The Danger in Trifles

Susan Glaspell’s “Trifles” is a play about a real life murder case that uses

symbolism to help bring it to a close. It is easy to see that Mr. and Mrs. Wright live

in a society that is cut off from the outside world and also strongly separated by

gender. Three of the key symbols in Glaspell’s play are a simple bird cage, a quilt,

and isolationism. Anna Uong of Virginia Tech and Karen Shelton of JSRCC share

these same ideas on symbolism. These three symbols are the main clues that help

the reader decide who killed Mr. Wright.

The bird cage that was found is one of the most profound symbols in the

story. Mrs. Hale describes Minnie as, “kind of like a bird herself, real sweet and

pretty but kind of timid and fluttery”(841). The bird and Minnie are similar because

they are both caged in. When Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters find the broken birdcage,

they think nothing of it until they discover the bird. He was found wrapped in a

cloth inside of a small box, with his neck wrung. “Mrs. Wright wrapped the dead

bird in a silk cloth and placed it inside a fancy box; this symbolises her cherishing of

her past life.”(Uong, 1) When John strangles the life out of Minnie’s bird, he also

strangles the life out of Minnie. The broken birdcage that was found represents

Minnie’s liberation from John. Just like the bird, Minnie has now freed herself from

John by killing him.

The second symbol that ties the story together is the quilt, which was

symbolic of Minnie’s life. The quilt that Minnie was working on at the time of her

husbands death is almost perfect, except for the most recently sewn block. It is said

to be “All over the place as if she didn’t know what she was about,” states Mrs.

Hale”(840). This is another clue into how enraged and flustered Minnie was.

Minnie’s last straw was when John killed her bird. When the bird died, so did

Minnie’s personality. After that murder, Minnie was enraged, confused, and didn’t

know what to do. Mrs. Hale wondered “if she was goin’ to quilt it or knot it”(840).

By quilting the blanket, she would have chosen to endure the pain that John was

putting her through, but by knotting the quilt she chose to eliminate it. Just as a knot

represents a finishing or a completion of a project, it also was an end to John. The

weaving of the quilt also symbolises the building up of the marriage and then the end

of it. “The quilt started out as a beautiful piece of art and was brought to a close by a

couple of sloppy stitches and knots”(Uong). Just like the Wright’s marriage, the

quilt was beautiful until the end where everything was simply