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We have only 150 staff but serve 450 million users, and have costs li ke any other top site: servers, power, programs, and staff. Wikipedia is somethi ng special. It is like a library or a public park. It is like a temple for the m ind, a place we can all go to think and learn. To protect our independence, we'l l never run ads. We take no government funds. We survive on donations averaging about Rp 300000. Now is the time we ask. If everyone reading this gave Rp 50000, our fundraiser would be done within an hour. If Wikipedia is useful to you, tak e one minute to keep it online and ad-free another year. Please help us forget f undraising and get back to Wikipedia. Thank you. Please Help Dear Wikipedia readers: We are the small non-profit that runs the #5 website in the world. We have only 150 staff but serve 450 million users, and have costs li ke any other top site: servers, power, programs, and staff. Wikipedia is somethi ng special. It is like a library or a public park. It is like a temple for the m ind, a place we can all go to think and learn. To protect our independence, we'l l never run ads. We take no government funds. We survive on donations averaging about Rp 300000. Now is the time we ask. If everyone reading this gave Rp 50000, our fundraiser would be done within an hour. If Wikipedia is useful to you, tak e one minute to keep it online and ad-free another year. Please help us forget f undraising and get back to Wikipedia. Thank you. Please Help Trifles From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This article is about the play. For the dessert, see Trifle. Trifles is a one-act play by Susan Glaspell. Her short story, "A Jury of Her Pee rs", was adapted from the play a year after its debut. It was first performed by the Provincetown Players at the Wharf Theatre in Provincetown, Massachusetts on August 8, 1916. In the original play, Glaspell played the role of one of the ch aracters, Mrs. Hale. It is frequently anthologized in American literature textbo oks. Contents [hide] 1 Background 2 Feminist drama 3 Symbolism 4 Modern theater 5 Title 6 Characters 7 Adaptations 8 References 9 External links [edit]Background The play is loosely based on the murder of John Hossack, which Glaspell reported on while working as a news journalist for the Des Moines Daily News. Hossack's wife, Margaret, was accused of killing her husband. However, Margaret argued tha t an intruder had killed John with an axe. She was convicted but it was overturn ed on appeal.[1] "...years later ... the haunting image of Margaret Hossack's kitchen came rushin g back to Glaspell. In a span of ten days, Glaspell composed a one-act play, Tri fles ... A year later, Glaspell reworked the material into a short story titled "A Jury of Her Peers."[2] [edit]Feminist drama Trifles is seen as an example of early feminist drama, because it is two female characters', Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale's, ability to sympathize with the victim' s wife, Minnie, and so understand her motives, that leads them to the evidence a gainst her, while the men are blinded by their cold, emotionless investigation o f material facts. The female characters find the body of a canary, which had its neck wrung, killed in the same way as the deceased (John Wright), thus leading

them to the conclusion that Minnie was the murderer, and they appear to empathiz e with her situation. Clearly, the wife is symbolized by the caged bird, a commo n symbol of women's roles in society. The plot concludes with the two women hidi ng the evidence against Minnie. The male characters are prejudiced in believing that nothing important can be di scovered in areas of the house where Minnie spent the majority of her time. Thei r minds are clouded by the prejudice and disregard important clues as being mere "trifles" that women concern themselves with, searching the barn and the bedroo m, places where men have dominance, rather than the kitchen, the only place wher e a woman would be in charge. One important line, spoken by the sheriff, says of the kitchen "Nothing here but kitchen things." This dismissal of the importance of the woman's life and the male reluctance to enter the "woman's sphere" is ke y in the men's failure to discover the crucial evidence for the case. The most i mportant evidence, the dead canary that the two women find, was hidden in Minnie 's sewing basket. The men scorn the domestic sphere, even kicking some of the it ems in contempt. The two women, having pieced together the murder, face the moral dilemma of tell ing the men about the motive or protecting Minnie, whom they see as a victim. Th eir choice raises questions about solidarity among women, the meaning of justice , and the role of women in society as a source of justice. [edit]Symbolism As the women note, Minnie used to sing before she married John Wright. Martha th eorizes that after Minnie's marriage, she was prevented from singing, or doing a nything else which would have yielded her pleasure, by her husband. Minnie's pli ght is represented by Martha as a spiritual death, symbolized in the strangling of her songbird companion. Another point worth noting is that both Martha and Mrs. Peters express guilt ove r not having visited Minnie more often--a reading which opens up the possibility that Martha's reading of the evidence is skewed by her own feelings that she sh ould have helped Minnie. Minnie is embodied in her kitchen and sewing things. The cold weather freezes an d breaks her preserve jars, symbolizing the cold environment of her home breakin g her spirit, as well as the coldness which causes the characters to fail in hum an empathy towards each other. The bare kitchen can be seen as symbol of the liv es of the former inhabitants. The male characters are clear symbols of "law" and cold rationality, while the w omen display an intuitiveness representative of the psychoanalytic movement, evo king an interrogation of the value of superficial rational thought. [edit]Modern theater One aspect of the play which makes it unique is that the main "players" in the m urder, Minnie (the murderer) and John Wright (the murdered) are never seen on st age. Their lives and personalities are fleshed out in the dialogue of other char acters. The small cast and understated scenery both serve to turn the audience t o the inward lives of the characters, [edit]Title The title is connected to Louis Hale's line "Well, women are used to worrying ov er trifles." [edit]Characters George Henderson, the County Attorney (originally played by Michael Hulgan) Henry Peters, Sheriff (originally played by Robert Conville) Lewis Hale, A neighboring farmer (originally played by George Cram Cook) Mrs. Peters, the Sheriff's wife (originally played by Alice Hall) Mrs. Hale (originally played by Susan Glaspell, and later by Kim Base) John Wright, the murdered Husband in the beginning of the Play Minnie Wright, main focus of the play and suspect of her husband's murder [edit]Adaptations

