Plot

Exposition

- The sheriff (Mr. Peters), his wife (Mrs. Peters), the County Attorney, and the neighbours, Mr. Hale And Mrs. Hale, enter the kitchen of the Wright household. Mr. Hale explains how he paid a visit to the house on the previous day. - Once there, Mrs. Wright greeted him but behaved strangely. She eventually stated in a dull voice -that her husband was upstairs, dead. - Mr. Hale is the first (aside from Mrs. Wright) who discovers the body. Mrs. Wright claimed that she was sound asleep while someone strangled her husband. It seems obvious to the male characters that she killed her husband, and she has been taken into protection as the prime suspect. Rising Action - The attorney and sheriff decide that there is nothing important in the room: “Nothing here but kitchen things.” The men criticize Mrs. Wright’s housekeeping skills, irking Mrs. Hale and the sheriff’s wife, Mrs. Peters. - The men exit, heading upstairs to investigate the crime scene. The women remain in the kitchen. Chatting to pass the time, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters notice vital details that the men would not care about: ·         Ruined fruit preserves ·         Bread that has been left out of its box ·         An unfinished quilt ·         A half clean / half messy table top ·         An empty bird cage  Climax When gathering up the quilting material, they discover a fancy little box. Inside, wrapped in silk is a dead canary. Its neck has been wrung. Minnie’s husband did not like the canary’s beautiful song (a symbol of his wife’s desire for freedom and happiness). So, Mr. Wright busted the cage door and strangled the bird. Falling Action Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters do not tell the men about their discovery. Instead, Mrs. Hale puts the box with the dead bird into her coat pocket ------- resolving not to tell the men about their little “trifle” they have uncovered. Denouement (Resolution) The play ends with the characters exiting the kitchen and the women have determined Mrs. Wright’s quilt making style. ( She “knots it” instead “quilt it” --- a play with words denoting the way in which she killed her husband. )

Literary Devices

Irony

• Sheriff Peters and County Attorney, George Henderson, pride themselves on their powers of detection and logical reasoning. But it is the two women, Mrs.Peters and Mrs.Hale, who discover the clues and establish a motive amid seemingly harmless items in the Wright home. The story ends with an ironic between Henderson and Mrs.Hale :

COUNTY ATTORNEY (facetiously). Well, Henry, at least we found out that she was not going to -------- what is it you call it, ladies?

MRS.HALE (her hand against her pocket). We call it ------- knot it, Mr.Henderson.

Symbolism

1) Bird : Mr. Wright's spirit

2) Cage : John Wright's oppression of his wife and her spirit

3) Stove, Cold House and Broken Jars : When the stove fire goes out, the house temperature drops below freezing point and all but one of the preserve jars break. The stove fire appears to represent John and Minnie Wright's marriage. The fire probably goes out just before or immediately after the murder. The resulting temperatures crack the jars of preserves, apparently representing Minnie's mental being. That jar that remains intact seems to symbolize the modicum of sanity left to her and the hope for a brighter future that Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters envision for her.

4) Unevenly Sewn Quilt Block : Mrs. Wright's disturbed mental condition.

5) Rope: Minnie Wright's unsurpation of male power. Strangulation is a man's method of killing . In her rebellion against her domineering husband, Minnie musters the strength to murder like a man, thus perversely asserting her quality.

Characters & Characteristics

George Henderson ( County Attorney )

The county attorney, he has been called to investigate the murder of John Wright and will probably serve as the attorney for the prosecution in the event of a trial. He is young and professional in manner, but he often dismisses the female interest in minor details of domesticity, and he disparages Mrs. Wright for what he perceives as her lack of homemaking abilities.

Henry Peters ( Sheriff )

The middle-aged local sheriff and husband of Mrs. Peters. He is at John Wright's house to examine the scene of the crime. Like Henderson, he gently teases the women about their interest in Mrs. Wright's quilt.

Lewis Hale ( Local Farmer )

A neighboring farmer, he had entered the Wright farmhouse to ask John about acquiring a telephone, only to find a strangled man and a wife acting very bizarrely. He says, "Women are used to worrying about trifles."

Mrs. Peters ( Sheriff's wife )

A relative newcomer to the town who never knew Mrs. Wright before John Wright married her, Mrs. Peters is "a slight, wiry woman" with a "thin, nervous face." She is married to the sheriff and prefers to follow the law, often apologizing for the behavior of the men because they are only doing her duty. Mrs. Peters understands loneliness and the world of the female domestic.

