who becomes the protagonist.  John Wright, then, the cruel and abusive husband, is the antagonist who got what he deserved.

Ironically, the men who are in charge never see it this way, and they will never learn of the evidence their wives have discovered since the women are the true jury of Minnie's peers (this play was based on a short story by Glaspell called "A Jury of Her Peers"--all based on a newspaper story Glaspell read about a woman who allegedly killed her husband), and having related to Minnie on many levels, the women have found her not guilty.  In this way, all the women of the play seem to be collectively the protagonist.  The men, therefore, are collectively the antagonist as they do not see any importance in the women's "trifles" and the smallness of their lives.  They are all, then, somewhat guilty of taking their wives for granted and not treating them with as much love and respect as they probably should.

A round character has dimensions or characteristics that make her emerge as a real human being that one can gradually know. A flat character is usually a type, exhibiting only one relevant characteristic.

In Trifles, the men are flat and more or less interchangeable. Their function is to treat the women in a condescending and dismissive manner, which shows the gulf between male and female abilities to perceive. They are in many ways stereotypes of men who belittle women. In contrast, Mrs. Hale, Mrs. Peters, and Minnie Wright are comparatively rounded characters, although the play is too short to fully develop them.

Mrs. Hale can be easily differentiated from Mrs. Peters as the older housewife who knew Minnie when she was young. Mrs. Hale is a round character because she has a mix of good and bad qualities, like a real person. On the positive side, she likes Minnie and could appreciate her happy and vibrant qualities. On the negative side, Mrs. Hale began, as is human nature, to avoid Minnie as Minnie became sadder and her home less pleasant. As Mrs. Hale pieces together what happened, she cannot condemn Minnie for killing her husband—she understands why Minnie felt forced to act.

Mrs. Peters also can understand why Minnie snapped but for a different set of reasons—and these reasons differentiate her from Mrs. Hale. Mrs. Peters did not grow up in the area, but she understands what it is to be isolated and also what it is to watch helplessly as a male kills a beloved pet. The two women together, because they are different, are able to understand—at multiple levels—why Minnie murdered her spouse. Through their eyes, too, Minnie becomes a well-rounded woman who is sympathetic, not merely the bad housewife the men wrongly dismiss her as.

For a charcter to be round, you need to be able to identify with that character and be able to see that character as a person.  Both Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters are real women.  Mrs. Hale is the gruff, older, more matronly women to Mrs. Peters' younger more dutiful wife.  Are they stereotypes?  Maybe, but as you read Trifles, you can identify with Mrs. Hale's remorse and guilt at not visiting Mrs. Wright more often.  You can also identify with Mrs. Peters law abiding side and also with revelations about her past.  As female, you actually find yourself hoping that the women don't divulge what they've found and know.  That kind of bond with the story can only happen if you have round characters present.

As for the men, they are all flat characters.  Their purpose is to refelct current beliefs about women and to increase the bonding between Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters.

The stereotypes that are present in the play are all those negative women connotations that don't seem to go away.  The way the men treat the women is a stereotype.  The conversation about the quilt is ridiculous to the men because they don't realize the significance.  The idea that the woman should take care of the house is another stereotype.  The county attorney implies that since Mrs. Wright doesn't seem to keep a clean house, she must be guilty.

But Glaspell essentailly takes each stereotype and turns it upside down.  The women find the evidence.  The women figure out the motive.  The attention to small details is what solves the case.  The small details, or trifles, that only women would notice.

The one-act play Trifles by Susan Glaspell has two protagonists: Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines "protagonist" as

the principal character in a literary work (such as a drama or story); the leading actor or principal character in a television show, movie, book, etc.

In the short story version of the play, "A Jury of Her Peers," Mrs. Hale is the leading protagonist and Mrs. Peters supports her, but in Trifles, the women work together to solve the murder and then cover up the evidence they find to protect Minnie Wright, the wife of the murder victim John Wright.

