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In 1916 Susan Glaspell wrote "Trifles," a one-act play to complete the bill at the Wharf Theatre (the other play was Bound East for Cardiff by Eugene O,Neill). One commentator on Glaspell's work believes the play was originally intended as a short story, but, according to Glaspell, "the stage took it for its own."1 In 1917, however, Glaspell rewrote the work as a short story, "Jury of Her Peers," which appeared in Best Short Stories of 1917. That work was adapted by Sally Heckel in 1981 for her Academy-Award nominated film.
The setting for all three works is the same: a gloomy farmhouse kitchen belonging to John Wright, recently strangled, and his wife Minnie, now being held in prison for the crime. Three men enter the set: one, the neighboring farmer who discovered the body; another the district attorney; and a third, the sheriff. Two women accompany them: Mrs. Hale, the farmer's wife and childhood friend of Minnie and Mrs. Peters, the sheriff's wife. While the men search the bedroom and barn for clues to a possible motive for the murder, the women move about the kitchen, reconstructing Minnie's dismal life. Through their attentiveness to the "trifles" in her life, the kitchen things considered insignificant by the men, the two women piece together, like patches in a quilt, the events which may have led to the murder. And because they empathize with the missing woman, having lived similar though different lives, they make a moral decision to hide potentially incriminating evidence.
It is unlikely that had either woman been alone, she would have had sufficient understanding or courage to make the vital decision, but as the trifles reveal the arduousness of Minnie's life (and by implication of their own), a web of sisterhood is woven which connects the lives of all three enabling Mrs. Hale and Peters to counter patriarchal law, a decision particularly weighty for Mrs. Peters, who, as she is reminded by the district attorney, is "married to the law."2
Having taught both play and short story in my "Images of Women in Literature" classes, I am continually amazed at the power of Glaspell's feminist understanding of the difficult decision with which the two early twentieth century rural women struggle. The volatile discussions...