Jenn Lamoreaux
Theatre TH 10 am
Test 1 Essay
In the play “Trifles,” written by Susan Glaspell, the theme would be gender difference. It
shows how women are portrayed in the time period. The men in the play are considered
aggressive and tough. They are serious minded people yet it was the women who really
discovered that Mrs. Wright killed her husband by strangulation. The men are looking all over
the house for clues to convict Mrs. Wright of murder. They feel that they can find evidence
without any problem. The other women, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale, don’t follow the sheriff and
stay together in the kitchen. They are paying attention to the detail that the men can’t seem to
see.
The kitchen is one of the major scenes. The women are paying attention to how messy it
is. The dishes are out and not washed, the towels are dirty and not washed, the fruit is spoiled
and the jam is broken from the jars. The county attorney, who is a man, goes into the kitchen,
where the women are, and he is commenting on how messy it is. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters just
look at each other expecting the attorney to figure out what might be going on inside the
house. The attorney says that Mrs. Wright wasn’t much of a housekeeper. Mrs. Hale just
stiffens up and said that there was much work to be done on the farm, so she really couldn’t
spend that much time in the kitchen. But in reality, it was the man’s job to be out on the farm.
It is interesting how the attorney comments on the towel and how dirty it is. Mrs. Hale is
quick to stand up for Mrs. Wright and said something about how the towel would naturally be
dirty if the husband works outside. In that time period, women’s work was the house. They did
all the cleaning, cooking, laundry, sowing, etc. The men worked out in the farm from sun up to
sun down. If the men were not working in the city, they were on the farm. Mrs. Hale was simply
saying that just because a towel is dirty doesn’t mean anything, if Mr. Wright was working on
the farm naturally his hands get dirty.
It is considered that women are more detail oriented than men and they usually will
stick up for one another. There is a different bond of friendship the women have than the men.
One way this is shown in the play is with the quilt that Mrs. Wright was working on. The sheriff
and other men were trying hard to find any type of evidence upstairs but they couldn’t see
anything. The women were in the living room and saw that Mrs. Wright was working on a quilt.
The knots in the quilt are important evidence that the men have no idea about. Quilts have to
have knots going through the quilt to keep the fabric in the middle from slipping. The knots that
Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters see is the exact knot that Mrs. Wright used to kill her husband.
Another image that the women realized that Mrs. Wright killed her husband, was from
the dead canary. The canary was strangled the same as the husband and the knot from the
husband’s rope is the same knot as the canary. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters realize what Mrs.
Wright did. The men don’t put those images together. If they had, she would have gone to
court. The empty bird cage and how the canary is placed into the box helped the women to
better understand what was going on. The bird was wrapped up in silk while the husband was
left with the rope around his neck. They figured that Mrs. Wright wasn’t being treated well by
her husband. Back in that time, men made the rules. No one questioned that. Women didn’t
stand up for themselves like they do now.
All throughout the play the women are the ones who actually find the evidence that
could convict Mrs. Wright. While Mr. Hale is telling the sheriff what he sees and what he thinks
happened, the women are the ones who actually know what happened because of the detail
they see around the house. They end up not telling the men what they see because they don’t
want to see Mrs. Wright get into trouble and go to court. In that time period, if a woman went
to court, they were usually let go. The jury would have sympathy for them and believe they
didn’t commit a crime. But if it was a man who went to court, no matter if the evidence was not
really there, they had a more likely chance of being convicted. This goes to show another
difference between men and women. The sheriff needed strong evidence against Mrs. Wright
but Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters decide to stick together and not say anything.