'Trifles' is a one act play focused around the workings of two women who work to solve the murder of a man whom they know abused his wife, the murderer. The main theme of the play is to show a solidarity between women and the uselessness of a justice system without a full spectrum of views.
I mainly enjoy the use of symbolism in the story, especially with that of the canary. Birds are often used as symbols of freedom, womanhood and fragility. A caged bird especially holds a connotation of restriction of what would be a noble creature, but is now forced into a life of solitude and separation, which we can see if the case with the main character, Mrs. Wright. She had her one passion and love in her home, and it was for her bird. Mr. Wright strangles the creature, symbolizing a breaking point for Mrs.Wright, and a plot point in giving her a motive to enact a murder. She only needed a push; the straw that broke the house-wife's back.
We see a lot of misogynistic rhetoric throughout the entire piece, even outright refusal to take interest in the kitchen, which is a 'woman's area'. The 'trifles' of women are not to be of concern, but having such a narrow point of view is what inevitably keeps them from solving the murder case. This is a huge allegory for a push to equal rights for necessity, something that is pretty ahead of its time for 1916.
Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters conceal the dead bird from the authorities. This gives an impression that they sympathize or empathize with Mrs. Wright's situation. Maybe they too long for a taste of freedom away from their cages? They give this chance to Minnie, maybe even living vicariously through the freedom she will now have.
As a reader who enjoys mystery, “Trifles” did a nice job of creating the suspense. The women that were in the house with the County Attorney and Sheriff were able to discover all the clues they were looking for without doing much searching. Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale discovered the bird cage with the broken door hinge and eventually the canary with the broken neck and were able to piece everything together. The conversation between the sheriff and County Attorney at the send had me thinking, if you men only knew what was really going on between the women. “Do you want to see what Mrs. Peters is going to take in?” and the County Attorney replied “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." (Mays, 1134) As I stated before I enjoyed reading this play because of the "dramatic irony," of the play. Dramatic Irony is defined as a literary technique, originally used in Greek tragedy, by which the full significance of a character's words or actions are clear to the audience or reader although unknown to the character. There's a part in the play that helps reinforce "dramatic irony" through a conversation between the three men.
ReplyDeleteSheriff: Well, can you beat the women! Held for murder and worryin' about her preserves.
County Attorney: I guess before we're through she may have something more serious than preserves to worry about.
Hale: Well, women are used to worrying over trifles.
This is interesting because if the men had focused on the things they thought to be "trifles," they too would have found the clues or the motive they were looking for.
Mays, K. J. (2013). The Norton introduction to literature. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/dramatic%20irony