapped in loveless marriages, as well as (2) ensuring that our attention is focused on the reactions of others

Opening Scene -- the gloomy kitchen is where Minnie Wright struggled to stay sane, and the domineering men immediately take charge while the women remain on the periphery -- the kitchen is the center of every farm wife’s existence

The Four Men -- clearly see women as a subservient group whose concerns hold little importance -- thus, in their search for hard evidence they will repeatedly overlook the existing evidence that the women discover, dismissing it as mere “trifles”

Mrs. Hale’s early defense of Mrs. Wright against the belittling comments of Mr. Henderson foreshadows her growing sympathy and complicity with the “murderess”

According to the play, once a woman marries she loses her former identity, along with her maiden name, and becomes subsumed by her husband -- note the references to Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale

The lives of Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale might not be as bad as Mrs. Wright’s -- but as women they are aware of the limitations that a patriarchal society has placed on their gender

Before marriage -- Minnie Foster had been singing and full of life

After marriage -- the confines of marriage -- symbolized by the house she lives in “down in a hollow” where you “don’t see the road” and the concentric bars of the log-cabin pattern of her quilt and the canary cage -- she has had all the life strangled out of her

John Wright -- destroyed Minnie Foster / destroyed her canary

Her revenge -- knotting a rope around his neck while he sleeps

Mrs. Hale leads Mrs. Peters to a full understanding of the situation as she removes the clues they discover -- the erratic stitching and the dead bird

Mrs. Hale accepts her own guilt in not having helped Minnie

Mrs. Hale’s final retort is layered with significance -- the words themselves sound defiant against Henderson’s facetious tone, and she mocks him with the evidence that she and Mrs. Peters have found and that even now he continues to miss -- the quilting knot and the knot around Mr. Wright’s neck

Mrs. Hale’s final retort -- the emphatic “we” further suggests the “knot” or bond that has been tied between these women and Minnie against the men -- the strength of women in unity

Critic -- “Although Glapsell condones the breaking of those codes of behavior which strangle women, she does not alienate the men who make them up” -- Trifles is not anti-male so much as an attempt to awaken audiences to the dilemmas of womanhood