Trifles

Social commentary and satire are standbys of the murder mystery genre, and Trifles is no exception. The play serves as an indictment of the patriarchal manner, by which men underestimate and dismiss women—often, to the detriment of their own purported expertise. That “expertise” in this play, is that of crime detection, and police and legal work. Throughout the play, the County Attorney (George Henderson) and Sheriff (Henry Peters) bluster in and out of the farmhouse, thoroughly convinced that their work is important and that they are the experts who will get to the bottom of the murder. They self-importantly stomp around while taking every opportunity to remind Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale how perfectly ridiculous and useless they find them.

However, it is the two women who display the insight and intelligence needed to solve the crime, and they, too, uncover the crucial piece of evidence that ties together the entire affair. This dramatic irony is the crux of the play. Through it, Glaspell mounts her indictment of a patriarchal society that habitually dismisses, erases, and undervalues women, while simultaneously highlighting the intimate specifics of how the violence of patriarchy is experienced in the most mundane ways by the women who must toil beneath it—with occasionally spectacular results.