Trifles

While at first glance, one might expect Mrs. Wright or one of the men to be the protagonists of the play, Mrs. Hale—the Wrights’ neighbor—is the true protagonist. Glaspell achieves this not by giving Mrs. Hale the most lines, but by making her insight and surreptitious action the driving force of the entire play. From the outset of the play, Mrs. Hale is outspoken about the men's obtuse and disrespectful dismissal of Mrs. Wright’s possessions and life experience. The men, tellingly, fail to see this outspokenness as a threat to their investigation, and simply let Mrs. Hale talk and move freely about the kitchen while condescendingly pacifying her, or dismissing her assertions while they undertake “important work” elsewhere. This gives Mrs. Hale the perfect opportunity to both piece together the details of the crime with Mrs. Peters and to smuggle the crucial piece of evidence—the dead canary—out of the house. In this way, she is able to spin the men's derisive dismissal of her into an asset. The dramatic irony attendant to her actions achieves much of Glaspell’s thematic work in this play.