Susan Glaspell, a feminist writer from the early 1900s, began her writing career as a reporter. As a reporter for a newspaper in Iowa, she covered a murder that became the inspiration for her play Trifles. The title is at once descriptive and ironic, and Glaspell incorporates various meanings of the word “trifles” in the play to reveal the different attitudes of the men and the women. Glaspell uses the definition “to deal without due respect” to express the men character’s disapproval of and the women character’s sympathy for the murder suspect, Mrs. Wright. As the county attorney and sheriff investigate the crime scene they begin criticizing Mrs. Wright for her seemingly untidy housekeeping, making scornful accusations such as “I shouldn’t say she had the homemaking instinct” (960). The comment is made after seeing a dirty towel roll. The remark is unjustified as the women later point out by noting that the towel was likely dirtied by the deputy sheriff who came into Mrs. Wright’s house after her arrest to start a small fire. Mrs. Hale also believes that the men aren’t giving Mrs. Wright enough credit, as “there’s a great deal of work to be done on a farm” (960). By using …show more content…
Wright than the men. This is how the second definition of trifles, “a small quantity,” comes into play. The men have limited proof of that the murderer is Mrs. Wright even after a thorough investigation of the departed’s house. The sheriff overlooks possible evidence, claiming that there is “nothing here but kitchen things,” while the women quickly find suspicious objects such as a quilt with unusually messy stitching, a broken bird cage, and the dead canary with its neck broken. Because the women find such evidence, the audience is lead to believe that women are more attentive, and thus more capable of finding evidence than the