In this blog post, we’ll analyze how the subtle clues found in the kitchen in Susan Glaspell’s one-act play ‘Trifles’ bear witness to women’s experiences and serve as the key to dismantling male-centered legal and social structures.

Introduction

About the Author

Susan Glaspell (1882–1948) was an American playwright and novelist born in Iowa. She began her career with neighborhood theater groups and later, together with her husband J. K. Cook, organized the Provincetown Players, spearheading the small-theater movement and influencing the theatrical world of her time.
Glaspell is known for works such as the one-act play ‘Suppressed Desires’ (1914), a satire on psychoanalysis, and ‘Trifles’ (1916), which tells the story of a wife who murdered her husband. She also won the Pulitzer Prize for the three-act play ‘Alison’s House’ (1930), which deals with events among the heirs of Emily Dickinson, and her novels include ‘The Glory of the Conquered’ (1909) and ‘The Road to the Temple’ (1926).

About the Play

Set in a small American town in 1916, this one-act play unfolds through the investigation of a man’s murder. The characters include Mrs. Hale, Mrs. Peters, District Attorney George Henderson, Sheriff Henry Peters, and neighbor Lewis Hale; the story begins as they visit the scene of Mr. Wright’s murder.
Glaspell presents a paradoxical plot in which, while the male characters casually overlook minor clues during the investigation, women—who were considered socially powerless—unravel the mystery of the case using precisely those minor details. In particular, by highlighting how objects scattered in the kitchen—such as a sewing basket—which men typically overlook, become the key to solving the case, she challenges the male-centered standards that have universally been regarded as serious and important.

Main Body

Definition of Feminism

Feminism began as a movement and ideology that critiques and seeks to resolve inequalities and oppression rooted in gender. In line with social and academic changes, feminism has branched into various theoretical currents, each presenting distinct perspectives on methodologies for women’s liberation and ways of understanding the nature of gender differences.
Ultimately, feminism shares the belief that women’s liberation contributes to the well-being of all humanity. While the term itself derives from “female” and conveys a focus on women and respect for femininity, in English-speaking countries today, the term “gender”—which refers to social gender rather than biological sex—is often used in the name “gender studies.” This is an adaptation made in consideration of the fact that the word “feminism” can evoke unnecessary resistance.

Feminist Criticism Used in Literary Analysis — The Psychoanalytic Perspective

Criticism that incorporates psychoanalysis into feminism sought to identify the causes of women’s oppression in individual psychological states and unconscious mechanisms rather than through a structural approach. This perspective focuses on explaining how femininity is formed and internalized through certain psychological mechanisms.
However, psychoanalytic feminism has been criticized for tending to attribute the root of the problem to differences in human nature between men and women. This is because there is a risk that structural factors—such as family structures and social institutions that create the gender division of labor—may be relatively overlooked. Nevertheless, this approach has made a positive contribution by expanding the perspective on women’s issues and practical strategies through its exploration of the deep layers embedded in the individual psyches of men and women.

Feminist Criticism Used in Literary Analysis — A Postmodern Perspective

Postmodern feminism criticizes attempts to explain the causes of women’s oppression through a single or fixed factor and emphasizes a perspective that deconstructs the category of “woman” itself. From this perspective, there are no universal characteristics of women, and femininity is viewed as varying depending on context, such as social status, economic conditions, political situations, and cultural ideologies.
While postmodern feminism is theoretically flexible and raises powerful questions, it has the weakness of being overly abstract, making it difficult to popularize. It also faces critical dilemmas, such as the argument that deconstructing the category of “women” could ultimately weaken the ability of women’s groups to solve their own problems.

