Susan Glaspell's Trifles

Susan Glaspell’s play “Trifles,” is about an investigation on the murder of John Wright, whose wife is the suspect of murder. The play starts out with five characters conversing in the Wrights kitchen. George Henderson (County Attorney,) Henry Peters (Sheriff,) Mrs. Peters, Lewis Hale, and Mrs. Hale. The men first start by talking about the poor housekeeping done by Mrs. Wright, which irritated Mrs. Peters, and Mrs. Hale. Hale then starts to describe how he found a dead John Wright, he said he walked into the Wrights house to ask about the cost of the phone line when he sees Mrs. Wright in the rocking chair. He asks Mrs. Wright if he can see John but she replies with No, because he’s dead. He then went snooping around and found that John Wright had been hung from a rope. He begins to ask Mrs. Wright questions on who did it but all she said was she didn’t know, and that

The women sticking together were shown by the way Mrs. Peters, and Mrs. Hale got defensive of the County Attorney saying “Dirty towels! Not much of a housekeeper, would you say, ladies?” (Glaspell, 1413) Also, when the two women find the dead canary. Throughout the poem and even till the end neither of the women did the “lawful” thing and told the two men about the dead bird they instead stood loyal to Mrs. Wright, because they knew it would ultimately add more evidence to the case of Mrs. Wright.
In the early 1900’s women were nothing compared to the men. Although they did all the household work like cooking, cleaning, sewing, and picking fresh fruit in the intense heat, they had no choice but to answer to their husbands, and according to Hale “women are used to worrying over trifles.” (Glaspell, 1412) Which is how the two women were able to get the evidence for the murder. Knowing what they said didn’t matter anyway, they do some
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