 Mrs. Hale (Lewis Hale's wife)

The wife of the farmer Lewis Hale, she is of a heavier build than Mrs. Peters and resents the condescension shown to her by the men in general and Henderson in particular because of her gender and domestic occupation. She remembers Mrs. Wright as the young Minnie Foster, and she feels sorry for Mrs. Wright. Mrs. Hale regrets not having come to visit Mrs. Wright to alleviate her cheerless life.

John Wright ( The Deceased )

A local farmer, he was commonly considered a good, dutiful man, but he was also a hard man and neglected his wife's happiness. He paid little attention to his wife's opinions and prevented her from singing. The play centers on the motive for his murder.

Mrs. Wright ( Suspect )

Born Minnie Foster, she used to be a happy, lively girl who sang in the local choir, but after she married John Wright, her life became unhappy and forlorn. Although she does not appear in the play, she is the main suspect in her husband's murder and sends Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale to collect a few minor items for her from the farmhouse.

Credit to : http://www.gradesaver.com/trifles/study-guide/character-list

Themes

Female identity

When speaking to the female characters in Trifles, Henderson and the other men make a key mistake in their assumption that the women derive their identity solely from their relationship to men, the dominant gender. For example, Henderson tells Mrs. Peters that because she is married to the sheriff, she is married to the law and therefore is a reliable follower of the law. Mrs. Peters' response is "Not--just that way," suggesting that over the course of the play, she has rediscovered a different aspect of her identity that ties more closely to her experience as a woman than to her marriage to Henry Peters. As Mrs. Hale concludes, women "all go through the same things--it's all just a different kind of the same thing." For Mrs. Hale, Minnie Wright's murder of her husband is the ultimate rejection of her husband's imposed identity in favor of the memory of the person Minnie Foster used to be.

Patriarchal dominance

In Trifles, the men believe that they grant female identity by virtue of the women's relation to men rather than through their inherent qualities as females. Except for the absent Minnie Wright, the women have no first name and take their husband's last names, despite being the protagonists of the story instead of the named male characters. This institutionalized male superiority is so pervasive that the men feel comfortable in disparaging Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale's interest in "trifles," with the clear implication that the women are too flighty and small-minded to worry about important issues such as the investigation at hand. In addition, when the men observe the troublesome state of the kitchen, they immediately conclude that the woman must be at fault in her homemaking abilities because they all know John Wright as a good, dutiful man and in consequence form a unified front protecting John Wright's reputation. Because of this male solidarity, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale can only aid Mrs. Wright if they ally with their own gender.

Domesticity

When Henderson observes the Wright kitchen, he concludes that Mrs. Wright must not have "the homemaking instinct," which Mrs. Hale interprets as an attack on Mrs. Wright's worth. Her countering of his statement with the suggestion that Mr. Wright did not have the homemaking instinct establishes two alternate interpretations of the meaning of domesticity. According to one definition, domesticity is the ability to keep a home in the purely physical sense, with a clean kitchen and well-sewn quilts. In her final moments prior to the murder of her husband, Minnie Wright rebels against these standards of domestic prowess because in her eyes, her husband has failed to meet the second definition of domesticity, which depends upon one's ability to make a home warm and comforting emotionally. Henderson fails to comprehend that the latter form of domesticity is as important as the first type, as shown by his disregard for signs of a troubled marital life in the Wright household.

Loneliness

While the need for revenge is the immediate impetus for Minnie Wright's strangling of her husband John, her isolation is the ultimate causes of her unhappiness in their marriage. As Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale note, John Wright was a hard man and did not provide the companionship needed, while Mrs. Hale blames herself for never having visited to offer Mrs. Wright a respite from her loneliness. Both women suspect that the canary had been a substitute for Mrs. Wright's lack of children and other friends, and Mrs. Peters' account of her solitude while homesteading in Dakota suggests that loneliness is an important element of the female and human condition. Mrs. Hale realizes that woman have all experienced loneliness in part because they do not realize their commonality and thus have not learned to unify and support each other. In the end, loneliness connects the women and brings them closer to each other.

Empathy and protection

At the beginning of Trifles, Mrs. Wright is an unknown quantity whose behavior in Lewis Hale's account is puzzling and bizarre. By the conclusion of the play, however, the substance of her personality and life has been revealed through Mrs. Hale's memories and through a few small details contained on the first floor of her house, and her character becomes the subject of sympathy and finally of empathy. Because Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale come to realize the similarities between the murderer and themselves, they decide that Minnie Wright is worthy of their protection, which has several meanings for the women. Most obviously, they unify with her against the law, as represented by the men of the play, but they also protect her by not telling her the truth about her ruined preserves. In addition, Mrs. Hale regrets not having protected Minnie from isolation and solitude, and she resolves to atone for her inability to protect Minnie earlier by helping her now.

(Credit to: http://www.gradesaver.com/trifles/study-guide/themes)