Feminism in Literature

A major factor behind the diverse development of contemporary feminist theories was the recognition of the importance of “the little things”—as Glaspell emphasized early on—and the significance of women’s culture. Glaspell shifted her focus away from a male-centered perspective toward the small details of everyday life, incorporating elements of mystery into events and dialogue while developing her stories through psychological insight.
In the play, Mrs. Haile and Mrs. Peters reconstruct the difficult life of their neighbor, Minnie Wright, who is in jail on charges of murdering her husband. Through this process, the two women and the audience come to understand the nature of the suffering that a male-dominated society inflicts on all women. However, the core of the play lies not so much in the motive for the murder itself as in the psychological dilemmas faced by the two women.
By concealing the facts they know and eliminating clues that might work against Mrs. Light, Mrs. Haile and Mrs. Peters effectively strip men in positions of legal authority—such as the sheriff or the prosecutor—of their right to administer justice, taking it into their own hands. They did so because they believed that only women who had experienced the same suffering as Mrs. Light could truly judge her.
The actions of these two women highlight the importance of seemingly trivial matters while also serving as a powerful challenge to the male-dominated hierarchy. Through these minor and peripheral elements of women’s culture, the author sought to expose larger social issues.

Trifles — Key Images and Symbols

Physical Descriptions and Names: The female characters in the story are primarily defined by others’ descriptions. For example, Mrs. Peters is described as slender and fussy, and is typecast as a nervous figure subordinate to men. In contrast, Mrs. Hale is depicted as having a more relaxed and healthy build and is given a rebellious disposition. The fact that the characters address one another as “Mrs.” rather than by their given names reveals the position of women, whose very names are defined by their husbands.
Incompleted Work: In a society where women’s roles are understood solely as efforts toward perfect housework, neither the value of that labor nor women’s status is properly considered. The kitchen, left in a state of disarray, symbolizes Minnie Wright’s mental turmoil and the fragments of her life; by dismissing such traces as “trivial,” the male investigators miss the core of the investigation.
The Object “Phone”: The fact that Ms. Light lacks even seemingly trivial conveniences like a telephone demonstrates her husband’s stinginess and the lack of human connection within the household. The absence of this everyday object symbolizes economic and emotional alienation, ultimately revealing how small deprivations affect a person’s life and psyche.
In this way, the recurring props and environmental descriptions in the play function as symbols that reflect character psychology and social structures, going beyond mere background. Glaspell reveals women’s experiences through the everyday clues that men tend to overlook, thereby prompting the audience to reconsider what truly matters.

Symbolic Elements

The fact that the husband refused to install a telephone without considering it as a means for his wife to relieve stress, chat, and communicate is a key factor that leaves Mrs. Wright excluded from external communication and feeling isolated.
Wright: The word “right” hidden within her name symbolizes that Mrs. Wright’s rights are being sacrificed, both socially and by her husband.
A Little Closer Together: When Mrs. Peters mentions that the imprisoned Minnie Wright is worried about her jar of fruit, the sheriff dismissively states, “All women worry about trivial matters.” This assumption causes the women to adopt a defensive stance, which ironically serves as a catalyst for them to draw closer to one another.
Jar of Cherries: Viewing the cherries as red and the jar as a circle evokes associations with menstrual blood. The breaking of Mrs. Light’s cherished jar of cherries may symbolize her loss of reproductive function as she enters menopause, while simultaneously hinting at the coldness—the emotional distance—in her marital relationship.
Quilt & Knot It: A quilt is a symbol of pieces coming together in harmony to form a whole, representing the “harmonious life” the Wrights should strive for. However, the fact that “knot” was chosen instead of a quilt—which the couple would have made together—reveals a rupture and severance in their relationship. Like a knot that is difficult to untie once tied, it also expresses the situation in which Mrs. Wright’s life has become entangled and difficult to resolve. Ultimately, even though “knot it” is a crucial clue to the entire incident, the men fail to discover it.
Footsteps: The sound of the men’s footsteps symbolizes an authoritative and coercive force. The kitchen, depicted as a women’s space, is located on the lower floor of the house and is assigned a trivial, fixed meaning, whereas the upper floor, where the men stomp about, is portrayed as dynamic and significant. This staging actually draws the audience’s attention to the ordinary women’s space and serves as a clue to avoid the traces of patriarchal men.
Bird: Upon discovering a broken birdcage and a dead bird with its neck twisted inside a sewing box, the two women learn that John Wright had killed the bird by twisting its neck. It becomes clear to them that the bird was Mrs. Wright’s sole source of comfort, and that by disposing of it, her husband had robbed her of the vitality of her life. They then realize that this incident was the direct catalyst that ultimately led her to murder her husband. The fact that Mrs. Wright—who used to enjoy singing in the choir—felt lonely and isolated in her completely changed circumstances after marriage highlights the similarity between the fate of the canary trapped in its cage and that of Mrs. Foster, trapped within her home. This realization erases any sympathy for Mr. Wright.
Law & Justice: Mrs. Peters claims she is “married to the law,” but she is not in a position to enact or enforce it. Since the district attorney is her husband—the sheriff—they perceive the law as a male domain. In this play, the women appear to circumvent the law and establish their own sense of justice in defiance of male-dominated institutional power.

