One Act Play 1: Trifles

Susan Glaspell’s pioneering feminist drama is set in the cold, abandoned kitchen of John Wright’s farmhouse in rural Iowa. John Wright has been found strangled with a rope in his bed, and his timid wife Minnie is held in jail as the primary suspect. County Attorney Henderson, Sheriff Peters, and neighbor Lewis Hale search the home for evidence establishing motive. While the men dismiss the messy kitchen as trivial female negligence ("Women are used to worrying over trifles"), the two accompanying women—Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters—observe subtle domestic clues: burst fruit jars ruined by frost, erratic sewing stitches on a quilt block, an unhinged birdcage, and finally, a colorful canary wrapped in fine silk with its neck wrung. The women piece together the truth: John Wright, a grim and tyrannical husband, suffocated Minnie’s spirit for decades and ultimately snapped her beloved canary’s neck. Minnie, driven past endurance, retaliated in kind. Recognizing that the legal system constructed by men will never understand the psychological murder Minnie endured, the two women choose ethical solidarity over statutory law, silently concealing the dead bird in Mrs. Hale’s pocket to protect Minnie from the gallows.

Practice questions curated specifically for One Act Play 1: Trifles.