Trifles Freedom and Confinement Quotes

Thanks for putting that creepy image in our heads, Mr. Hale. Seriously, though, here's a question for all you super-sleuth Shmoopers out there. Why didn't Mrs. Wright run away? She'd just killed the husband who had her trapped. She was finally free. What made her confine herself in the house and wait to be caught?

This line is the first definite confirmation we get that Mrs. Wright is now confined in jail. It's horrible, right? She killed the husband who made her feel imprisoned for years only to end up in literal jail. What do you think this shows on a larger symbolic level?

Mrs. Peters is talking about the men and their investigation when she says this. Let's flip things around a little bit. In what way might the men be confined by their duty to the law? Even if they did have the empathy to understand what drove Mrs. Wright to murder her husband, would they have the freedom to help her?

Here, we learn that Mrs. Wright basically had no friends. We wonder if it was Mr. Wright that kept her confined to the house, or if she somehow confined herself out of sheer depression and lack of self esteem. A little of both maybe? Which idea do you think the play most supports?

This detail of Mrs. Wright's past stands out in sharp contrast to her stifled life with Mr. Wright. Throughout, the play seems to equate singing with freedom. We get it. We never feel freer than when we're belting out "Let It Go" in the shower. In many works of literature, singing (and music in general) is shown as giving human beings a brief moment of escape from whatever is going on in their lives.

Oh, we have so many questions about this apron. First, it's not much of a leap to see the apron as a symbol of a woman's enslavement to the kitchen, right? Okay, so if Mrs. Wright felt imprisoned in her kitchen, why would she want the symbolic apron to comfort her in real-deal jail? You could interpret this as meaning that Mrs. Wright actually didn't feel confined in her kitchen. Or course, you could also see this as showing just how brainwashed women were into accepting their restrictive roles as homemakers.

And here it is... probably the biggest symbol of Mrs. Wright's confinement that the play has to offer. It's an actual cage, so it's sort of hard to miss. Notice how the play immediately equates Mrs. Wright with the bird. We see a birdcage and then we're told that Mrs. Wright used to sing like a bird herself. Uh... yeah, Susan Glaspell: I think we're picking up what you're putting down. The bird was trapped like Mrs. Wright was trapped; we totally get it.

We can't help but point out that for someone who felt trapped herself, Mrs. Wright didn't seem to mind keeping the bird in the cage. Ah well, we'll forgive her since it was the one ray of light in her life and all. Still, that probably didn't make the whole being in a cage thing suck less for the bird. Is there a larger meaning in idea of the prisoner imprisoning something else?

Check out how prison-like this description of the Wright house is. Being down in a hollow, cut off from the road—it's almost like this gloomy place is surrounded by walls. Even though Mrs. Wright wasn't a literal prisoner, it's easy to see how she felt like one in a place like this.

So after years of confinement by her husband, Mrs. Wright killed him by strangling him with a rope. On one level, this is a fitting death because she's kind of doing to him what he did to the bird. On another level, though, it's fitting because she's confining him. Being strung up by the neck is about as trapped as a person can get.