Blog Post # 17: Quote response on Trifles

“Mrs. Hale: [With a slow look around her.] I wonder how it would seem never to have any children around. [Pause.] No, Wright wouldn’t like the bird- a thing that sang. She used to sing. He killed that, too.
Mrs. Peters: [Moving uneasily.] We don’t know who killed the bird.
Mrs. Hale: I knew John Wright.
Mrs. Peters: It was an awful thing 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.” (Kennedy847)

First and foremost, understanding a text based on dialogue alone was always a struggle for me. This particular piece of work was not that hard to follow. So with that said, I think the play in general creates a lot of different conflict. That’s what make a good drama right? Conflict.
Anyways, In this scene, the women have deduced that Mr. and Mrs. Wright killed each other. Mrs. Wright killed Mr. Wright physically, however. Mr. Wright influenced a dark psychological and mental change in Mrs. Wright that led to Mr. Wright’s murder. The bird and cage analogy, is a representation of husband and wife. It was noted that years back, Mrs. Wright was a vibrant, socializing, church-going until Mr. Wright caged her and she never sang again. Her lack-luster life led to years of misery and as the death of her husband has proven, she became quite numb and distant for quite sometime.
The characters speaking in this dialogue, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, are simple housewives who solved the mysteries simply by relating to what its like being woman and their roles in society. Here, Mrs. Peters is in conflict because here husband is the sheriff and she is practically “married to the law.” (Kennedy848) She knew that the evidence found based of disarrayed quilt patterns and the bird/cage analogy was enough to place Mrs. Wright guilty of murder. As a housewife however, she see’s that marriage life really took its toll on Mrs. Wright and it changed her into this person she doesn’t know. In this case she found the need to disregard the evidence as insufficient.
This poem reminded me of Anne Sexton’s, Her Kind. In the end it is noted that women, go through the same problem. It all come in a different way but we can all relate with each other through experiences.