Trifles Add Up to a Big Case

¶ … Trifles Add Up to a Big Case

One of the greatest lessons in life is the one that things are never how they appear; something else is always going on and it is best to pay attention to those other things to get a clear picture of what is actually going on. In Susan Glaspell's play, Trifles, we see an example of how looking beneath the surface proves to be very critical in figuring out what happened in the Wright's house. The small trifles, which the men choose to overlook, become the most significant aspects of the case but these men are too prejudice to be open to that fact. Through the seemingly insignificant details the women find, Glaspell is proving a larger point that some people cannot see the truth because of their mindset.

The men in the play seem to think trifles are useless. This arrogant attitude immediately creates a wall between the men and women in the play. The men simply do not think the women can offer any helpful or objective advice, so they leave the alone in the kitchen. Hale tells the Attorney, "Women are used to worrying over trifles" (Glaspell 1117). From this statement, we can assume the men will only see the women as getting in their way, should they want to say anything. As a result, they bumble around the house, unable to put any pieces of the puzzle together. The men are their own worst enemy because they allow their attitudes about women prevent them from solving a crime. The real crime is their close-mindedness.

Trifles are not useless. The irony of this play is that the very things the men thought were useless bits of information told a story about what happened to the Wrights. They do not even spend any amount of time in the kitchen because that is a woman's place and only cooking and cleaning happens in the kitchen. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters find seemingly unrelated things that are actually clues. One obvious clue the men would never have picked up on was the misplaced loaf of bread. They know that only a woman in distress would not put the bread back in the breadbox. The table is also only partially wiped clean. This, too, is a sign that something is amiss. In the living area, the women notice that Mrs. Wright's quilt is "not sewed very good" (1121) because it looks like "she didn't know what she was about" (1121). Mrs. Peters also notices the broken door on the birdcage. Later they find, in a fancy box no man would have ever looked into, the dead bird wrapped in a piece of silk, in a fancy box and they deduce that Minnie was going to bury the bird after John killed it. The meaningless items of this home tell the whole story.