Analysis of Trifles Story and Gender Roles In It

Conformity to Gender Roles in “Trifles” “Trifles” written by Susan Glaspell takes place in the home of the late Mr. Wright and his wife Mrs. Wright. Mr. Hale, a neighbor, investigates the crime scene alongside local sheriff Peters. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters also accompany them, accidentally uncovering clues to the murder mystery along their way. The play explores the differences in how men and women observe and behave by contrasting the characters’ different reactions and observations in the home. The characters conformity to their gender roles in this play are what allow the women to uncover the truth. The men in the play investigate the scene in a much more serious and professional way compared to the women, who approach the scene with attention to detail and with more emotion. The use of the word “trifles” for the title of the play represents the items that the men saw as worthless that led to the answer to their murder mystery. The title “Trifles” refers to the items and the details that the women notice in the Wright’s home. Mr. Hale refers to Mrs. Wright’s worries over her preserves as “worrying over trifles.” While the women understand her worry over this and see it as insight into her life, the men consider it to have no importance to their evidence. The women understand her broken jars and frozen fruit as insight into her marriage with Mr. Wright. While the title suggests that these women are noticing items with little importance, the story tells that their attention to detail, or their attention to these ‘trifles” is what allows them to understand why Mrs. Wright murdered Mr. Wright. The fruit is frozen because Mrs. Wright does not tend to her fire which makes the women assume that she had more issues going on and more problems to deal with than just doing her housework. Something that the men simply brush off as unimportant is a clue into the women's understanding that there is more happening in this household than just a normal marriage. Because the women are so used to the details in a home considering they also tend to their homes, they are able to pick up on these small features and notice that they are telling to Mrs. Wright’s relationship with her husband. The simple reasoning for the characters to be at the house itself also separates them by gender. The men are there for work, as a sheriff and as a county attorney, while the women are there to accompany them. The men are strictly looking for clues and evidence while the women go off on their own and notice random details about the home. The county attorney and sheriff view this house as a crime scene that a murder occurred at, an investigation that they must but to an end. The women, however, are taking in the details of the house as it is; a home. The women grasp an understanding for Mrs. Wright as a woman, a wife and as a friend. They speak of her at a younger age and how her and her life changed when she married, while the men push all of these ideas aside and focus directly on their work. The women analyze and dissect Mrs. Wright’s life, causing them to randomly come across the evidence that could prove she murdered her husband. Opposite to this, the men are only looking in the room of the murder and are only trying to find clues that deal with the murder, rather than the reasoning behind it. While the women aren’t even looking for an answer to this murder mystery, they come across it because they relived the life of Mrs. Wright while the men just relive one moment. The items that the women stumble across are ones that the men continuously pass without concern. When the women are in the farmhouse, they come across Mrs. Wright’s unfinished quilt. This quilt leads to them uncovering Mrs. Wright’s bird that had its neck wrung. Without having paid attention to an unfinished quilt, this huge clue would have never been found. However, the county attorney dismisses this quilt in saying that it’s not a “very dangerous thing [that] the ladies have picked out.” The county attorney’s dismissal of the quilt just because it isn’t necessarily “dangerous” or because it isn’t the literal murder weapon that the men thought they could find, shows how the women’s evaluation of the crime scene brings them their answer because they were really evaluating Mrs. Wright’s life, rather than just one scene from it. The state of the quilt itself also tells the women that Mrs. Wright was in a state of distress, something that becomes obvious to the women when they see that Mrs. Wright’s sewing is “all over the place” “as if she didn't know what she was about.” The messy sewing tells the women she is nervous about something, which they later come to assume is the abusive relationship that she was in with her husband. This tiny detail that the men so quickly write off is what once again makes them question the state of the house and Mrs. Wright’s items, all messy and as if she didn’t have the time to tend to them. The one item that particularly leads to the biggest clue of the crime is an item found by the women as well as analyzed by them. The birdcage leads to much thought on the marriage between Mr. and Mrs. Wright. The women even go so far as to compare who Mrs. Wright was before she was married to a bird, as she was “lively” and a singer in the choir. The empty bird cage leads them to find the dead bird with its neck wrung, symbolic of Mr. Wright killing the old version of Mrs. Wright in their abusive relationship. The women clue into the emotions of Mrs. Wright to understand her loneliness and her motive behind the crime. When the men come outside to look for clues of someone coming in, they acknowledge the bird cage as empty, but nothing more. This valuable finding does not even get questioned by the men because they discount the women’s interpretation of the item. They do not expect women to be able to do a man’s job, despite the fact that them being women and understanding the role of a woman in a home is what allowed them to do the men’s job. While the women do not go out looking for clues to this murder mystery, they still come across them because of their ability to undo Mrs. Wright’s life and put together clues that the men didn’t even understand as clues. The parallels that are drawn from the men and women both gathering evidence show how their gender roles may conform the women to be confined to their homes, however it does not make them stray away from doing important work and rather makes them do the legal officials jobs better than they could. The play highlights that even though the women were supposed to wait while the men did the work, they were still able to overcome the gender role of being “useless” in a situation where the men held the job title. The womens’ way of uncovering evidence dealt with emotion and with starting at the little clues and dissecting them in Mrs. Wright’s life. The women continue viewing the home as a home with details, while the men view it as their job for the day. The conformity to gender roles in this story shows that while the men consider the womens’ findings useless, they actually work against the roles by gaining power in the truth they have.