Blog Entry 17 - Quote Response on Trifles

This short play is about a woman who presumably lived in an abusive relationship, was stripped of her identity and self-esteem and killed her husband in his sleep.  Trifles by Susan Glaspell begins by the authorities looking into the death of John Wright.  John was a man that kept to himself and was rarely seen in town or at social gatherings.  The townspeople had thought of him as a good man, but also as a strange man.  Mrs. Hale describes him to Mrs. Peters, "Like a raw wind that gets to the bone" (Glaspell 845).  There was something about John that made Mrs. Hale uncomfortable whenever he was around.  At the time she probably never thought that he was cruel to his wife. 
When a visitor, Hale, had stopped by the Wright's farm house one morning Mrs. Wright was found in the kitchen.  Hale, describes seeing that "she was rockin' back and forth.  She had her apron in her hand and was kind of -pleating it." (Glaspell 839).  Hale thought that something was terribly wrong the way that Mrs. Wright was behaving and she refused to let him speak with John.  She told Hale, "'Cause he's dead" (Glaspell 839), and in saying those words she showed no emotion. 
Having been in an abusive relationship, it was easy for me to see that Mrs. Wright could have been the one to kill her husband.  Mrs. Hale had described Mrs. Wright as, "She didn't even belong to the Ladies Aid.  I suppose she felt she couldn't do her part, and then you don't enjoy things when you feel shabby" (Glaspell 842).  This is an example of a woman that had been stripped of her self-esteem and identity and closed herself off to any outside relationships. 
The scene at the farmhouse also portrays a depressed woman.  The kitchen is described at the beginning of the play as "a gloomy kitchen" with "unwashed pans under the sink"(Glaspell 837).  Such disarray shows signs of her despair.