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Rebecca Watson
LITT 2114-001
Drama Close Reading
Oppression to Justice: A Look at Early Feminism

Susan Glaspells play Trifles was written during the early 1900s, a time when women

were fighting for their rights. During this time, women were meant to stay home and be

housewives. This job entailed cleaning the house, cooking, doing laundry, and of course taking

care of any and all children. The play takes place in a kitchen in an abandoned farmhouse after

the murder of John Wright. The County Attorney, the Sheriff and his wife, as well as a neighbor

and his wife are in the farmhouse looking for any evidence that would help the case. As the men

go off to look at the bedroom, the women are left alone in the kitchen and their curiosity gets the

better of them. They begin to look around the kitchen and try to tidy things up as though the

house were their own. The play, through feminine symbols, reveals the ways in which the labor,

identity, and the desires of women are subdued under the weight of patriarchy.

Through symbolism, some of the ideas of feminism are exposed. The first symbol to be

exposed was the jar of jam after the County Attorney pulls it down from the shelf. Preserving

fruits and other food items for the winter was a very important and necessary job of a

homemaker especially those who lived in a rural area where getting to a market or grocery store

was nearly impossible during the cold months. The task consists of picking the fruit or

vegetables, preparing the jars by boiling them, preparing the fruit or vegetables for preserving,

placing them in the jars, and boiling again to seal the jars tightly. This was generally done during
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the summer months, which makes for a very hot kitchen. After the County Attorney pulls the jar

down, Mrs. Peters says [Mrs. Wrights] fruit; it did freeze . . . [Mrs. Wright] was worried about

that when it turned so cold (1158). The jar reflects the hard work put into preserving which

symbolizes the hard work that needs to be put into a marriage and caring for a family. Since the

women were meant to be homemakers, their main job was to make sure that the house was cared

for as well as their husband and children. The home was the one place where women could take

charge and run as they wanted rather than having to do what their husband wanted. The one jar

that did not break symbolizes solidarity, which is a key idea in feminism: all women unite to

stand together. After Mrs. Hale discovers the jar, she recounts when she had to preserve her

cherries and how hot the afternoon was when she took up the task (1159). By recalling this, Mrs.

Hale sympathizes with Mrs. Wright because she understands the task takes up a lot of time and

effort especially during the hot summer months. She is then showing her solidarity with Mrs.

Wright that the labors women are subjected to in order to be a perfect homemaker can be

difficult and go unnoticed. The single jar could also symbolize hope that Mrs. Wright will not be

accused of murder or hope for a better, equal future for women.

Another symbol, the quilt that Mrs. Wright was working on, is symbolic of finding ones

identity. Mrs. Peters finds the quilt under part of the small corner table (1160) and notices that

the squares were mainly done but that Mrs. Wright had not started to put it together. One square

began with nice stitching but then became bad, showing that Mrs. Wright was nervous. Mrs.

Hale then undoes a knot on this square and tells Mrs. Peters that she is just pulling out a stitch
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or two because bad sewing always made me fidgety (1161). By taking apart the square, Mrs.

Hale tampers with the evidence and by doing so, she has shown her support for Mrs. Wright and

her innocence. The quilt symbolizes small pieces of oneself coming together to form a whole

person which is another key idea of feminism: finding oneself. Quilts generally tell stories once

all the squares are put together and the bigger picture can be seen. Mrs. Wrights quilt is a

gateway into her life: a simple farm wife life that has been interrupted by the murder of her

husband. Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale begin to understand the pieces of Mrs. Wrights life by

reading her quilt. The first piece that was picked up by Mrs. Hale was a log cabin pattern

(1160) which could be a part of Mrs. Wrights childhood. As the quilt comes together, it shows

that Mrs. Wright was finding her identity and potential to be more than a farm wife. Since she is

held back by her husband to show her true colors, she decides to murder him in order to be

herself.

The caged bird that Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters find in the kitchen is another symbol that

is exposed later in the play. Mrs. Peters is the one to find the cage in the cupboard and notices

that one hinge is pulled apart (1161) showing that someone used excessive force to open the

cage. Women were meant to be confined to the household and the cage is symbolic of such

treatment. With the husbands being in charge, the women could only be free to do what they

want when their husband said it was fine. Once Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters realize that the bird

was killed, they begin to question if it was Mr. or Mrs. Wright. It is suspected that Mr. Wright

was the one to kill the bird, and it symbolizes him killing her innocence and spirit. According to
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Mrs. Hale, Mrs. Wright used to sing and Mr. Wright killed that, too (1163). By framing Mr.

Wright as the killer of the bird, Mrs. Wright can then have a motive for wanting her husband

dead. He killed possibly one of the only things that brought her happiness in a childless house

therefore she thought it necessary for him to suffer. Just as the bird was suffocated, the house

confines Mrs. Wright and she could have been feeling suffocated since she never had visitors or

made trips to town. Mrs. Hale says that she has not been here for so long (1161) even though

the two were neighbors and thinks that because she did not have frequent visitors, Mrs. Wright

was beginning to feel the need to be set free from her confinement.

The kitchen: can it be another source of confinement? As the scene is set for the play, the

kitchen is described as gloomy and out of order since there are unwashed pans, a loaf of bread

out, a dishtowel on the table and other signs of unfinished work (1155-1156). Mrs. Wright could

have been partially through her chores when Mr. Hale came over looking for Mr. Wright and

when she heard him coming that is when she sat in the rocker. Since the kitchen is the main

place where a homemaker could be found, since she does all of the cooking, it could represent

another form of confinement for Mrs. Wright along with the rest of the house. In the kitchen,

Mrs. Wright could have felt like a caged bird: flitting from one side to another just going through

the motions of her everyday chores all while feeling as though she will never be free. Most of

her things are in or near the kitchen: her quilt, apron, some of her clothes, and her preserves.

When Mrs. Peters says that she needs to get some of Mrs. Wrights things, she has to get them

from the front room closet (1159) which shows that Mrs. Wright spent the majority of her time
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downstairs in the kitchen. Under a small corner table, Mrs. Peters finds Mrs. Wrights quilt in a

large sewing basket (1160). There is also a rocking chair in the kitchen and the birdcage was

discovered in a cabinet. Mrs. Wright spent a lot of her time in the kitchen so it would make sense

to have personal items in there to distract her from chores when she felt she needed a break. Still,

there is a sense of confinement with all these items being in proximity of the kitchen. In order to

break from this confinement and become more independent, Mrs. Wright decides that her

husband needs to be out of the picture.

There are many ideas of feminism that have added up over the years but the three that

have always been the most relevant are independence, solidarity, and finding oneself. Susan

Glaspells Trifles showed these three ideas through the feminine symbols of the jar of jam, the

quilt, the birdcage, and the kitchen. The female roles of Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale both show

their solidarity with Mrs. Wright by tampering with evidence in order to take the focus off the

accusation that she killed her husband. Over the course of the play, the audience is able to build

up a bigger picture of Mrs. Wright. She begins as a flat character: we do not know much about

her aside from that she was a homemaker and her husband, Mr. Wright, was a farmer. But as the

play progresses, she becomes a more round character as we see, through symbols, that she was

discovering her potential and knew that if she stayed married to Mr. Wright, she would never

reach her full potential. She was confined to the house and the one thing that brought her joy,

singing, was killed along with the bird. By coming to an understanding of their labors, realizing

their identities and desires, the women of the play become a forefront for the feminist movement.
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Works Cited

Glaspell, Susan. Trifles. The Norton Introduction to Literature, Shorter 12th ed., edited by

Kelly J. Mays, Norton, 2016, p. 1155-1165.