Attitudes About Women in Society

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Today’s society and the society of the early 1900s have completely diverse attitudes and beliefs about women. This ranges from their roles in society to what they’re supposed to do in the household, plus where their place is around men. In today’s society, however, women are allowed to vote, have high-paying jobs, and even own property!
Some men may say that a woman’s place is in the kitchen; but on the other hand, a select handful of men and all women will disagree. In Susan Glaspell’s “Trifles”, the setting is mainly the main living quarter, which contains the kitchen and living room. The kitchen is where the cooking and cleaning takes place, usually done by a woman, and the living room is where the family comes together and spend times together. In this story, the women stay inside the entire time and the men spent all of the play going through what had happened, in the barn, and trying to find a motive. The men felt as if the women were too fragile to handle debate and controversy. This is ironic since Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters are left alone in the main living quarters, which is a woman’s “place”, but yet, this is where the ladies and the reader find out the most information about Mrs. Minnie Wright’s life and slowly begin to solve the mystery. The reader soon discovers about how happy and cheerful Mrs. Wright was before she was married. She was a lovely girl who loved singing in the church choir, like the canary she had acquired and loved, she also wore vivid dresses and was absolutely good-natured. On the contrary, her home is very dark and gloomy now and she is grim, alone, and depressed. Her house has been left a mess and without things being put in order such as, unwashed pans, a loaf of bread outside the bread-box, an...

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...hat Mr. Wright killed the canary by wringing its neck. It had probably infuriated this cruel man with its singing, just as his wife used to enjoy singing before she married him. The person who reads “Trifles” must assume several things in this story and form their own opinion. One thing that needs to be assumed is that Mr. Wright killed the canary and then, she wrung his neck in the same way that he wrung the neck of her canary.
If the women had unveiled that they had come across the canary, it would have made further evidence available to the men that Mrs. Wright killed her husband. Without this evidence, the men can just undertake the fact that the cat ate it, and not be able to evict or send Mrs. Wright to trial for her husband's murder. They have confidence in what the women state about the cat perhaps getting the canary because, in the end, what do women know?

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