Mrs. Hale

Character Analysis

Woman Warrior

All hail Mrs. Hale—this protagonist of Trifles is not to be trifled with. Like most other women in America around the turn of the 20th century, Mrs. Hale puts up with a daily onslaught of sexism. But unlike a lot of other women, this Midwestern farmwife doesn't take it lying down.

Mrs. Hale isn't even afraid to go up against men with authority, like Mr. Henderson, the County Attorney. Early in the play, Mrs. Hale gets annoyed that Henderson disses Mrs. Wright's housekeeping even though the murder suspect was grabbed suddenly from her house and tossed into jail. Every time the Attorney tries to talk smack about Mrs. Wright, Mrs. Hale has a comeback. Here's one of our favorite interchanges:

COUNTY ATTORNEY: [...] Dirty towels! (kicks his foot against the pans under the sink) Not much of a housekeeper, would you say, ladies?
MRS HALE: (stiffly) There's a great deal of work to be done on a farm.
COUNTY ATTORNEY: [...] I know there are some Dickson county farmhouses which do not have such roller towels. [...]
MRS HALE: Those towels get dirty awful quick. Men's hands aren't always as clean as they might be.
COUNTY ATTORNEY: Ah, loyal to your sex, I see. (33-37)

No, Mrs. Hale doesn't get all up in Henderson's face and call him a jerk. She's still a lady of her time and has to be wee bit subtler than that—they might lock her up too if she spent all her life being outright aggressive. But notice how every time the County Attorney tries to pin the bad housekeeper label on Mrs. Wright, Mrs. Hale finds a way to undercut it and to put the blame on men.

Bad Samaritan

If Mrs. Hale were nothing more than a flag-waving crusader for women's rights, she wouldn't be nearly as complex a character as she is. The thing that makes her so interesting is her guilt over never coming over to spend time with her neighbor Mrs. Wright. Over and over again, she admits that she knew what a horrible husband Mr. Wright was and how lonely Mrs. Wright must have been, but that she stayed away because the Wright house was gloomy and depressing.

Mrs. Hale's guilty conscience erupts after she and Mrs. Peters find Mrs. Wright's dead canary, which they're sure Mr. Wright executed. The sight of the dead bird makes it all too clear the kind of horrible life Mrs. Hale's neighbor wife had been living. Mrs. Hale also knew Mrs. Wright before she got married and turned into a depressing lady. Check out this set of lines, where Mrs. Hale's guilt finally explodes:

MRS HALE: [...] I wish you'd seen Minnie Foster when she wore a white dress with blue ribbons and stood up there in the choir and sang. [...] Oh, I wish I'd come over here once in a while! That was a crime! That was a crime! Who's going to punish that? [...] I might have known she needed help! (136-138)

Notice that Mrs. Hale isn't screaming that Mr. Wright should've been punished for all his years of treating his wife like dirt. Instead, Mrs. Hale is saying that she's the one who should be punished for ignoring another woman in need just because that woman's house was gloom-central.

Rebel with a Cause

Usually whenever anybody talks about Trifles, the word "feminist" comes out in the same sentence. So it seems pretty likely that Mrs. Hale's realization that she could've done more is meant to be a message to every woman everywhere. Take this quote for instance:

MRS. HALE: [...] I know how things can be—for women. I tell you, it's queer, Mrs. Peters. We live close together and we live far apart. We all go through the same things—it's all just a different kind of the same thing. (138)

It this isn't a rallying cry for women everywhere to band together, than we've never heard a rallying cry. (Psst: we've heard rallying cries.) In the end, along with Mrs. Peters, Mrs. Hale takes a stand against the male-dominated society by hiding the dead bird that could condemn Mrs. Wright of murdering her husband. It might not be a huge act of rebellion, but it is a rebel act. By doing this, Mrs. Hale is saying to the men, "We as women defy your laws. We're mad as hell, and we aren't going to take it anymore."