Plot Summary
The setting for Trifles, a bleak, untidy kitchen in an abandoned rural farmhouse, quickly establishes the claustrophobic mood of the play. While a cold winter wind blows outside, the characters file in one at a time to investigate a violent murder: the farm’s owner, John Wright, was apparently strangled to death while he slept, and his wife, Minnie, has been taken into custody as a suspect in the crime.
The sheriff, Henry Peters, is the first to enter the farmhouse, followed by George Henderson, the attorney prosecuting the case. Lewis Hale, a neighbor, is next to enter. The men cluster around a stove to get warm while they prepare for their investigation.
Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale follow the men into the kitchen; yet, they hesitate just inside the door. They are obviously quite disturbed by what has happened in the house and proceed with more care than their husbands.
In a play filled with minor details (trifles) that take on major significance, the entrance of the characters is very revealing. There is an obvious divide — social, psychological, and physical — separating the men from the women, a fact that takes on a larger significance as the play progresses.
The investigation begins with Henderson questioning Lewis, who discovered the murder the day before. Lewis explains that he was on his way into town with a load of potatoes and stopped at the Wright farmhouse to see if John and Minnie wanted to share a telephone line with him, since they were neighbors. The farmer admits that he didn’t think John would be interested, since he didn’t like to talk much and didn’t seem to
When he appeared at the Wright’s door early in the morning, he found Minnie rocking nervously in a chair, pleating her apron. When he asked to see her husband, she quietly told Lewis that he was lying upstairs with a rope around his neck, dead.
Lewis summoned his partner, Harry, to check the grisly scene. The two men found John just as his wife described him. Minnie claimed someone strangled him in the middle of the night without disturbing her. “I sleep sound,” she explained to her shocked neighbor.
Henderson suggests the men should look around the house for clues, beginning with the bedroom upstairs and the barn outside. Henry casually dismisses the room where Minnie sat, suggesting there is “nothing here but kitchen things.”
It is those very kitchen things, however, which prove to be the most telling clues about what really happened in the Wright farmhouse. Climbing up on a chair to view the top shelf of a cupboard closet, Henderson finds some broken jars of fruit preserves. Mrs. Peters asserts that Minnie was afraid those jars would freeze and break while she was away. “Well, can you beat the woman!” Henry scoffs, “Held for murder and worry in’ about her preserves.” Lewis chimes in, “Well, women are used to worrying over trifles.”
This callous exchange highlights one of Glaspell’s most important themes in the play — differences between the sexes — and propels the plot forward into its next stage, the real detective work accomplished by Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale.
The men go upstairs to continue their investigation, giving the two women a chance to talk privately for the first time. As they gather things to take to Minnie — a change of clothes, her shawl, and her familiar apron — Mrs. Hale remembers her friend from years ago, before she married John. “She used to wear pretty clothes and be lively, when she was Minnie Foster, one of the town girls singing in the choir,” Mrs. Hale recalls.
Minnie married John, who moved her to a lonesome farmhouse at the bottom of a hill. John was, by all accounts, a taciturn man with a violent temper. Under his roof, Minnie no longer socialized, and her gay party attire turned to drab, functional house clothes.
What the men are seeking, Mrs. Peters notes, is evidence of a specific incident that must have sparked the murder. What the women are finding, however, are small signs of detachment and frustration everywhere — a loaf of bread left outside a breadbox, a table partly cleaned, and a piece of quilt with frantic, uneven stitching.
The men return and pass through the kitchen in time to hear the women discussing whether Minnie was going to quilt or knot the sewing project. To them, the question is frivolous, just the sort of thing women use to occupy their time.
While their husbands search for evidence outside the house, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale discover the final, essential clues to the mystery in the kitchen. While looking for some paper and string to wrap Minnie’s things, Mrs. Peters discovers an empty birdcage with a broken door in a cupboard.
Neither woman can recall whether she actually had a bird, but Mrs. Hale remembers that Minnie did have a beautiful singing voice when she was younger. Their find takes on tragic significance, however, when Mrs. Hale opens Minnie’s sewing box and discovers a small canary wrapped in a piece of silk — with a broken neck.
Suddenly, the men return. Instinctively, Mrs. Hale hides the sewing box under the pieces of quilt. When Henderson notices the cage and asks about the bird, Mrs. Peters joins Mrs. Hale in hiding evidence. “We think the — cat got it,” she lies.
The men decide to take one final look around upstairs, leaving the women alone to decide their course of action. Neither will say what is on their minds out loud, but both show understanding and sympathy for the plight of Mrs. Wright.
