Jane Doe
Professor Martin
English 1301
09 October 2004
The Power of Emotional Women
	Different forces rule men and women.  Women are emotional beings, driven by heart and feelings.  Men, on the other hand, set goals and make decisions based more on logic than what their heart is telling them.  In her play, Trifles, Susan Glaspell uses the murder of a farmer and the ensuing investigation to illustrate this striking difference between the sexes.  While the male characters use logic and intellect to decipher the crime scene, the women approach the task from a different angle.  Through the women’s perspective and ultimate reactions to the murder of Mr. Wright, Glaspell demonstrates how emotion can outweigh reason in the female decision making process.  
	From the outset of the play, the male characters begin dissecting the events of the previous morning and investigating the scene of the crime in an effort to prove the logical conclusion they have already reached: Mrs. Wright committed the murder.  The only interest the men show in understanding why Mrs. Wright would murder her husband is to provide a jury with a motive for the crime.  After a retelling of the discovery of the crime and a commentary of the housekeeping abilities of Mrs. Wright, the men in the play set off to “get the lay of things upstairs” but instruct the women to “keep an eye out for anything that might be of use to us” (Glaspell).  The County Attorney almost sums up the difference between the sexes by saying, “it’s all perfectly clear except a reason for doing it.  But you know juries when it comes to women.  If there was some definite thing” (Glaspell).  While the women gather some necessities for Mrs. Wright, the men explore the home in search of more information.   
	Unlike the men, Mrs. Hale has all the information she needs to understand the murder without leaving the kitchen.  Immediately, Mrs. Hale displays a degree of sympathy for Mrs. Wright by defending her abilities as a housekeeper;  Mrs. Hale states, “There’s a great deal of work to be done on a farm” (Glaspell) in response to the attorney’s criticism of the home.  Even before the obvious question “Do you think she did it” is posed by Mrs. Peters, Mrs. Hale is reminiscing about the woman accused of the heinous crime by saying, “she use to wear pretty clothes and be lively” (Glaspell).  Mrs. Hale feels a connection to Mrs. Wright from the beginning of the play, and she recounts her past dealings with Mrs. Wright and draws several sad parallels between their lives.  This emotional connection even allows Mrs. Hale to villanize the murder victim by describing him as “the raw wind that gets you to the bone” (Glaspell). Mrs. Hale’s sensitive and emotional nature overtake her logical side.  Therefore, she is able to empathize with a woman who committed a heinous crime.
	Unlike Mrs. Hale, Mrs. Peters is not ruled by her emotional side from the outset of the play.  She initially questions Mrs. Wright’s guilt and does not seem particularly connected to the farm wife whose home she is dissecting.  She attempts several times to interject logic into the discussion with Mrs. Hale, perhaps in an attempt to get her friend to see the situation for what it is, a murder; “It was an awful thing was done in this house that night, Mrs. Hale.  Killing a man while he slept, slipping a rope around his neck that choked the life out of him” (Glaspell).  Even after this logical interjection, Mrs. Peters’s emotions grow stronger as she says, “We don’t know who killed him.  We don’t know” (Glaspell).  Although her initial reactions to the crime indicate a search for the logic in the situation, she too is ultimately swayed by emotion enough to remain silent about the discovery of the dead canary despite her knowledge of the implications of the bird.  Although she makes the statement “it’s a good thing the men couldn’t hear us.  Wouldn’t they just laugh!  Getting all stirred up over a little thing like a dead canary” (Glaspell), the reader can sense Mrs. Peters knew the dead bird provided the motive for Mrs. Wright to kill her husband.
	The behavior of the characters in the play, in addition to the dialogue, demonstrates the difference between the sexes when it comes to the power of emotion.  While the men are gathering evidence to use against the woman sitting in jail for killing her husband, the women are straightening her home and collecting necessities to take to her in jail.  As the men leave the kitchen to “get the lay of things upstairs” (Glaspell), the women begin the task of sorting through the kitchen.  In stereotypical female fashion, the women start by cleaning up the mess left from the night before.  During this, the reader gets the first glimpse of Mrs. Hale’s emotional side; “She’ll (Mrs. Wright) feel awful bad after all her hard work” (Glaspell).  Ultimately, in gathering items for Mrs. Wright, the women uncover motive for the crime; they also uncover an emotional connection to the woman accused of the murder so powerful, it enables them to hide the dead canary.
	Mrs. Wright’s guilt in the murder of her husband is a forgone conclusion for the men in The Trifles, but the two female characters wrestle with the crime and the emotional reactions they have to it.  While the discovery of the canary confirms the reader’s suspicions of Mrs. Wright’s guilt, it also provides the proof that the women are swayed more by their emotions than by logic.  The logical conclusion would be to turn the bird over to the men and provide the motive for the crime.  The women, however, choose to remain silent.  The power of emotion wins out over logic.

Work Cited

Glaspell, Susan.  “Trifles.” 10 Oct. 2004
	http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/eng384/trifles.htm