Blog 17: Quote-Response Trifles

I love Trifles! It is such a short play, but it makes a strong impact. I like how it sets up women's knowledge against men's. The men are investigating the murder of John Wright, whose wife is being held on suspicion of having committed the crime. Dramatic irony occurs as the men reject evidence in the kitchen; the Sheriff says, "Nothing here but kitchen things" (Glaspell 840). This bit of dialogue suggests that the men reject the "kitchen things" as evidence because they are kitchen things; they are part of women's lives and therefore not important. In their arrogant reasoning, they somehow forget that the suspect is female, which should make "kitchen things" very important. The men go upstairs to investigate the scene of the crime, and their wives, left behind in the kitchen to pick up some things for Mrs. Wright, locate all the evendence needed to indicate not only that Mrs. Wright killed her husband because of his brutality but also that they shared some of the blame for knowing "how things can be--for women" and not "com[ing] over here once in a while!" (847) The men's reaction to "kitchen things" indicates "how things can be." Women's lives and women themselves were treated as inconsequential, and when one is inconsequential, one is not really human in terms of rights or in terms of treatment, which allows brutal men like John Wright to torture his spouse. In this "Jury of Her Peers," Mrs. Wright is acquitted by the women because they understand that she murdered her husband because he killed all the joy in her life and because they should have seen the problem and tried to help.