Condescending Of Women In Susan Glaspell's Trifles

In the play Trifles by Susan Glaspell, the men are portrayed as condescending towards women. The play centers on the murder of John Wright who died in his bed by strangulation. His wife Minnie has been charged with the crime. When the play begins, the County Attorney, the neighbors Mr. and Mrs. Hale, and the Sheriff and his wife have come to collect things to take to Minnie in jail. In addition, the men want to look around the murder scene upstairs clues. The men never stop to think why such a meek, small, birdlike woman would ever consider or possibly kill her husband. They don’t even assume that the clear evidence was in the kitchen they assumed that the kitchen was just a sign of a bad housekeeper that Minnie was. The men only see what …show more content…
The play centers on the murder of John Wright who died in his bed by strangulation. His wife Minnie has been charged with the crime. When the play begins, the County Attorney, the neighbors Mr. and Mrs. Hale, and the Sheriff and his wife have come to collect things to take to Minnie in jail. In addition, the men want to look around the murder scene upstairs clues. The men never stop to think why such a meek, small, birdlike woman would ever consider or possibly kill her husband. They don’t even assume that the clear evidence was in the kitchen they assumed that the kitchen was just a sign of a bad housekeeper that Minnie was. The men only see what is on the surface of the kitchen, a dirty towel, pots and pans out of place, jars of preserve exploded, the crooked stiches in a quilt, and an empty bird …show more content…
They have a chauvinistic attitude toward the women. The comments made by the men about the women indicate that they feel that women only have the capability of thinking about trivial things in life. The unbroken fruit jar symbolizes Mrs. Wright’s secret. Mrs. Peters is aware of this, because she goes looking for this. When the men first find the fruit jars, they are annoyed. They are annoyed and confused by the kitchen in general. This is where the title of the play comes from, when Hale says women worry about “trifles.” She worried about that when it turned so cold. But Mrs. Peters knows to keep looking, and she realizes that Mrs. Wright worked hard to can that fruit, and she looks for Mrs. Wright’s secret. She finds it. The men are clueless in the kitchen, but the woman knows where to look. She realizes there is more to see here, and there is more to this story. The women however are shown to truly stick together in this situation as far as hiding the evidence that would commit Minnie to prison the quilt is a symbol of the household, and this one is hidden away, unfinished. The fact that the ladies wonder if she was going to knot the quilt is funny to the men, who don’t think it’s important, or who think it’s morbidly ironic given the strangulation of her