Trifles

Trifles, written by Susan Glaspell in 1916, is a play about women protecting each other in a time and place where women were expected to follow their husbands' instruction and submit to their authority.
The world of this play may be described as cold, not because it is snowing and not because the characters look chilled, although they do, but because it is a crime scene and there is a noticeable lack of understanding between the men and the women. The majority of the play, which is one scene, is the two women, Mrs. Peters, the sheriff's wife, and Mrs. Hale, Minnie's neighbor, speaking privately.

They are first uncomfortable being there, having been asked to grab some stuff for Minnie, who is in jail as a suspect for the murder of her husband, John Wright. The men are pretty condescending about the duties of the women throughout the whole play. In the beginning, learning that Minnie was worried about her jarred fruit in a freeze, the neighbor Hale commented that "women are used to worrying over trifles." The sheriff comments how the women wonder about Minnie's quilting method, and the men share a laugh.

The dramatic irony in Trifles is that the women hold the power in the form of knowing the truth. The men discount learning about the situation from the women's findings, but Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale inexplicitly came to the conclusion that Minnie killed her husband because he was stifling and hard, and perhaps abusive. They can surmise this after finding the strangled bird, which is the climactic point because it changes the insight we have into the situation.