Trifles
Trifles Author: Susan Glaspell
First Performance: 1916, Provincetown, Mass.
Published: 1920
Genre: Drama in 1 act
Setting: Kitchen of a rundown Midwest farmhouse, c.1916
Cast: 3m, 2f
A farmer has been discovered strangled, and the sheriff and his men are investigating the case. The sheriff's wife Mrs Peters and a female neighbour Mrs Hale go through the household trifles in the kitchen and note the untidy room, uneven stitching in a quilt, a dead canary carefully laid in ‘a pretty box’, etc. They piece together enough evidence to convict the farmer's widow of the murder. However, in reconstructing the crime, the two women reflect on the life of abuse that the farmer's wife had to endure and agree that the poor woman was pushed beyond reasonable limits. Feeling guilty that they did nothing to help...
[The entire page is 259 words long]
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