In the beginning of the play, the dialog focuses on the men: Lewis Hale, Sheriff Peters, and George Henderson, the county attorney. However, this is to set the tone and mood and to emphasize that the men consider what they are doing to be more important. They demean the women for being so concerned with household details. Mr. Hale remarks, "Women are used to worrying over trifles."

This establishes a contrast between the self-important men, who go all over the house but find no clues at all, and the women, who look around in the kitchen while they are waiting and discover enough clues to implicate Minnie Wright in the murder. However, the women also make a decision not to share this information with the men. The play points out the inequality between the men and the women, and it also points out the injustice of that inequality in that the women solve the mystery but the men do not.

We see, then, that because Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters become the central characters and work together to find clues and solve the mystery, they are the protagonists of the play.

The most tragic character in Trifles is a character we never see on stage: Minnie Foster Wright. She is suspected of murdering her husband and is being held in the local jail. The play itself depicts the investigation of the murder scene, the Wrights' farm, and focuses mostly on the women who are there to gather some items to bring to Mrs. Wright and inadvertently solve the crime.

Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters accompany their husbands, who are part of the official investigative for evidence of motive at the crime scene. As the women set about gathering personal items for Mrs. Wright, they notice some odd details in the home. They see that Mrs. Wright did not finish some work in the kitchen and that she missed a stitch in her knitting. These observations suggest that Mrs. Wright was interrupted and that she was acting out of character. However, it is the discovery of the broken bird cage and the body of the dead bird that truly suggest the tragedy of Mrs. Wright's character. Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale reflect on what they know of Mrs. Wright and her life with her husband. Mrs. Hale in particular identifies with Mrs. Wright, as she knew her as Minnie Foster. Minnie was once "sweet and pretty." Mrs. Hale admits that she never visited her old friend because "it's a lonesome place." She feels sympathetic and pities Minnie but also feels guilty that she abandoned her friend. The women both empathize with Minnie when they discover or at least speculate that her husband broke her bird's neck. The bird was her only sense of joy, and once he killed it, Minnie snapped. Mrs. Peters even remembers a moment from her childhood where a boy killed her kitten, and that makes her feel Minnie's pain.

Because the women in the play empathize with Minnie as they lay out the details of her sad, lonely life, the readers are also prone to see Minnie as a tragic figure.

A tragic character is Minnie Wright.  She is the wife of Mr. Wright, who she murdered.  However, Minnie is not what most would classify as a cold-blooded murderer.  We have to know about her life before passing judgment about her character.  She lived a very reclusive life, thanks to her husband, who was extremely controlling, more so than normal.  Minnie used to be a cheerful, outgoing young woman who enjoyed singing (before she met her husband).  After marrying Mr. Wright, she was forced to stop her singing, which crushed her spirit.  Mr. Wright controlled what she did and who she did it with. The breaking point was when she had gotten a beautiful pet canary that sang to her.  This was her pride and joy.  Mr. Wright got tired of the bird's singing, so he broke its neck.  Minnie could not take anymore of what she had endured for so many years, so she killed her husband.  She is a tragic character because she had to endure so much sorrow and sadness at the hands of her controlling husband, and this drove her to commit murder.

You have asked more than one question, so, according to enotes rules and regulations, I have edited it down to just focus on the characterisation in Trifles.

What is interesting about this play is that in a sense there is not just one protagonist - there are two - Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale. They are pitted against the male characters in the play: Hale, the County Attorney and The Sheriff. The antagonism between this play focussed on gender relations is built around the fact that the women are able to find the motive that the men are cluelessly looking for, in spite of the men underestimating their focus on "Trifles" - household clues that clearly reveal the reason for the crime.

To investigate this further, you will want to look at how the men mock the women and infer that they know nothing, only concerning themselves with "womanly" activities. A key example of this, and one that is referred to again and again at various points in the play to highlight the irony, concerns the quilt that Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale find. Mrs. Hale says of this quilt:

It's log cabin pattern. Pretty, isn't it? I wonder if she was goin' to quilt it or just knot it?

