In the one-act play, Trifles, by Susan Glaspell, the Wright household sees the entry of the sheriff, his wife, the neighbors, county attorney and Mr. and Mrs. Hale. They all enter the kitchen while Mr. Hale describes his visit to the house when Mrs. Wright behaving in a bizarre way had eventually expressed in a hebetudinous voice that her spouse was dead, upstairs. Mrs. Wright is never seen onstage. The men seem to be sure of the fact that she had killed her husband as she had queerly claimed that someone had strangled Mr. Wright while she was sound asleep. While the men head upstairs in search for forensic evidence, the women stay in the kitchen clearly irked by the men’s critique of Mrs. Wright’s housekeeping skills. They observe details that unravel how bleak Mrs. Wright’s emotional state was and surmise that her spouse must have been cold and oppressive. Mrs. Wright comes across to the audience as a desperate wife. The ladies discover a dead canary whose neck has been wrung. They decide not to tell this trifle matter to the men. A play of words indicates how she must have killed her husband.
The setting is the kitchen of the Wright household. The setting has an empty bird cage, a table which is kind of half clean, an unfinished quilt, ruined food preserves and bread that has been left out of the box.
The main characters in the play are Mrs. Wright, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters.
The title Trifles signifies the passivity that is attributed to the women folk of the society. The play portrays Mrs. Wright’s onerous life shrouded in drudgery of the household. To the society and even her husband, her dreams and emotions are nothing more than matters of trifle importance. Similarly, when the ladies find evidence in the kitchen, they themselves are under the influence of the notion that they cannot contribute to the investigation and their findings are trifles. The play exposes how the patriarchal society views the women folk as inferior. They are ascribed by the society to remain inside the boundaries of the household sphere, the claustrophobic world of monotony and futility.
The canary is dead, yet kept with care in a fancy box. The cage, stove, cold house, portray the encaged soul of Mrs. Wright who was bearing with the simmering pain of her drab life in the coldness of the house which was no less than a dungeon for her. The broken jars testify her broken dreams which were lost in the quest of living up to the patriarchal expectations. The unevenly sewn quilt block signifies her mind’s tumultuousness, being torn between her desires and attributed responsibilities.
The thematic presentation shows the male characters exuding self-importance. They believe in their capability and belittle the women. They refuse to appreciate the women. The women folk in the play show compassion for Mrs. Wright by hiding evidence. They steal the box portraying loyalty to the feminine gender and thus also subvert the patriarchal social order. They could very well sympathize with Mrs. Wright’s emotions.
The irony remains in the fact that even murdering her spouse would not let her have the desired freedom. The male folk act as symbol of the patriarchal shackles that haunt her emancipation.
If found innocent owing to lack of evidence, she would not have given in to her conscience as her desires of flight were too earnest to make her look back and voluntarily bind herself inside the cage of the societal dungeon.
Hinz-bode, Kristina. Susan Glaspell and the Anxiety of Expression. New York: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2006.