notices that the sewing is erratic at one point whereas it is neat everywhere else that has been stitched. "Why, it looks as if she didn't know what she was about!" Mrs. Hale exclaims. Then, because bad sewing always makes her "fidgety," she fixes it.

While Mrs. Hales sews, Mrs. Peters gathers the clothing that Mrs. Wright, who is in jail, has requested. Needing a string or something to wrap these items, Mrs. Peters looks in a cupboard and finds a bird cage. This cage has a broken door because a hinge has been pulled apart.

Later, Mrs. Hale suggests that Mrs. Peters take the quilt to Mrs. Wright to finish. Agreeing, Mrs. Peters looks for Mrs. Wright's quilt patches in the sewing basket, but finds none. Then, she sees a pretty red box and, thinking the scissors may be in it, she discovers instead a dead canary wrapped in silk. Its neck has been wrung. Just as they look upon the poor bird in horror, the men descend the stairs.

Facetiously, the county attorney alludes to the wives' remarks about whether Mrs. Wright was going to "quilt or knot" the quilt she was sewing,

"Well, ladies, have you decided whether she was going to quilt it or knot it?"

Mrs. Peters replies with dramatic irony, "We think she was going to--knot it." Dismissively, the attorney responds,

"Well, that's interesting, I'm sure. (Seeing the bird-cage)  Has the bird flown?"

Mrs. Hale tells him that they think the cat got it. She adds that Mrs. Wright liked the bird and was going to bury it in the pretty box.

When the men start back up the stairs, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters confer with one another about the cruelty of Mr. Wright and her terrible isolation and loneliness without children or friends. Their sympathy for this poor woman waxes as they talk; finally, they make their decision to hide the "trifles" of the bird and the box from the sheriff and county attorney.

Of course, the word trifles means something of little value or importance; however, as the title of Susan Glaspell's play, the word is certainly used ironically as it is, indeed, the seemingly meaningless things, mere "trifles" that women are "used to worrying over," as Mr. Hale remarks, that unlock the secret of Mrs. Wright's motive for killing her husband.

Clearly, then, another significance to the title of Trifles is the marked divide in the psyches of men and women, a major theme in the one-act play. For, George Henderson, the county attorney who looks around the kitchen before searching upstairs, asks the sheriff,

"You're convinced that there was nothing important here--nothing that would point to any motive?"

and the men then ignore that room because it contains, as the sheriff assumes, "Nothing here but kitchen things." And, it is with more irony that Glaspell writes of the men as the county attorney tells the sheriff he would like to see any of the things that Mrs. Peters, who was to do some alterations for Mrs. Wright, takes with her and "keep an eye out for anything that might be of use to us." So, here he does consider that a trifle may be something of use. But, the irony of this is the fact that the trifle that is of the most use goes not with Mrs. Peters, but with Mrs. Hale who hides in her pocket--yet another mere "trifle" as it is the simple difference of one woman over the other hiding the "trifling" bird--a difference that "makes all the difference."

The word trifle, then, exceeds its definition in Glaspell's play as it is the trifles and the failure to recognize their significance that prevents the men from solving the case of Mrs. Wright's murder of her husband.

Glaspell's one-act play is tightly structured and has only five characters with on-stage roles, though Minnie Wright and her husband John are important off-stage figures in this drama.

The minor characters in the play are the three men who have come to the Wright farm in an official capacity to investigate Mr. Wright's murder. They are George Henderson, Henry Peters, and Lewis Hale. It is a subversive move from the start to make them the peripheral voices, because men—especially detectives in a crime drama—would normally be center stage.

However, the center of this drama concerns the women, whom the men dismiss as unimportant and concerned only with minor domestic details—trifles—and of no value to a murder case. By focusing on the women, however, Glaspell demonstrates that many aspects of life that patriarchy disregards and belittles as unimportant are central and salient facts motivating female behavior.

The woman have an ability to "see" what the men utterly lack. The males' big, important investigation is shown to have little value against what the women are able to discover through their focus on detail. For example, they find the carefully wrapped dead canary with a broken neck. This leads them to understand that Minnie Wright murdered in response to this killing of a beloved pet, which was the last in a series of abuses that finally made her snap. The women hide this knowledge from the men, knowing that the men lack the empathy to understand Mrs. Wright's point of view. This is dramatic irony: we as an audience are privy to what the men are not.

In Susan Glaspell's play titled, "Trifles," the minor roles are those of the men. This would include the County Attorney, the Sheriff, and Mr. Hale. Though minor characters, their roles are important for several reasons.

The men create the depth of the conflict in the story. Although we never meet Mrs. Wright, who has been accused of killing her husband as he slept, the men arrive at her home looking for evidence with which to convict her. In this case, the men are present for the simple purpose of feeding the plot. And as the story progresses forward, the women come to resent what the men are trying to do.

The men are also present in that they are the ones that set the mood of the story in terms of the sense of "trifles." Mr. Hale refers to the serious concerns of the housewife as "trifles," meaning trivial, unimportant things.

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.

Others of them are critical that the house is not very clean...

COUNTY ATTORNEY (with the gallantry of a young politician). And yet, for all their worries, what would we do without the ladies? (...Starts to wipe [his hands] on the roller towel, turns it for a cleaner place.) Dirty towels!...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.

and not nicely decorated...

COUNTY ATTORNEY. No--it's not cheerful. I shouldn't say she had the homemaking instinct.

MRS. HALE. Well, I don't know as Wright had, either.

