"Trifles" is a relatively short, one act play written by Susan Glaspell in 1916. The play consists of five characters however there are two more characters who are not present, which the entire play is based upon.
The five characters include: George Henderson, the young county attorney; Henry Peters, the middle aged sheriff and his wife Mrs. Peters; Lewis Hale, farmer and neighbor to the Wright's and his wife Mrs. Hale. The two characters that do not act in the play are John Wright and his wife. Wright was killed by strangulation and the other characters were at his home speculating about how the murder took place. From the start of the scene it was assumed that Wrights' wife, Minnie, was the murderer. Also, I could ascertain that this play deals with the rights of women, (actually the deficit of rights) in the early twentieth century.
In fact, if this play was written by a male I would have been extremely offended; I'm surprised at the lack of respect shown to the female characters. For example, in the beginning of the play Mr. Hale was talking to his friend Harry about installing a "party phone" for himself and John Wright. Hale said that Wright "put him off" when he mentioned the phone the first time so he thought about speaking to Mrs. Wright about the issue. Hale then said " ...but I thought maybe if I went to the house and talked about it before his wife, though I said to Harry that I didn't know as what his wife wanted made much difference to John". A marriage is a partnership between two people, so when Hale inferred that Wright's wife's opinion didn't or wouldn't matter, that was absurd to me! If anything, in my experience, a lady can persuade her mate of the need to get/buy something, and can be very convincing! The fact that even Hale, a neighbor, would know that Wright didn't appreciate or wouldn't acknowledge his own wife's opinion tarnishes Wrights' whole character for me and its almost hard to feel empathy over his murder. But it wasn't just Wright's attitude towards women that needed a major adjustment, all the men in this play have serious issues when it comes to the female sex! Henderson the county attorney is concerned with the state of cleanliness of the house of a suspected murderer, Hale makes sweeping generalizations about women "used to worrying about trifles", and the sheriff won't even investigate a part of the crime scene properly because he says it's just "kitchen things"!
But what's even more mindboggling to me is that even the female characters downplay themselves in this play! Mrs. Peters was asked by Mrs. Wright to bring her apron down to the jail with her change of clothes. Mrs. Peters thought that to be an odd request and came to the conclusion that having the apron would probably make Mrs. Wright feel "more natural".
Mrs. Hale made an interesting statement while she and Mrs. Peters were trying to justify how Mrs. Wright might have murdered her husband. Mrs. Hale said, "I might have known she needed help! I know how things can be--for women." Assuming men and women have no differences and there are no gender roles, and men and women are just billions of different individuals with individual talents and individual needs, why would Glaspell make such a generalized statement? This seems to be some sort of female double standard to me. Unless Glaspell made a typographical error, and what she really meant to write was 'I know how things can be for --Mrs. Wright'...or 'I know how things can be --for myself".
I personally believe that tampering with state's evidence is morally wrong and illegal despite the fact that the men in this play were belittling the women, because maybe a conviction would have got Mrs. Wright the proper psychiatric care! If Mrs. Wright was so unhappy maybe she could have considered divorce instead of murder.
