In her short play "Trifles", Susan Glaspell shows the difference between genders. This
story is about a murder investigation. The setting for "Trifles" is in an untidy kitchen in a
rural farmhouse, on a cold winter day. The farm's owner, John Wright was strangled to
death in his sleep, while his wife slept next to him. She is now held in custody as a
suspect, claiming she didn't now anything about the murder, because she was in a deep
sleep.
The play begins with Henderson, the county attorney questioning Lewis Hale, a neighbor
farmer, who discovered the murder the day before. While the man were investigating the
crime scene, the women remained in the warm kitchen and started to chat to pass the time.
They just had an every day housewife conversation, about small things, the preserves,
how the man were mean for criticizing Mrs. White's untidiness, they were wondering if
she killed her husband who was a good but a hard man." Just to pass the time of day with
him-like a raw wind that gets to the bone". The two women even noticed the mistake on
the pretty quilt that she was working on. How the time passed they felt deeper and
deeper Mrs. Wright's loneliness and unhappiness. When they saw a bird cage, they
sensed how important that could be in Mrs. Wright's life and later when they founnd the
little bird with a wrung neck in a beautiful box, they knew what happened. They didn't
tell the men about their discovery, the little "trifle" they have uncovered. Mrs. Hale and
Mrs. Peters noticed tiny details that the men would not care about. They chose to hide
the evidence because they were loyal to their gender.
