What characterizes Mrs. Hale's reaction to the men's behavior and Mrs. Peters' initial and later feelings in the play? What causes their evolving solidarity with Mrs. Wright?
The following lines highlight how Mrs. Hale reacts to the men's behavior. Mrs. Hale is a little irritated that the men (county attorney George Henderson and sheriff Henry Peters) feel free to criticize Mrs. Wright's homemaking skills.
COUNTY ATTORNEY . . . Dirty towels! (kicks his foot against the pans under the sink) Not much of a housekeeper would you say, ladies?
MRS. HALE (stiffly) There's a great deal of work to be done on a farm . . .
MRS. HALE Those towels get dirty awful quick. Men's hands aren't always as clean as they might be . . .
MRS. HALE (crossing left to sink) I'd hate to have men coming into my kitchen, snooping around and criticizing (she arranges the pans under the sink, which the lawyer had shoved out of place) . . .
Meanwhile, the lines below comprise the sheriff and the county attorney's reactions...
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to Mrs. Peters comments. The men scoff at what they consider Mrs. Peter's focus on minutiae. Mrs. Peters is saddened that Mrs. Wright's fruit jars broke, but the men think that, in light of the murder investigation, Mrs. Peter's focus is misplaced.
However, Mrs. Peters's comment highlights a deeper understanding of Mrs. Wright's difficult life than the men realize. The carefully preserved fruit represents Mrs. Wright's hard work. However, Mrs. Wright never got to taste the results of all her hard work: the jars broke because of the extreme cold. So, anyone who tried to sample some of the preserves might have found pieces of broken glass mixed in with the fruit preserves.
MRS. PETERS (to the other woman) Oh, her fruit; it did freeze. (To the lawyer) She worried about that when it turned so cold. She said the fire'd go out and her jars would break.
SHERIFF (rises) Well, can you beat the woman! Held for murder and worryin' about her preserves.
COUNTY ATTORNEY (getting down from chair) I guess before we're through, she may have something more serious than preserves to worry about. (crosses down right center)
Although Mrs. Peter is adamant that the "law has got to punish crime," she later changes her viewpoint. Here are the lines that demonstrate this:
MRS. PETERS (with rising voice) We don't know who killed him. We don't know . . .
MRS. PETERS (something within her speaking) I know what stillness is. When we homesteaded in Dakota, and my first baby died—after he was two years old—and me with no other then . . .
MRS. PETERS . . . My, it's a good thing the men coudn't hear us. Wouldn't they just laugh! Getting all stirred up over a little thing like a—dead canary. As if that could have anything to do with—with—wouldn't they laugh? . . .
Mrs. Peters's words show her dawning realization that the circumstances surrounding Mr. Wright's murder are more complicated than the men think. Although others may conclude that Mrs. Wright killed her husband out of malice, Mrs. Peter no longer entertains the notion. She has seen too much evidence of Mrs. Wright's unhappy life in the farmhouse to conclude that simple malice was the motive for the murder.
In Susan Glaspell’s play Trifles, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters are both married women who apparently do not have jobs outside the home, but they are different in several notable aspects: their background, age, and length of residence in the community. Throughout the course of the play, the similarities come to seem more important than the differences, which had initially led them to notice different things and to interpret those items differently as well. Ultimately, through combining their resources, the two women come to a joint conclusion that is different from that of the men.
Mrs. Hale and her husband, Lewis, are the Wrights’ neighbors and long-term residents of the area. Lewis is the person who discovered John Wright’s body. She remembers Minnie Wright from their younger days, when Minnie was bright and lively. In contrast, Mrs. Peters and her husband, Henry, who is the sheriff, have moved there more recently. Although she is a relative stranger, she empathizes with Minnie’s situation, because she herself had felt lonely while living on a remote Dakota homestead. Both women share experiences in domestic matters, such as canning preserves and quilting, and they especially bond over the “dead canary” they find. Realizing that the men would laugh at them for getting worked up "over a little thing" is a shared moment that brings them closer to each other as well as to Minnie.
What might explain Mrs. Hale's and Mrs. Peter's evolving solidarity with Mrs. Wright?
Initially, Mrs. Peters fulfill the role of dutiful, subservient wife. Mrs. Hale, a bit more outgoing and assertive, comes from a larger town, where the strict patterns of social norms in small towns are less evident. Both women plan to simply collect Mrs. Wright's belongings and wait for the men to collect evidence. However, it is the women who collect the most valuable item of all - a dead canary, and thus, a motive.
Unfortunately, the men are condescending to the women and women's "trifles" that they cause the women to begin thinking of what Minnie Wright's life must have been like. As they consider her childless, loveless plight, they come to the conclusion that her husband had taken her only joy, the bird, for no reason. Thus, they bond with the alledged murderess and keep the dead bird in the trifling knitting kit.