Jane Doe
Professor Martin
English 1301. TS2
4 October 2004
The Strength of the Female Bond
Most women, at least once in their lifetime, will experience an overwhelming desire to defend another woman against a man. This bond between women, even those who are not particularly close to one another, can form from simply having something in common. In the play Trifles by Susan Glaspell, a strong bond, or a feeling of sisterhood, develops between the women throughout the play. It is this bond that ultimately drives Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters to make their decision to hide the evidence that would provide a motive for why Mrs. Wright strangled and killed her husband. 
In the early 1900’s, all women had one thing in common, how society viewed them. Men had the control and women were regarded as inferior beings. A woman’s role was to take care of the family and the house. It is evident that the women in this play, which was written in 1916, are of no exception. The county Attorney, Sheriff Peters, and Mr. Hale view the role of Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters to be that of simply gathering items to take to Mrs. Wright in jail. The women are not there to help with the investigation, for a woman’s thoughts hold no value. After Mrs. Hale makes a short statement regarding Mrs. Wright’s broken jars of preserves, Mr. Hale comments, “Well, women are used to worrying over trifles” (Glaspell). With this, Glaspell allows the reader to see how the men have no regard for the women’s thoughts. Little do the men realize that it is through these “trifles” (the broken jars, dirty towels, erratic quilt stitching, and a broken birdcage) that the women start to establish their bond and eventually find the evidence that the men are looking for.
An overall feeling of sisterhood is not evident early on in this play. While the reader can see that Mrs. Hale immediately starts defending Mrs. Wright when she comments, “Those towels get dirty awful quick. Men’s hands aren’t always as clean as they might be” (Glaspell), Mrs. Peters chooses to stay quiet in the background. Though Mrs. Hale has not visited Mrs. Wright in over a year, she still considers herself a friend. Mrs. Peters on the other hand, who is married to the Sheriff, is not acquainted with Mrs. Wright so initially her loyalties appear to lie with the men. This is apparent to the reader when Mrs. Peters comments, “. . . it’s no more than their duty” (Glaspell), in defense of the men after Mrs. Hale has stated how she would hate to have men coming into her kitchen, snooping around and criticizing. Mrs. Peters continues to make small comments such as this until she and Mrs. Hale discover the erratic stitching on the quilt that Mrs. Wright had been working on. With the discovery of this “all over the place” stitching, both women start to realize that something had not been quite right in this house. Mrs. Hale states, “. . . it looks as if she didn’t know what she was about!” (Glaspell). Mrs. Peters tries to say it could have just been Mrs. Wright being tired, but the reader knows she is not convinced of that herself. While Mrs. Peters could have insisted Mrs. Hale not disturb the quilt, she instead allows Mrs. Hale to rip the bad stitching out and re-sew it. Even Mrs. Hale is not willing to admit to Mrs. Peters that this could be evidence, so instead she uses the excuse, “Bad sewing always made me fidgety” (Glaspell), as her reasoning for why she alters the stitching. With Mrs. Hale correcting the stitching and Mrs. Peters not stopping her or insisting upon telling the men, the reader sees the women working together to protect Mrs. Wright for the very first time. At this point however, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters are not comfortable enough with one another to make it obvious that either of them realize they are covering up a piece of evidence from the men.
Once the quilt has been fixed, the women stumble upon a birdcage with a broken door. Mrs. Hale comments that someone must have been rough with it and Mrs. Peters agrees. This is yet another display of their evolving bond. Shortly after, they discover a dead bird that had been placed in a beautiful box. The bird’s neck had been wrung. The women share a look of growing comprehension and horror. They realize this is the evidence the men are looking for. Mrs. Peters almost instantly tells Mrs. Hale a story of how her kitten was killed by a boy when she was young. She recalls the strong feeling of anger towards the boy, and states, “If they hadn’t held me back, I would have hurt him” (Glaspell). With Mrs. Peters’ story about her cat, the reader now starts to see that she and Mrs. Wright have something in common; however, this will not be the only thing they prove to have in common. Mrs. Hale then starts to speak of the loneliness that Mrs. Wright must have felt by never having had any children around and by Mr. Wright keeping her secluded from the rest of the world. She then points out, “If there’d been years and years of nothing, then a bird to sing to you, it would be awful still, after the bird was still” (Glaspell). After this, Mrs. Peters says, “I know what stillness is . . . my first baby died after he was two years old, and me with no other then” (Glaspell). Once again she finds herself to have something in common with Mrs. Wright. 
Even though Mrs. Peters has started to strongly sympathize with Mrs. Wright and can now seemingly understand what happed the night of the murder and why, she still comments that, “The law has got to punish crime” (Glaspell). Mrs. Hale, however, continues to defend Mrs. Wright and still works to persuade Mrs. Peters to do the same by telling her, “Oh, I wish I’d come over here once in a while! That was a crime! That was a crime! Who’s going to punish that?” (Glaspell). Mrs. Hale follows this with a strong statement saying, “I might have known she needed help! I know how things can be for women . . . We live close together and we live far apart. We all go through the same things – it’s just a different kind of the same thing” (Glaspell). It is with this statement that the women seal the deal and make the difficult decision to keep the bird hidden from the men. From this point on, the women will now share the ultimate bond, the hiding of the evidence.

Works Cited
Glaspell, Susan. Trifles. 1916. 3 Oct. 2004 <http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/eng384/trifles.htm>.