Note then that the men descend the stairs, and the Sherrif repeats her words, drawing a laugh from the men. It is highly crucial then, that straight away after this, whilst Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters are taking up their time with "little things" as Mrs. Hale says, that they find the motive in the piece of crooked sewing, that gives evidence of "anger, or - sudden feeling", as Mrs. Peters reports Mr. Henderson saying. Note how Mrs. Hale describes what she sees:

Mrs. Peters, look at this one. Here, this is the one she was working on, and look at the sewing! All the rest of it has been so nice and even. And look at this! It's all over the place! Why, it looks as if she didn't know what she was about!

The women, by engaging in their "trifles", have found the motive that the men have been looking for, whilst they have been stomping ineffectually all around the house. The answer was under their noses all the time, but needed a woman's knowledge to piece it together. It is this conflict that dictates that the female characters are the protagonists and the male characters the antagonists.

An interesting way to analyze the characters in Trifles is to think of them in the context of a classic murder mystery story, such as a Sherlock Holmes mystery. The great detective Sherlock Holmes had been part of the culture for about three decades when Susan Glaspell wrote this play. Whether she had those stories in mind when she wrote or not, one can draw some parallels.

Mrs. Hale would represent Sherlock Holmes in this play. She uses her powers of observation and her specially honed emotional intuition to piece together the crime. She notices the jagged stitching on the quilt squares and concludes Mrs. Wright was nervous. She concludes after seeing the bird cage that "someone must have been rough with it." She takes a non-traditional approach toward solving the crime, relying not just on outward observation, as Holmes does, but on her understanding of human nature. She reaches a surprising conclusion--that the suspected perpetrator was actually a victim in the case. As Holmes has been known to do on occasion (for example, in "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle" and "The Adventure of the Abbey Grange"), Mrs. Hale withholds evidence that means a guilty party may go free.

Mrs. Peters, then, is Watson. Although she is capable of making observations, she doesn't see the deeper meaning behind them that Mrs. Hale does until Mrs. Hale enlightens her. She doesn't necessarily agree with Mrs. Hale's deduction that Minnie was nervous, and although she is the first to notice the broken door on the cage, Mrs. Hale realizes its significance. Mrs. Peters, like Watson, tends to view the world through a traditional lens.

The County Attorney, Sheriff Peters, and Mr. Hale represent Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard or the police force that Holmes always outshines. While they go about pursuing the case using traditional methods, because they don't have Mrs. Hale's unique skill in understanding people, they miss the important clues. They diminish the women's skills as Scotland Yard often downplays Holmes' methods--until they are forced to admit his superiority. In this play, of course, Mrs. Hale does not reveal her superior methods to them, leaving them in the dark, as Holmes has also been known to do.

Mr. Wright, the murder victim, is revealed through Mrs. Hale's sleuthing to be the actual perpetrator of crimes against his wife that are unlikely to have been punished, let alone acknowledged, in the patriarchal society they lived in. Mrs. Wright, although guilty of a heinous crime, was a victim herself and deemed, by the empathy of the women investigators, to be worthy of mercy because of what she endured.

I can see seven main characters that we can analyze in this play.

Minnie - She is the accused murderer and wife of an unloving and emotionally abusive man.  Her refusal to speak, react or confess to the crime shows the reader that she is a strong and resolute woman who has changed from her earlier years as a more free-spirited girl.

John Wright - He is the victim.  He is described as cold, isolating and uncaring. He kills the only ounce of joy that Minnie has in their quiet, childless home - the bird.

Sheriff Peters, Mr. Hale and Mr. Henderson - I am grouping these three men together because they essentially represent the same thing - a patriarchal existence with no regard for the input of women.  As they investigate the house they constantly joke about the women and their "trifles" such as the condition of the jelly or the contents of a sewing kit.  By disregarding the women's point of view, they do not come up with any evidence against Minnie Wright.

