The sheriff, his wife, the county attorney, and the neighbors of Mr. and Mrs Wright enter the kitchen of their house, Mr. Hale explains how he paid a visit to the house on the day before. Mrs. Wright greeted him but behaved strangely when he asked to see her husband, but later stated in a dull voice that her husband was upstairs, dead. After telling everyone of what he saw at Wright’s place, the Sheriff looked around and said that there is nothing worth looking at in the kitchen as it is just "kitchen things".
After looking around too, mrs. Peters points out a broken jar of preserves and the Sheriff says, "Well, you can beat the women! Held for murder and worryin' about her preserves" by saying this, I think the sheriff was pointing out that a woman that might be facing criminal charges can worry about anything since women are known to worry about even unreasonable things and "Preserves" happens to be one of them. But "preserves" can symbolize anything that women worry over that men see more as trifles. There is another point in the play when the women comment on the tidiness of the house and how she must not have been happy with her husband. However, it seems Susan Glaspell expresses her view that the entire men see is a messy house and that the wife was not a very good house keeper. They do not see these things as being very important.
The women realize that these small things that the men call trifles could actually go towards motives. Mrs. Wright did not appear to be happy with her husband. They knew this because of the little "trifles" that they discovered. Maybe that was the reason that she murdered her husband. Not only did the men see the worries of women as unimportant, but the women were always connected to who the men were. I also think that Unlike the men who are looking for forensic evidence to solve the crime, the women in Susan Glaspell's Trifles observe clues that reveal the bleakness of Mrs. Wright’s emotional life. They theorize that Mr. Wright’s cold, oppressive nature must have been dreary to live with. Mrs. Hale comments about Mrs. Wright being childless: “Not having children makes less work – but it makes a quiet house.” To the women, they are simply trying to pass the awkward moments with civil conversation. But to the audience, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters unveil a psychological profile of a desperate housewife.
When