Glaspell's "Trifles" 2 pg. Lit. Response

“Trifles” is a play by Susan Glaspell that tells of a murder by hanging that takes place. The culprit of this crime initially could not be identified. It was not until later in the story when the ladies were looking at the house that the murderer was quietly discovered. The name of the play most likely came from the fact that it was a very small thing that was the key to the ladies discovering that it was, in fact, Mrs. Wright who killed her husband. The story was in a sense separated by gender, and it was the gender group that was not even on a real mission to find the offender who found it. Glaspell often times uses visual elements in order to communicate information to the audience that the dialogue could not.
An example of this occurs when Hale was describing Mrs. Wright. “She had her apron in her hand and was kind of—pleating it” (Glaspell, 5). The fact that she was wearing an apron gave the idea that she was a homebody wife who cared about her household and family. Mrs. Wright pleating the apron let the reader know that she was deep in thought about something and was using the apron to deter her visitor from thinking that she did anything malicious. This was a way for her to portray innocence. When Hale told Mrs. Wright that he wanted to see John, she laughed (Glaspell, 6). Obviously she was not in her right mind, because her husband, John, had just been killed and she found some sort of humor in it. At one point, Hale told Mrs. Wright that he had come in to see if John wanted to have a telephone put in, and she began to laugh, then she looked scared. This visual element shows that she was unsure of how to react either because she was so upset, or because she was trying to cover up the dastardly deed she had done.
As Hale was describing his first experience with seeing John’s lifeless body, he said “It looked…”, and then his face twitched (Glaspell, 7). Glaspell used this important visual element to really portray how horrible the body must have looked. Without this visualization, the reader would not have gotten the full effect of how awful Hale felt as he looked at the body. As Mrs. Hale described her interaction with Mr. Wright, she shivered (Glaspell, 22). This is another example of how the body language that the characters of the story give off shows to what extent they feel the way they do about something. Mrs. Hale thought that spending time with him was so bad that it caused her to have a body gesture to match her dismay.
When the men leave the room for the first time, Mrs. Hale “arranges the pans under [the] sink, which the lawyer had shoved out of place” (Glaspell, 12). This shows the first obvious difference between the men and the women of the story. The women were more delicate and caring about others’ needs. Although Mr. Wright was dead and Mrs. Wright was in jail, she felt the need to tidy up the house a little. Mrs. Peters was talking to Mrs. Hale about whether or not they thought Mrs. Wright killed her husband. When Mrs. Peters hears footsteps, she stops speaking; she looks up at the room from which the footsteps were coming, and continues speech in a softer tone (Glaspell, 15). This is the first time that the women had broken off from the men and had actually tried to keep something a secret from them. The sheriff mockingly repeats something that Mrs. Hale had said. “The men laugh, [and] the women look abashed” (Glaspell, 17). The women were looked down upon by men, and judging from this visual element, their opinions were not valued, but scoffed at rather. This is another example of the differences between the men and women becoming more and more apparent.
All in all, “Trifles” was a very interesting play in which the murder of the victim became more and more apparent as the story proceeded. The author of the play, Susan Glaspell, used very colorful visual elements, such as actions and costumes, to tell her story about how the perpetrator of this crime was discovered. These elements play an important role in Glaspell's play, because without them, the reader would not be affected by it in the same way.