As a girl, Mrs. Peters remembers a boy killing her kitten with a hatchet, which brings back her feelings of rage and helplessness. She also recalls years of loneliness and desolation, when she and her husband were homesteading in the Dakota plains, and her baby died, leaving her alone in the house.
For her part, Mrs. Hale has vivid memories of Minnie Foster when she was happy and outgoing, before she became Mrs. Wright, imprisoned in this bleak farmhouse, cut off from the world.
The women consider their alternatives: disclose what they know, or cover up the clues that suggest a motive to the crime. Mrs. Peters finds the answer in the men’s patronizing treatment. “My, it’s a good thing the men couldn’t hear us,” she says half-jokingly. “Wouldn’t they just laugh! Getting all stirred up over a little thing like a — dead canary.” Without admitting it aloud, this is the only excuse the women need to keep Minnie’s private agony a secret.
The men return once again. Henderson glances quickly at the items Mrs. Peters has collected to take to Minnie, not noticing the sewing box with the dead bird.
While the men take one last look around to examine the windows of the house, Mrs. Peters frantically tries to hide the box in her handbag. It won’t fit and she begins to panic. Just as the doorknob turns and the men start back into the room Mrs. Hale finds room for the box in her coat. The trifles are safely hidden.

Next summary

The setting of this one-act play is a farmhouse kitchen in the Midwest. Instead of modern appliances, there is a hand pump at the sink for water, and a wood-burning stove for warmth and for cooking. From the kitchen, there are three doors: one to the parlor, one to the upstairs, and one to the shed and then on to the outdoors. In the middle of the room is a rustic dining table and chairs. The room has not been cleaned up and looks as if someone was interrupted in the midst of cooking a meal. Dirty pans are stacked under the sink, a loaf of bread is sitting outside the breadbox and a dishtowel is sitting on the table.
The door to the shed opens and Sheriff Peters, County Attorney Henderson and Lewis Hale, a neighboring farmer, enter the kitchen followed by the sheriff's wife and the neighbor's wife.
The sheriff and the county attorney begin questioning Mr. Hale about events that occurred on the previous day. Mr. Hale told them he was on his way into town and decided to stop and ask John Wright to go together with him for the cost of a party telephone line. He had asked him in the past but he said no, so Mr. Hale wanted to talk to him about it in front of his wife with the hope that she might have some influence.
When Mr. Hale knocked on the Wrights' door, there was no answer. It was after eight o'clock, so he knew they were up. When he knocked a second time, he thought he heard an answer, so he went in. He found Mrs. Wright rocking in a rocking chair and pleating her apron in her hands. He asked to speak to her husband, but she told him no because he was dead. She indicated that he was upstairs and that he had been strangled with a rope. When he asked her who had done that to her husband, she said she did not know because she had slept through it.
At the end of Hale's story, the men prepare to investigate upstairs. The county attorney opened a kitchen cupboard and noticed that a jar of preserves was broken and spilled on the shelf. Mrs. Peters explained that they must have frozen in the night and the jar broke. She said that Mrs. Wright worried about her fruit freezing. The county attorney indicated that Mrs. Wright would have more important things to worry about when they finished the investigation, but the sheriff said that women always worry about trifles.
The county attorney washed the preserves off his hands in the sink and reached for the roller towel to dry them, but he could not find a clean place on the towel to use. He became critical of Mrs. Wright's housekeeping skills, but Mrs. Hale defended her saying that, "there is a great deal of work to be done on a farm." The county attorney asked Mrs. Hale if she and Mrs. Wright were friends. She said that she liked Mrs. Wright but never felt comfortable in the house with Mr. Wright around; that the house was not a very happy place.
As the men prepared again to go upstairs, Sheriff Hale reminded the county attorney that Mrs. Hale is to get some of Mrs. Wright's belongings to take to her. The attorney agreed, but told Mrs. Hale that he wanted to see everything she selected and to keep an eye out for anything that might help his investigation. The men disappeared up the stairs.
The women examine the kitchen a bit more closely, noticing that Mrs. Wright had been making bread and that she left the bread out on the counter instead of putting it away. They examined all of the jars of fruit and found only one that was not broken, a jar of cherries.
The women go into another room and return carrying a dress, a petticoat a skirt, and a pair of shoes to take to Mrs. Wright in jail. Mrs. Hale remembers Mrs. Wright when she was younger, a pretty town girl who sang in the choir, before she met her husband. She suspected that Mrs. Wright was not involved in the ladies' auxiliary because her husband was stingy, she felt shabby and like she had nothing to contribute. Mrs. Peters remembered that Mrs. Wright had asked for an apron and for her little shawl that was hanging behind the door.
