Happiness In Susan Glaspell's Trifles

Life in short isn’t just an enormous moment, it’s multiple diminutive moments. What affects these small moments the most are emotions, and the most significant emotion is happiness. Happiness can range from something as a big as winning the power ball to something as miniscule as a pet. The miniscule things are what tie us down, and make sure we stay sane. In the play Trifles by the playwright Susan Glaspell the thing that tied down a Midwestern farmwife Minnie Wright, was her little canary. The one miniscule thing that kept her sane from all of the sadness that surrounded her caused by her emotionally abusive husband. With the death of it, came the death of her sanity and her husband. Throughout the play the female characters discuss the
As Mrs. Hale tells the county clerk as to why she never visits the Wright house she says, “No, I don’t mean anything. But I don’t think a place’d be any cheerfuller for John Wright’s being in it” (558). If an acquaintance of the family finds it hard to believe that a house with John Wright would be full of life, and happiness. Imagine how the wife of John Wright would feel in her own house. I can imagine why she ended up killing her husband, he drove her
Though the play doesn’t tell us directly that John Wright killed the bird, it is insinuated by what the characters tell us. While examining the cage Mrs. Peter, and Mrs. Hale discovered, Mrs. Peter says, “Why, look at this door it’s broke, One hinge is pulled apart” (559). Substantiating that the cage was broken into, and seeing how only Minnie and John stay at the house it’s safe to assume that it was John who broke into it. Finally, the two ladies discover the dead bird in Minnie’s quilting box, and Mrs. Hale says, “Mrs. Peters-look at it! Its neck! Look at its neck! It’s all-other side to” (560). To which Mrs. Peter replies, “Somebody-wrung-its-neck” (560). From this the reader can make the assumption that it was John Wright who killed the bird, because that’s exactly how he was killed by Minnie Wright.
John Wright’s abusiveness ultimately led to his own demise. Abuse is very prominent in many relationships today and comes in many shapes, in this play it’s observed as emotional. Which in my personal opinion is the slow killer, as shown by Minnie Wright’s slow descent into madness leading her to kill her husband. So be nice to your significant other, unless you want to follow John Wright’s path of