Violence In Susan Glaspell's Trifles

Trifles is a play about a woman name Minnie Wright who killed her husband, John Wright. In the play, the sheriff Henry Peters and the county attorney George Henderson, along with the witness Lewis Hale, are investigating John’s Wrights farmhouse. While their wives, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hales, are gathering up things to take to Mrs. Wright, who is in custody. While the men are investigating, the women find an empty bird cage, then found the dead bird in Mrs. Wright’s sewing kit. The bird was killed in the same manner as Mr. Wright. Instead of showing the evidence to police, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hales hide it. Because of the hidden evidence, the men are unable to find any clinching evidence that will prevent her from being acquitted by a future jury. Each of the women had their own reasons for suppressing the evidence, in addition to the shared reason of loyalty to their sex that they believe justices their actions. …show more content…
Peters reasoning for helping Mrs. Wright is because she knows the pain that Mrs. Wright is going through. Mrs. Wright was mentality and possibly, physically abused by her husband. The only thing that she had was her bird. When Mr. Wright killed it, she lost it. Mrs. Peters had lost things she loved in the past, first a kitten and then her two-year-old son. So, she knew the pain that such a loss could bring. When Mrs. Peters was young, a boy had killed the cat and she wanted to hurt the boy who had done it. Because of that, Mrs. Peters empathized with Minnie's pain and, in her mind, she could not condemn Minnie for what she