Susan Glaspell'sTriflesis a play about the effect of gender differences on perceptions of duty, law, and justice. The play is based and focused on John Wright, that has been strangled to death with a rope in his eerie Midwestern farmhouse. His wife was the immediate suspect being that she was the only one found to be at the house during the incident. As the County Attorney Henderson, Sheriff Peters, and the neighbor of the Wrights named Mr. Hale investigated the house for clues, the women Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters were left to gather belongings for Mrs. Wright. While the women were focused on Mrs. Wright's unfinished quilt and female things as the men sarcastically made fun of, and Mr. Hale described as a trifle, "HALE: Well, women are used to worrying over trifles." (Glaspell 187), is what turned out to be the clues that lead to revealing the case. When the ladies further examined details in the lower part of the house as the men were upstairs searching for clues, they discovered Mrs. Wright's dead pet canary, which instantly formed the mystery of what had occurred. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters then concluded that Mr. Wright snapped the bird's neck. After years of being in a lonesome, neglectful, and emotionally abusive marriage, Mrs. Wright was clear to be fed up and murdered her husband, being that the canary was all she had to look forward to. The play comes to a climax when the women hide the evidence from the men in charge; not coming forward with what was needed to convict Mrs. Trifles leaves the audience with questions of why the women unite in Mrs. Wright's defense to hide the evidence from the male authorities. The significance of the title of the story is indicated throughout the play. Trifles are defined: a things of little value or importance, which the men constantly described the details that the women were focused on. As mentioned above, the female things and "women stuff" that Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale were worrying about were what led them to crack the case; therefore, what the men thought had no importance was the main factor that was needed for the investigation. The true meaning of justice for women and oppressed people everywhere.
The historical look at gender differences during the setting of the story is shown throughout the play with how the men and the women view clues and treat the house as the investigation proceeds. The men went directly to the crime scene where Mr. Wright was found dead, versus the women who more browsing the house conditions and Mrs. Wright's unfinished quilt, initially not searching for clues. The women paid attention to the things the men found trifle; consequently, the men were too busy making fun of the women worrying about none important components, which caused them to overlook the evidence being revealed through jarred preservatives, quilting, and poor housekeeping from Mrs. Wright. The story examples the overall mindset of men back in the 1800s and mid-1900s that women's concerns or thoug...