The men also joke about the quilt Mrs. Wright is making, as if they would know anything about it. In fact, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale become defensive and angry at the men for their lack of understanding and their overall insensitivity to the plight of the common housewife, which is what they are.

This is the third most important reason the men are present: they bring to light for Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, and for the audience, how difficult it is for a woman to run a house and make it a home. It shows that men have a great deal to say about things they know nothing about, and appear to have little appreciation for the work that women do that benefits them the most.

By the end of the play, there is a new sense of solidarity between the women, and a desire to help Mrs. Wright in any way they can, not just by taking some of her things to the jail, but also by preventing the men from finding any more evidence that might convict her.

"Trifles" is used in Susan Glaspell's Trifles to create verbalirony,whichis defined as...

...the saying of one thing and meaning another.

The play is about the unseen Mrs. Wright who is being held for the suspected murder of her husband. The authorities (the men) have come to look for evidence against Minnie Wright. The women have come to gather a few things to take to Mrs. Wright while she is in jail. The idea of "trifles" is introduced as one of the men speaks as to what he considers the hard work of a woman living on a farm:

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
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. [The two women move a little closer together.] 

A "trifle" is defined as:

an article or thing of very little value

Hale has just said that everything a woman does to try to keep up with the work on a farm, inside and out, is of little importance. The stage directions note that hearing this, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters move more closely together: for in dismissing what Mrs. Wright does, he has also insulted these women. He sees trifles; the women see the substance of their lives.

Hale represents the viewpoint of a male-dominated society—inferring how unimportant a woman's work is. In that it fills every day of a woman's life, the comment diminishes a woman as she works tirelessly to accomplish things that men take for granted.

The two women symbolize all housewives who struggle to keep up with the demands of days that are long and exhausting. When the County Attorney washes the jelly from his hands, he criticizes the dirt on the towel. Mrs. Hale defends Minnie's housekeeping against his criticism. She explains how hard it is to keep house, especially when the men use towels with dirty hands. Mr. Hale has offended the women by making light of their labors, showing a distinct divide between the world of men and the world of women.

This attitude alienates the women and they slowly come to understand Minnie's painful existence: she has no children; her husband (John) is antisocial and selfish: Hale adds to this understanding...

...I didn't know as what his wife wanted made much difference to John.

Then the women find the birdcage, looking like it has been mauled, and the dead bird wrapped gently in Minnie's sewing box. They realize hands have wrung the bird’s neck. We can infer that—emotionally and perhaps physically—her husband also has brutalized Minnie.  The women decide to withhold evidence of the dead bird from the men to protect Minnie.

The "trifles" that the men brush aside are the only things allowed to women. They are anything but trivial to them. The men in the house have the same dismissive attitude as John did. The trifles (as they are called) are the most important things in Minnie's life. The bird would seem to the men to be a trifle, but it is more important to Minnie than anything. At the bird's death, she snaps and kills John.

A final irony is that the women may seem trifle, but they are hardly that. Aware of John's cruelty, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters do all they can to protect Minnie from the men, showing a power the men don't even notice.

It is interesting how well-titled the play Trifles is because it certainly is rife with them. Yet, ironically these are anything but trifles at the end of the play.

It is arguable that the first trifle is the dirty kitchen towel of which the country attorney complained about. This may be a significant and foreshadowing trifle because of the answer that Mrs. Hale gives him.

Those towels get dirty awful quick. Men's hands aren't always as clean as they might be.

Since Mrs. Hale has an inkling as to what may have occurred in that house, this may be a clear reference to John Wright.

Aside from this first incident, more trifles show up:

The bread was set out, which may mean that the last fight of the Wrights could have happened near dinner time, prior to bed, and before Minnie snaps and kills John.

That there is only one compote of cherries after doing such hard work is significant of the state of the household, and how little produce was coming out of their farm.

Then comes the stitching which, with its erratic pattern, shows the state of mind of Minnie Wright. Shortly after that, they find the birdcage with the hinge pulled apart. This brings the women closer and closer to the final piece of evidence that would signal the motive of the crime.

When Mrs. Peters opens the cupboard looking for paper and string, they find the carefully wrapped body of a canary inside a box. This bird was Minnie's only companion, and her abusive husband grabbed the bird and wrung its neck. There is the motive of the murder: Minnie must have finally snapped, so she killed her husband in a similar manner.

It is always interesting to consider where the title of plays, short stories or novels comes from. Often, the title is mentioned in the play and examining the context of where it is mentioned can be very revealing when we think about why an author or playwright has given his or her work the title that they have. Key to understanding Trifles is realising that Glaspell is presenting us with two completely different worlds--one of them male, the second female, and exposing the radical differences between them.

In this play we are presented with a murder scene and a group of men who are trying to find clues that might indicate who killed John Wright. Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale watch their menfolk engage in this task, but as they stay downstairs, ironically it is they who are able to use their knowledge of running a household and the day-to-day tasks that women have to do to find out who committed the murder. Yet, at the start of the play, this knowledge, which is shown to be so key, is dismissed by Mr. Hale as "trifles." Certainly not important enough for a man to bother about knowing. As Mrs. Peters talks about preserves, the men talk:

SHERIFF: Well, can you beat the woman! Held for murder and worryin' about her preserves.
COUNTY ATTORNEY: (setting his lips firmly) 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.

Note the dismissive tone in the way that the men talk as they are shown to underestimate the knowledge involved in the sphere of women. This is something that is repeated again and again in this masterful play as the men jokingly refer to various aspects of women's work and ironically highlight their lack of knowledge and their inability to solve the crime that the women manage to work out. The supposed "trifles" of a women's world are actually shown to be of vital importance.