The women begin speculating on the crime, knowing that the prosecutor will make fun of Mrs. Wright for saying that she slept through the murder. They speculate on the craftiness with which the crime had to have been committed for Mr. Wright, himself, not to be aware of it. It is common knowledge that there was a gun in the house, but there is no apparent motive, and no sign of anger.
Next, the women discover Mrs. Wright's sewing basket with a quilt that she had begun sewing. They wondered aloud if she was going to hand stitch or tie the quilt. The men returned in time to hear the question, and again laughed at the women for worrying about trifles. The men went outside to the barn.
The women noticed that the quilt square that Mrs. Wright had been working on had erratic stitches in it, uneven and scattered. Mrs. Hale pulls out the uneven stitches and does them over again neatly, wondering the whole time, what Mrs. Wright was so nervous about that made her stitches erratic.
Next, the women noticed an empty birdcage. Mrs. Hale remembers a traveling salesman selling canaries cheap a few months prior, but she does not know if Mrs. Wright had purchased one. The birdcage door was broken, with one hinge pulled apart as if someone had been too rough with it. Mrs. Hale expresses regret that she had not come to visit Mrs. Wright sometimes. She said the only reason she did not is because she didn't like the place. It was always so lonesome and secluded. Mrs. Peters reassures her that she should not feel bad about it; as she was so busy herself with her farm and children.
The women talk for a while about Mr. Wright. Though Mrs. Hale concedes that John Wright was a "good" man who did not drink, kept his word and paid his debts, she also said he was a hard man, "Like a raw wind that gets to the bone." Mrs. Wright, according to Mrs. Hale, was like a bird herself, pretty and timid, and she sang sweetly. Mrs. Hale suggested that it would be nice to take Mrs. Wright's quilting to her to give her something to pass the time in jail.
The women begin to gather up her belongings, searching for the rest of the sewing materials. They find a pretty box and think that maybe the scissors are in there, but instead find the dead canary, its neck wrung.
The men return from outside as Mrs. Hale slips the box under the quilt pieces. The men again make fun of the women and their worries over trifles. The men again disappear upstairs, still searching for evidence of a motive.
The women realized with horror that Mrs. Wright loved the bird and was going to bury it in the pretty box. Mrs. Peters remembers when she was a young girl that a neighbor boy killed her kitten. She says if she had not been held back, she would have hurt him. Mrs. Hale expresses certainty that John Wright killed the bird. She reflects that after having the bird singing in the house, the stillness would be overwhelming. Mrs. Peters could relate to stillness, reminiscing about being on a homestead alone after the death of her first child. Mrs. Hale again expresses regret that she did not visit Mrs. Wright, and an understanding of the way things are for women.
The women agree that Mrs. Wright should not be told about the shattered fruit jars just as the men return downstairs. The county attorney comments that the case is pretty clear except that they have not found any hard evidence. He briefly looks over the belongings that the women have gathered to take to Mrs. Wright and approves them. Mrs. Hale The last bit of conversation is made up of the men questioning the women again about the quilting, one of many women's trifles.
Themes
In simple terms, in contrast, It is these differences that allows Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale to find the clues needed to solve the crime, while their husbands miss the same clues.
. They are partly identified by the roles their husbands play. An important detail is they are always referred to by their married names only, and no first names are used.
As the investigation commences, the men seek obvious clues that might suggest a motive for the crime — perhaps indications of alcoholism or physical abuse. Henderson overlooks the small, but significant, clues that tell the real story. He ignores Lewis, who tells him that John never seemed to care what his wife wanted, and dismisses the mess in the kitchen as the result of shoddy housekeeping. When the women rise to Minnie’s defense, he even mocks them for simply trying to be “loyal to your sex.”
When the men leave the room to examine other parts of the house, the real detective work begins.
The women discuss Minnie as she used to be — a happy, young girl in pretty clothes who sang in the town choir. Because their lives are also focused on the home, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale are able to interpret some of the silent cries for help that the men were unable to see or hear.
By the time they find the damaged birdcage and the dead canary, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale know the truth: John Wright drove his wife to murder him by isolating her from her friends and depriving her of beauty and song. The “trifles” of the play embody the possessive, patronizing attitude men sometimes have toward the lives of women.
Isolation
The devastating effects of isolation — especially on women — is another theme of the play. The
Unlike the men who are looking for forensic evidence to solve the crime, the women in Susan Glaspell's Trifles observe clues that reveal the bleakness of Mrs. Wright’s emotional life. They theorize that Mr. Wright’s cold, oppressive nature must have been dreary to live with. Mrs. Hale comments about Mrs. Wright being childless: “Not having children makes less work – but it makes a quiet house.” To the women, they are simply trying to pass the awkward moments with civil conversation. But to the audience, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters unveil a psychological profile of a desperate housewife.