In the play "Trifles," in everything from the things they notice to the things t hey say, men and women behave completely differently. The men seem to have no ti me for the women and feel that they are focusing on the smaller and unimportant elements of the crime scene or the "trifles" as the name of the play states. Aut hor Susan Glaspell clearly shows the inferior position of women in early twentie th-century America as well as the differences between men and women. One way Susan Glaspell shows the inferiority of women in this play is through bo dy language. They stand close together. "The women have come in slowly and stand close together near the door" (Glaspell). From the very first part, they are so mewhat timid in their place. As the drama goes on, each time the men seem to cri ticize Mrs. Wright, the women move closer together physically. This shows the bo nd of women in understanding how they are viewed by men. In this play, the chara cters can empathize so much with Mrs. Wright that they end up hiding the evidenc e of the murder (the dead bird) and take justice into their own hands by letting her off the hook. This is also why the play was entitled "A Jury of Her Peers." Women in this play understand what life is for other women. The men completely do not understand. They assume that their way of solving the crime is the best w ay and are completely uninterested in all the "clues" that the women turn up. Th ey are also completely uninterested in emotional response, which the women are i n tune with. They feel sorry for Mrs. Wright that her preserves have been broken . One of the women remembers how hot it was on the day she made her preserves. T hey feel sorry for the death of the bird as they remember how terrible it was to have something you loved taken away from you. The trifles in this play that the women see as important, the men make fun of. F or example, when the Sheriff reaches up into the cupboard and comes away with a sticky hand, the woman express sadness that her fruit (preserves) had frozen. Ra ther than recognizing all the hard work that went into making those preserves, t he Sheriff exclaims, "Well, can you beat the women! Held for murder and worryin' about her preserves" (Glaspell). He deems their concerns unimportant. Again the women look closely at the quilt and are made fun of. "They wonder if she was go ing to quilt it or just knot it. (The men laugh, the women look abashed") (Glasp ell). According to the men, this is just another mere trifle that the women are concerned about. However, again, the women notice that suddenly the stitches cha nge, and they wonder what happened to upset her so. They can see the evidence of turmoil in her quilt. They actually see the evidence of unhappiness and trouble d times everywhere in this house. The men also seem to blame the women for everything. When the County Attorney cr iticizes the housekeeping of Mrs. Wright, and Mrs. Hale defends her saying house work is hard on a farm, the County Attorney minimizes this. When Mrs. Hale confe sses that this home was not a happy place, saying that Mr. Wright was a terrible man, the County Attorney again minimizes this statement. "No--it's not cheerful . I shouldn't say she had the homemaking instinct" (Glaspell). He blames everyth ing on Mrs. Wright. Women are the ones in charge of making a home happy by cooki ng and cleaning and raising children and tending to their men. Another way that Glaspell demonstrates the position of women in twentieth-centur y America is through symbolism. The bird is one such symbol, a symbol of the way Mrs. Wright was before Mr. Wright. "She--come to think of it, she was kind of l ike a bird herself--real sweet and pretty, but kind of timid and--fluttery. How-she--did-change" (Glaspell). Marriage to this "hard man" is what changed her. T hey understand what it is to loose vitality because of a man. Mrs. hale recalls the kitten that a boy killed in her youth. Mrs. Peters recalls what it was like to lose her baby, and how still the world became after that. They recognize that this bird meant everything to Mrs. Wright. "If there'd been years and years of nothing, then a bird to sing to you, it would be awful--still, after the bird wa s still" (Glaspell). The women understand how horrible life must have been for h er, probably because their lives are not as great as they might like them to be

either. They understand the endless sacrifices that women make for them, and the way these sacrifices change the very nature of who they are. As Akalay-Gut stat es in Studies in Short Fiction, "Minnie's existence and her behavior are determi ned by her man who makes the rules she lives by. In this respect all three women are the same. Their behavior varies only because different men motivate differe nt behavior" (Akalay-Gut). The women understand this fully. The men never once question their way of doing things. They are looking for some thing "big" in the house, some big clue. The women, on the other hand are lookin g at the smaller things and thinking about the emotional impact of the smaller t hings. The men dismiss their methods knowing that they will never find anything that way. Even at the very end, when the men have found nothing, they make fun o f the women once again. "(Facetiously). Well, Henry, at least we found out that she was not going to quilt it. She was going to--what is it you call it, ladies! " (Glaspell). Those poor, uneducated women who were concerned with the mere trif les of the play are actually the ones who solved the mystery and know exactly wh at went on in this house.