Response to Susan Glaspell's "Trifles"

This story struck a lot of sparks in class, so I'm just going to skip the usually summery and jump right in--in terms of the ethical right/wrong actions of Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale, I would have to make the call, that if I had to make the call, I would say that they did the wrong thing by hiding the evidence (the dead canary). However the case, it's totally not because of the reason they had for hiding it--whether of not to protect Mrs. Wright from a harsher trial because she had been wronged for years and driven to murder is a most complicated choice to make, and it's hard if not impossible to call either one (hiding or divulging the possibly incriminating evidence) the right or wrong decision...

Which, in a way, is exactly why what Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale did was wrong--they made an extremely morally grinding decision based on very little other than their own rushed personal conclusions--conclusions based mostly on a almost romantic take the circumstances which lead to a chilling murder committed in cold blood. Over the course of the play, the two women speculated and speculated, drawing conclusions and reminiscing about the romantic good old days, and ended up turning a very real murder into a fantastical tragedy--one that could nearly be played out as a drama similar to "Trifles" itself. Therefore, I think that while maybe the nature of their decision could be right under circumstances, the reality of their actions are that they didn't have enough real facts--concrete knowledge--to make the kind of call that they did. In short, the two women made a life-altering judgment call from how they felt about what happened, and not on what they knew actually happened--most odious.

On the other hand, after writing this, something else totally hit me (square in the face--not), I realized that if, say, the two women did end up divulging the evidence and gave the dead bird to the attorney and the sheriff, the same thing could happen from the other perspective--the attorney and the sheriff could use the canary and make up their own story to overly incriminate Mrs. Wright--essentially do a similar wrong as the two women did--using their own feelings and prejudices on strictly surrounding the dead bird instead of basing her trail on the big picture--weighing all evidence equally. However the case, that last bit was total speculation, and was totally not thought through.

To wrap up this post, I'd have to say that the more we delved into Glaspell's "Trifles" the more I began to understand it. My first read through left me with a most detrimental attitude--I was totally discouraged by the actions (which I then perceived as arrogant, as, to some less degree, I still do) of the two women in the story, and while I still believe that they most definitely messed up, after hearing the debate in class, I feel like now I have a better grasp on it--or, at least, less detrimental.