Patriarchal Oppression in Glaspell's "Trfiles"

At first glance, Susan Glaspell’s magnificent play appears to be about a murder investigation. But the play has multiple layers that conceal deeper meanings and reveal larger themes about gender relations, the most prominent of which is patriarchal oppression. Lewis Hale, a neighboring farmer who is assisting the county attorney, declares: “Well, women are used to worrying over trifles.” Hale’s statement, bristling with hubris, implies that women are trivial and unimportant. It suggests that men are doing all of the important work and that women are irrelevant. The irony is that the story of Mrs. Wright and her relationship to her husband is revealed in so-called trifles: a messy kitchen, an unfinished quilt, and frozen jars of preserves, a birdcage with a broken door and a dead canary wrapped in cloth in a sewing basket. Each piece of the unfinished quilt, viewed by the male characters as “trifles,” tells the story of an oppressed woman’s life with a respected but “hard man.” 

The Wright’s farmhouse, the scene of a murder, is cold and inhospitable, much like the relationship between John and his wife. Only the male characters in the play are given a first name, which infers that the women’s identity and their value are derived from their husbands, with the further implication that women have no inherent value. It is when Mrs. Hale refers to Mrs. Wright by her maiden name, Minnie Foster, that the prime suspect is given her own identity. 

Mrs. Wright was emotionally and physically isolated from the outside world. She was abused. The other women in the story did not come to visit her, a fact that is lamented by Mrs. Hale, who regards her failure to do so as a crime. In a society that gives men privileges and denies them to women, women need to support one another. Mrs. Wright’s only companion was a singing canary that reminded her of happier times. But, like the canary it its cage, Mrs. Wright was imprisoned within the walls of that cold house with John.

By piecing together the clues that the men in the story regarded as irrelevant, the women deduced what happened and understood why Mrs. Wright strangled her husband. I had the impression that they empathized with her, despite the illegality and apparent immorality of her act. In their minds it was justifiable homicide.

Late in the play, Mrs. Hale reflects upon the dead canary: “No, Wright wouldn’t like the bird—a thing that sang. She used to sing. He killed that, too.” The canary was Mrs. Wright’s only companion in that house, and her overbearing husband wrung its neck. John Wright’s unpardonable act was not only a symbolic attack on his wife; it was an assault on women and matriarchy, a violent attack on all that is good and beautiful. He got what he deserved. 

 

Significantly, at the end of the play Mrs. Hale unlawfully concealed the evidence that would have convicted Mrs. Wright, evidence that was in plain sight but misinterpreted under the noses of the officious male investigators.