Text Analysis

The two wives reflect on Minnie Wright’s situation as they wrestle with whether or not to tell the men about the evidence they’ve discovered. They reproach themselves for failing to save Minnie, who was abandoned to a dreary life with a taciturn husband who wouldn’t let her answer the phone or even keep a bird.
Mrs. Haeil says, “I could have come. I stayed away because it wasn’t cheerful, and that’s why I ought to have come. I’ve never liked this place. Maybe because it’s down in a hollow and you don’t see the road. I don’t know what it is, but it’s a lonely place and always was,” revealing why she couldn’t come to Mini’s aid sooner. Even Mrs. Peters, the sheriff’s wife, seems to be covering up for Mini.
Mrs. Hale says, “I know what stillness is. When we homesteaded in Dakota, and my first baby died after he was two years old, and I had no one else then,” she says, drawing on her own experience to explain the despair a woman feels when cut off from the outside world as a farmwife. They understand the deep loneliness Mrs. Wright must have felt when even her minimal contact with others was severed, and they try to comprehend the extreme choice that resulted from it.
The solidarity between the two women ultimately leads them to conceal evidence of the murder. Glasspell metaphorically reveals this psychological isolation by setting the play’s backdrop on a farm in Iowa. Psychological isolation serves as the backdrop against which a woman—deprived of the opportunity to function as a whole human being through relationships with others—is driven to extreme circumstances.
Although Mrs. Wright did not live in a place that was completely geographically isolated, her farm was on the outskirts, far from the village, despite the newly connected railroad and communication networks of the time. John Wright refused to have a telephone installed and did not allow even minimal social activities, such as the church choir that Minnie had enjoyed before her marriage. This emotional and social isolation was a key factor that drove her to murder.
The depiction of the setting early in the play clearly reveals the psychological implications of loneliness and isolation. Mrs. Wright inherited the hardships endured by earlier generations of pioneer women, reflecting the plight of women who toiled under endless domestic labor and loneliness while settling the barren plains of the 19th century. The historical observation that women living in rural areas had a higher incidence of mental health issues is presented as context to explain the impact of domestic labor and isolation on women’s mental well-being.
The quilt, a key metaphor in the play, carries multiple meanings. A quilt is a three-layered bedding set that protects the body from cold weather, and for 19th-century women, it was a primary means of expressing their creativity. Through this activity—which was permitted and encouraged in a male-dominated society—women exchanged opinions without speaking and formed a sense of communal solidarity. Quilting, intertwined with church women’s group activities, provided women with a social role and a sense of connection.
However, Mrs. Wright was deprived of even these opportunities for communication. When Mrs. Haile examines Mrs. Wright’s sewing and discovers that the stitches—which are usually meticulous—are a mess, she instinctively realizes that this could be the decisive motive her husband is looking for.
“Something to show anger or sudden feeling.” Mrs. Haile unpicks Mrs. Wright’s uneven stitches. This immediate and automatic reaction is interpreted as an act intended both to protect Mini and to heal her. By re-sewing the stitches evenly, Mrs. Haile symbolically expresses solidarity with the wounded woman.

