How Is Irony Used In Trifles

Thirdly, Glaspell uses the literary device of irony to maintain the audience's attention and to build suspense in the drama. Irony is defined as the usage of words that are opposite of its literal meaning (“Irony”). Trifles is a dramatic irony where the audience is able to understand the main point of the story but, a few of the main characters in the piece cannot. One major moment of irony in the drama is when the intelligence of Mrs.Hale and Mrs.Peters is underestimated. They use it as an advantage when keeping quiet as they find clues the men were overlooking and figure out the murder on their own. The women were granted access to the crime scene because during this time no one thought women were smart enough to figure it out on their own

When conversing the County Attorney says to the Sheriff, “You're convinced that there was nothing important here—nothing that would point to any motive” to which the Sheriff responds, “Nothing here but kitchen things”(Glaspell,Susan). The men are trying to prove Mrs.Wright committed murder however, their assumptions of women being weak causes them to ignore the kitchen when typically is considered to be the woman's domain where she probably spent most of her time. It is in the kitchen that Mrs.Hale and Mrs.Peters find the questionable unfinished piece of quilt, the birdcage, and the dead canary wrapped in Mrs.Wrights sewing box. The women's intellectual reasoning surpasses the men's basic detective skills, ironically creating a clever plot during the time period because it is the complete opposite of any role a woman would play in that

The County Attorney and Sheriff examine the items the women want to take to Mrs.Wright in jail and the attorney says, “Oh, I guess they're not very dangerous things the ladies have picked out… No, Mrs. Peters doesn't need supervising. For that matter, a sheriff's wife is married to the law…” (Glaspell, Susan). This quote shows how the attorney assumes the women have picked out decent items to take to Mrs.Wright, little did he realize the items included the dead canary and the unfinished quilt which the women altered, therefore eliminating any evidence that may convict Mrs.Wright as guilty. Also, the attorney ignored the idea that Mrs.Peters would do anything to corrupt the crime scene merely because she is the Sheriff's wife but, the audience knows she is concealing the evidence. She does not admit to finding evidence because as a woman in society at this time she can emotionally and realistically relate to Mrs.Wright and that connection is more important to her than the law (Holliday, Stephen). Then at the end of the drama a kind of humor is incorporated as well through the phrase “knot it”. The women had focused on the quilt pattern Mrs.Wright had left unfinished and made the correlation between the knotted pattern on the quilt with the way Mrs.Wright conducted the murder. The type