Horne 1
Taylor Horne
Professor Mulry
5 December 2014
English 1102
Just Trifles?
Susan Glaspell’s “Trifles” illustrates the role of women in the early nineteen hundreds,
and how insignificant women were considered to be versus their male counterparts. Throughout
the drama, the men of the town are searching for evidence and a motive as to why Mrs. Wright
would murder her husband. In the meantime, Mrs. Wright’s female neighbors continue to say
how bad they feel that they were not there for their neighbor in her time of distress. They start
looking for things to bring Mrs. Wright while she is being held by the police, and they find many
significant “clues” that could easily prove motive from the perspective of a woman, but men
would never even notice these certain things. The definition of Trifles is “something that does
not have much significance or importance” (“Trifles”). In this play, Glaspell basically lays out all
the evidence the men need to prove motive, but the men sees those things as “trifles,” but when
the women look at these things in Mrs. Wright’s home and can tell that she was not a happy
housewife. The items of true significance in this story were the fruit jars, the log cabin quilt, and
the dead canary. Each of these items seems insignificant to the men, but the women see the story
of a woman whose husband killed her spirit.
During the course of the play, Mrs. Hale says “It never seem to be a cheerful place” but
what showed the true nature of the home is the broken fruit jars in the kitchen (Glaspell 2). The
Horne 2
women say how it’s a shame that all Mrs. Wright’s hard work goes to waste. The fruit has to be
kept at a certain temperature to maintain it freshness and to keep the jars from breaking. Mrs.
Peter’s said, “Oh, her fruit; it did freeze. She worried about that when it turned so cold. She said
the fire’d go out and her jars would break” (Glaspell 3). These jars are a symbol of how cold the
wright household was and the emotional abuse Mrs. Wright endured from her husband. Brian
Sutton stated in his article: “She lives on an isolated farm, and because of her husband’s cold
personality and the gloom of her surroundings, she (Mrs. Wright) has visitors” (Sutton 171).
Mrs. Peters adds, “They say he was a good man” (Glaspell 7). Mrs. Hale replies with detail, “Yes
– good: he didn’t drink, and he kept his word well as most, I guess, and he paid his debts. But he
was a hard man . . . Just to pass the time of day with him – (shivers) Like a raw wind that gets to
the bone” (Glaspell 7). She is giving an account on his true home nature, not the act he puts on
