Trifles_by_Susan_Glaspell

Trifles Susan Glaspell’s play, Trifles, is about a woman who murders her husband because he is the one to blame for her cold and lonely life. The title itself is really used to give emphasis to the meaning of the play. Within the plot there lies an undertone of discrimination towards women, which I think tends to generate a more sympathetic feeling for Mrs. Wright. Making it feel as though she is seen more of a victim then a cold blooded murderer. There are many little things throughout the play that goes to prove that Mrs. Wright murdered her husband, and the ironic part of it all is that it’s the sheriff and the county attorney’s wives Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters who solve the case. Although these women never point out all the “little things”, as the men like to call it, because they feel sad for Mrs. Wright and wish that they would have taken more time for her and gone and visited with her. The men don’t realize that the little things are pieces of a puzzle and if they would put them all together they would see the bigger picture. One example is how the women pay attention to the fruit preserves. Mrs. Peters says she would worry about her preserves being in the cold without a fire started because the jars would break. The sheriff just shrugs it off and Mr. Hale says that woman are use to worrying over trifles giving us a foreshadow of what lies ahead. Unfortunately for them, if they would have paid attention they would realize that if Mrs. Wright was not preoccupied with something else, she would have started a fire to keep them from freezing. Another little detail is that Mrs. Wright did not wake up, even if someone was a sound sleeper they would still have felt someone struggling, fighting for air and fighting for their life. A third thing is the piece of the quilt, the wives were wondering if she was going to quilt it or knot it because a section was so messy. The men at this point don’t understand why these women are so concerned with a quilt, and all the little things in the house while they are going around trying to find hard evidence that she committed the murder. They can’t understand why a rope was used when there is a gun in the house, which throws them off track even more. One of the men looking at the quilt thinks that the messy part is because Mrs. Wright was nervous, but the wives convince them that this is something that can happen when someone is tired. This in turn makes the men laugh at the women for wondering about the quilt themselves. To the men it was of little importance, but to the wives is showed a disturbance in Mrs. Wright’s life, because Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters realize that it’s the same kind of knot in the rope that is around Mr. Wrights neck. The final detail that the men do not notice or pay attention to was the empty bird cage the wives found, one of the women knew that Mrs. Wright was superstitious so she would not have had a cat that may have gotten the bird, so at first they think it must have just flown away. While they are gathering things to bring to Mrs. Wright to help pass the time while in jail, they come across the dead bird. This makes them put two and two together; the broken bird cage, and the dead bird with its neck wrung. They now believe that Mr. Wright must have killed the bird in anger. The ladies make comments to each other about how Mrs. Wright use to be a singer and having such a beautiful bird to sing to her must have brought her great joy. If Mr. Wright was the one that wrung it’s neck, then it only seems to add up to why and how he died. Not wanting Mrs. Wright to spend the rest of her life in prison, they decide to keep the bird a secret. All in all the ladies cannot believe what they have discovered, by looking at all the “little things” that their husbands find trivial and meaningless, they have solved the murder. The moral of the story is that women who take the time to look at all the “little things” and listen to one another tend to stick together and because of this, they will “knot” tell!