Mrs. Peters - She is the character that changes the most in the play.  She comes in a dutiful Sheriff's wife with no real opinion or idea other than what he feeds here.  Through her understanding of Minnie's bleak existence and her past experience with cruel and domineering males, she begins to change her mind about the circumstances surrounding the murder and joins Mrs. Hale in hiding evidence which could convict Minnie.

Mrs. Hale - She is the strong farm wife who knows how hard it is to put away jelly, keep a clean house, and care for a family.  She realizes that she had avoided Minnie herself over the years when perhaps she needed a friend.  She hides the body of the bird herself in a place where the men will never look and takes a stand against the treatment of women at this time.

The behavior of the women in "Trifles" qualifies them all to be tragic characters.  Women, who are presented as morally and intellectually superior to the men in the story, stoop to the level of criminal behavior to solve their problems.  Minnie kills her husband, and Mrs. Hale and the other women cover up evidence of her guilt. 

Tragic characters, like Mrs. Hale supports the tragic heroine, Minnie in "Trifles."   Clearly, Minnie makes a mistake in judgement, killing her husband.  By doing so, she seals her fate. 

Mrs. Hale, who discovers the dead canary and proceeds to conceal it from the men, supports Minnie because she identifies with her experience.  Through Mrs. Hale, the audience understands that Minnie's actions, the murder of her husband, could easily happen to any one of us.

The tragic characters in "Trifles" help to highlight the causes for Minnie's actions.  The men in the story would not understand the reason for Minnie's behavior, it is only through the women, who are sympathetic, that a full picture is presented regarding Minnie's abusive and desolate life in the isolated farmhouse.

The most interesting part about analyzing the play Trifles is actually awarding the characters the importance that they deserve as part of a complex plot.

This being said, it is clear that, aside from Minnie Wright, the other two central and most important characters are Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters.

Minnie Foster Wright is a presumably a middle-aged woman by the time that she is found, dumbfounded and in shock, at her house after having told a fellow farmer that her husband, John Wright, laid dead in their bedroom. Her first appearance is taciturn, and "all done up", in the words of Mr. Hale. This shows that she looked disheveled and utterly stressed out. We know by Mrs. Hale that Minnie was once "fluttery", "pretty", and used to wear pretty clothes "with ribbons" but that this is no longer the case. Minnie is now tired, much older, ungraceful, and perhaps even untidy-looking, considering the state of the house, and of her mind.

Mrs. Hale, who is the most clever of every character in the play, is observant, analytical and quick to make connections. As a fellow farm wife of Minnie's,she is aware of the amount of work that comes with the lifestyle. Being close to Minnie's age, we can also consider her a middle-aged wife, humble-looking, but wonderfully seasoned by the experiences of the daily toil. It is Mrs. Hale who can make the deeper connection to Minnie, subtlety pointing out that "men's hands are not always as clean as they ought to be", and defending Minnie from the silly remarks of the country attorney and the sheriff. Mrs. Hale is, above all, remorseful for not being able to tend to Minnie when she needed someone the most. This is what ultimately leads her to suggest the suppression of the evidence from the men.

Finally, Mrs. Peters can be considered the character most detached from the situation. As a sherrif's wife, she has surely adopted the mentality that "the man is in charge", as it is suggested from her actions in the story. She is shy, does not emit her opinions as firmly as Mrs. Hale, prefers to "stay out of it", and detours Mrs. Hale's opinions with sensible answers. However, there is a lot of Minnie Wright in Mrs. Peters; she also suppresses her emotions.

When Mrs.Peters tells the story about her kitten being bashed to death while she was being held back she admits to feeling the need to kill the person who did that to the kitten (she does not say the words "kill" but they are clearly hinted). Additionally, she commiserated with Minnie in that she, too, felt once alone and isolated without support after the loss of her child after moving to a new city. Mrs. Peters lets out a lot of herself toward the end of the play, demonstrating that she may too be living under the overwhelming figure of her husband.