Tuesday, September 29, 2015

In Trifles by Susan Glaspell, is Mrs. Wright a murderer?

In the play Trifles by Susan Glaspell, Mrs. Wright is technically guilty of murdering her husband. The play clearly indicates that she killed him. The detectives searching the Wright house during the course of the one-act play are looking for a motive, which they are unable to find. The wives of the two men searching the house—Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters—do uncover the likely motive and decide to hide the evidence. Even though they know Mrs. Wright killed her husband, they believe she did so with good reason—at least from what they can infer from her home and their former relationships with her—so they do not reveal the clues to their husbands.
When the men enter the Wright home, they search in all the expected places, like the entrances and the crime scent itself. They leave their wives to the "trifles," which in this case means gathering items for Mrs. Wright while she is in jail. As they do so, the women observe the state of the kitchen (work has been left unfinished) and Mrs. Wright's sewing (she dropped a stitch suddenly). They figure that Mrs. Wright must've been interrupted by something, or that she was suddenly upset about something. Then when they go to gather some sewing supplies, they come across Mrs. Wright's dead bird. The bird and the damaged cage imply that Mr. Wright killed her bird and she retaliated by killing him. The women combine this with their sense that Mrs. Wright had been isolated by her husband and her voice had been silenced, as she used to be a singer. The women associate the bird with the woman herself; thus, the husband killed the wife's spirit. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters decide this is a valid motive and join together with the wronged wife in keeping her secret.

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