In Susan Glaspell's play, Trifles, Mrs. Minnie Wright has been accused of murdering her husband as he slept. A group of men and a pair of women arrive at the beginning of the play, entering the Wrights' cold and gloomy home. The men are intent upon finding evidence with which to condemn Mrs. Wright. The women are there to collect clothing and personal items to take to Minnie while she is in jail.

As the women search for things Mrs. Wright can use, they come across a battered bird cage in a cabinet. The door has been half ripped off its hinge. This is puzzling as there is no bird about. As the women continue, they find Mrs. Wright's sewing box, and inside, wrapped in a piece of silk (to show its worth to Mrs. Wright) is the dead bird.

MRS. HALE. …I expect this has got sewing things in it (Brings out a fancy box.) What a pretty box. Looks like something somebody would give you. Maybe her scissors are in here. (Opens box. Suddenly puts her hand to her nose.) Why-- (Mrs. Peters bend nearer, then turns her face away.) There's something wrapped up in this piece of silk.

MRS. PETERS. Why, this isn't her scissors.

MRS. HALE (lifting the silk.) Oh, Mrs. Peters--it's-- (Mrs. Peters bends closer.)

MRS. PETERS. It's the bird.

MRS. HALE (jumping up.) But, Mrs. Peters--look at it. Its neck! Look at its neck! It's all--other side to.

MRS. PETERS. Somebody--wrung--its neck. 
(Their eyes meet. A look of growing comprehension of horror.)

Clearly the women understand that Mr. Wright murdered the bird; it would have been one bright spot in this dark home in which Mrs. Wright lived. And the women remember that when she was younger and single, she was lovely, and she sang in the church choir. The bird would have meant a great deal to Mrs. Wright. Mr. Wright's brutality and total disregard for his wife is apparent. In face of this emotional and mental abuse of the woman, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters believe that the death of the bird was Mrs. Wright's motive for killing her husband. He destroyed the one beautiful thing in her unhappy, lonely, childless home: and she snapped.

As the women perceive how little the men truly understand the difficult life of a woman, particularly a wife, a division rises between the women and the men, and the ladies choose not to share their discovery, so as to prevent the men from finding the evidence they are searching for to convict Mrs. Wright of murder.

Why don't Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale reveal the evidence in Trifles?

The one-act play Trifles by Susan Glaspell takes place in the kitchen of a remote farmhouse, where the dead body of a farmer named John Wright has been discovered. His wife, Minnie Wright, has been arrested for murder, and Sheriff Peters, the County Attorney George Henderson, and Mr. Hale have come to look for evidence of the deed. They are accompanied by Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale, who remain in the kitchen waiting while the men go about the house and barn searching for clues.

The men disparage the women and their concern over "trifles" such as Mrs. Wright's fruit preserves and the mess in the kitchen, but once the men leave, the women look around with the perspective of also being homemakers concerned about the details of housekeeping. As they gather clothes for the woman in jail, they talk about whether or not she committed the murder They notice a part of a quilt that is sewn improperly, as if Mrs. Wright was nervous and distracted when she sewed it. They also find a broken bird cage without a bird in it. Mrs. Hale expresses concern that she didn't come around and visit Mrs. Wright, as she must have been so lonely and dispirited. Mrs. Hale compares Mrs. Wright when she was single to a sweet, pretty bird.

The deciding moment, when the women realize that Mrs. Wright must have committed the crime, comes with the discovery of the dead bird, whose neck has been broken. The women realize the song of the canary must have helped keep Mrs. Wright's spirits up, and when John Wright killed it, Mrs. Wright fell into despair. She was all alone then, with no friends coming around to visit her and no bird to keep her company. The men pass through and comment that if they had a piece of evidence establishing motive, the case would be easier. However, the women hide the evidence of the dead bird because they empathize with Mrs. Wright, her terrible loneliness, and what the death of the bird must have meant to her.

Susan Glaspell's "Trifles" is often viewed as a feminist drama that analyzes the way men abuse, misunderstand, or discredit women and their views. It is implied that Mrs. Wright was being assaulted by her husband and that she murdered him out of self-defense or due to the years of neglect she suffered. For that reason, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale are sympathetic to her. Even while they discovered the cause of Mr. Wright's death before the police, they are still belittled and talked down to by the men in the room. Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale likely faced similar issues as Mrs. Wright because they lived in such a misogynistic society. Out of compassion or perhaps rebellion, they may have decided to let Mrs. Wright's guilt go unnoticed.

Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters don't reveal the evidence they discover that Mrs. Wright finally snapped and murdered her husband because they sympathize with her. Mrs. Hale feels remiss for not having spent more time visiting her old friend. She realizes she should have been there for her, remembering Mrs. Wright as a once vivacious and happy young woman whose "song" was silenced by an abusive husband. Mrs. Peters, who is new to the area, grows to have a deep identification with Mrs. Wright's plight as she learns her story. Like Mrs. Wright, Mrs. Peters had a period when she was isolated, in her case in the Dakotas, and she once had a kitten hacked to death by a young boy, so she understands both why Mrs. Wright would be depressed and why she would act out violently at her canary having its neck wrung.

Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Wright are, in the end, more concerned with the spirit of the law than the letter of law, and want to help Mrs. Wright, who was, in their opinion, justified in killing her husband.

One of the reasons that Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale do not reveal the evidence they discover is that they think men won't understand it. They find Mrs. Wright's bird strangled and wrapped in silk. Using their intuition and their understanding of a woman's view of marriage at that time, they deduce that Mrs. Wright's husband killed her beloved bird and that she killed her husband in retaliation.

Their deductions enable them to figure out a motive for Mrs. Wright's crime, but they lack hard evidence. They know that the men around them will dismiss their evidence as trivial, as mere "trifles," so they don't reveal it. They are used to having their ideas dismissed by men. In addition, they do not disclose the evidence because they sympathize with Mrs. Wright and don't want to reveal anything that could point to a motive for her crime.

The conclusion of Susan Glaspell's one-act play with Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peter's decision to withhold  the evidence of the dead canary is comparable to the decision of Sheriff Heck Tate to record the death of Bob Ewell as that of a man falling upon his own knife.  For, in both cases, it is "a sin to kill a mockingbird."  The harm has already been done, and the perpetrator of the evil is also apprehended; and, the victims of the injustice have long served their masters in subservience and melancholy and isolation.

With dramatic irony Lewis remarks while in the kitchen,‘‘Well, women are used to worrying over trifles.’’  For, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters do exactly the opposite.  They hide the trifle of the dead canary whereas the men would use it as evidence against Mrs. Wright. Perceiving the singing bird as the last aesthetic the poor woman had left in her dismal, isolated life, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters regard more than the obvious details in concluding that Mrs. Wright, like Boo Radley, had suffered enough in her lifetime already and should not be held for murder.

In Trifles, why didn't Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters reveal the dead bird?

In Susan Glaspell's play, Trifles, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters are very careful not to reveal the dead canary that they find in Mrs. Wright's sewing basket.

The two women have come to the scene of Mr. Wright's alleged murder to gather a few things for Mrs. Wright, who is being held in the jail, accused of killing her husband. While the women are there, they go through the kitchen and living area to find things that might be useful to Mrs. Wright. They do not know her, though as their time passes in that sad and dark home, Mrs. Hale wishes she had made more of an effort.

As the women work to complete their task, they listen to the men who are totally unsympathetic of a woman's plight in the world: the hard work needed to keep a home, extra work created by thoughtless husbands, the difficulty in providing a home with a cheery atmosphere; and, jarred jellies broken due to the cold. The men refer to a housewife's worries as "trifles." The men are particularly uncaring about the life of the woman they have decided is guilty.

Upon further discussion between them, the women realize that without children, Mrs. Wright's home and life must have been barren indeed. They remember her as a vibrant, pretty young woman who used to sing in the church choir before she married Mr. Wright. (And it is probably no mistake, with irony included, that her husband's name is "Wright," for he has been anything BUT "right.")

The women find a birdcage in a cupboard, stored away, which puzzles them. They believe a bird would have made the house a happier place, providing companionship for the housewife. When they discover the dead bird in a little box in Mrs. Wright's sewing basket, its neck at an irregular, unnatural angle, it does not take much for them to realize that Mrs. Wright had saved the dead bird to bury it, and that it had not died a natural death. They surmise that Mr. Wright must have killed it.

Their sense of compassion is heightened. Mrs. Peters remembers losing a baby, and how devastating it was especially because she had no friends their to comfort her. She also recalls a little boy, when she was young, who killed a kitten before her eyes—she blurts out that she could have...killed him! The women believe that when Mr. Wright killed the bird, the only bright spot in Mrs. Wright's harsh and lonely world, that she lost her mind and killed her husband while he slept.

The pair of housewives hide the evidence of the dead bird: they believe that if they let the men know of its existence, it will provide them with a motive for Mrs. Wright's "alleged" murder of her husband. In the face of the total lack of concern the men show for the plight of women such as themselves, the women unite in their purpose to protect Mrs. Wright as best as they are able.