The Symbiotic Relationship Between Stitches and Silence

Mini Light’s stitches carry the same significance for Mrs. Peters as well.
Mrs. Peters was the first to notice Mini’s clumsy stitching, and when she hands it to Mrs. Haile, a wordless connection flows between them. In the play, this scene is described in the original English text as follows: “the women’s eyes met; something flashed to life, passed between them.” This brief moment is the decisive turning point where empathy and understanding begin to blossom between the two women.
Mrs. Peters is portrayed, as Mrs. Haeil describes her, as a timid and unassuming person. She appears indecisive, torn between her sympathy for Mrs. Wright and the pressure to submit to the authority of the law because her husband is the sheriff. When Mrs. Haeil urges her to choose the other side—that is, Mini’s side—she evades the issue, but a sudden realization ultimately leads her to challenge male authority.
As a result of this realization, Mrs. Peters defends Minnie by quickly hiding the box containing Mrs. Wright’s dead canary. This act of defiance is not a mere impulse but a decision born of the accumulated significance of the small details she has come to recognize throughout the play. Her unhesitating response upon discovering Minnie’s sloppy stitching foreshadows her subsequent collusion with Mrs. Hale.

Conclusion: The Play’s Feminist Elements and Their Limitations

This play was written at a time when the women’s suffrage movement was in full swing, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. The author, Glasspell, was a former journalist, and since she wrote this play based on a case she covered during her time as a reporter, the work reflects its social context and real-life events. The plot—in which an oppressed woman murders her husband and other women, who were considered inferior to men, set out to uncover clues about the crime—clearly reveals a feminist perspective.
This play illustrates how men’s and women’s concepts of “justice” differ. While men cling to a fixed, conventional framework of justice, women view justice as the sum of small factors—a combination of social and personal influences—that shape specific actions. Mrs. Hayel and Mrs. Peters feel that in a society dominated by the conventional legal order, it is difficult to fully understand or fairly judge an exceptional case like that of Mrs. Wright.
The play reveals that the farther Mrs. Wright is removed from the kitchen and the outside world, the more the possibility of a fair judgment slips away from her. The two women realize how cruelly Mrs. Wright was treated by her husband and ultimately conclude for themselves that the murder could be justified. The character’s surname, “Mini,” symbolizes the social status of women during the author’s era. Mrs. Light’s loneliness, her lack of choice, and her disregard by society embody the reality faced by women at that time.
The way Mrs. Light exists solely through dialogue within the play mirrors the reality of women being socially ignored in a patriarchal society. The play emphasizes the need to examine the causes and consequences of her actions before condemning her. Her married life, in which she was isolated and silenced by her husband, rendered her virtually nonexistent until she killed him. In other words, Mrs. Wright is symbolized as a representative of the “invisible women” of Glasspell’s era.
However, limitations have also been pointed out in the feminist interpretation of the work. One example is the suggestion, from a psychoanalytic perspective, that Mrs. Wright’s motive for murder can be interpreted as “phallic envy.” If the birdcage (or the bird) existed for the purpose of raising a child—that is, as a tool to bear a son as a surrogate for a man—then frustration stemming from the “failure to acquire masculinity” could be a stronger motive than mere alienation arising from the couple’s cold relationship. Such an interpretation effectively accepts the stereotype that “a powerful woman is masculine,” and thus risks reproducing the cultural notion that women remain in an inferior position dependent on men.
Therefore, from a certain perspective, Mrs. Wright may be seen as having killed her husband out of frustration over her failure to attain masculinity; this could be interpreted as the revenge of an oppressed woman or as submission to an inescapable fate. Furthermore, one could criticize the story for failing to fully reveal female agency, pointing out that the two women had to join forces to uncover clues in solving the case.
Nevertheless, this play can be evaluated as a work that effectively expresses feminist ideas by exposing the oppression faced by women at the time and “educating” female audiences and characters. The fact that the characters secure their rights on their own, rather than waiting for suffrage, also signifies a subversion of traditional concepts of law and justice.

Questions for Reflection

1. Can this play be criticized as immoral?
2. How does the way the characters enter the stage at the beginning of the play, before any dialogue begins, illustrate the differences between men and women?
3. How do Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale differ as characters? What do the portrayals of these two characters symbolize about women?
4. When Mrs. Hale discovers the quilt and Mrs. Wright wonders whether she was sewing or trying to tie a knot, the men mock the women for worrying about trivial matters. What is the purpose of revisiting this issue in the play’s final lines?