Trifles is a one-act play; in other words, the entire play takes place in a single location and unfolds as one continuous action without a break. As in a short story, the characters in a one-act play are presented economically, and the action is sharply focused. In contrast, full-length plays can include many characters as well as different settings in place and time. The main divisions of a full-length play are typically acts; their ends are indicated by lowering a curtain, turning up the houselights, or turning down the stage lights while stage hands change the props. Playwrights frequently employ acts to accommodate changes in time, setting, characters on stage, or mood. In many full-length plays, such as Shakespeare’s Hamlet, acts are further divided into scenes; according to tradition a scene changes when the location of the action changes or when a new character enters. Acts and scenes are conventions that are understood and accepted by audiences because they have come, through usage and time, to be recognized as familiar structural techniques, akin to chapters in a novel or stanzas in a poem.
The major convention of a one-act play is that it typically consists of only a single scene; nevertheless, one-act plays contain many of the elements of drama that characterize their full-length counterparts. One-act plays create their effects through compression. They especially lend themselves to modestly budgeted productions with limited stage facilities. However, the potential of a one-act play to move audiences and readers is not related to its length. As Trifles shows, one-acts represent a powerful form of dramatic literature.
The single location that composes the setting for Trifles is described at the very beginning of the play; it establishes an atmosphere that will later influence our judgment of Mrs. Wright. The “gloomy” kitchen is disordered, bare, and sparsely equipped with a stove, sink, rocker, cupboard, two tables, some chairs, three doors, and a window. These details are just enough to allow us to imagine the stark, uninviting place where Mrs. Wright spent most of her time. Moreover, “signs of incompleted work,” coupled with the presence of the sheriff and county attorney, create an immediate tension by suggesting that something is terribly wrong. Before a single word is spoken, suspense is created as the characters enter. This suspenseful situation causes an anxious uncertainty about what will happen next.
The setting is further developed through the use of exposition, a device that provides the necessary background information about the characters and their circumstances. For example, we immediately learn through dialogue — the verbal exchanges between characters — that Mr. Henderson, the county attorney, is just back from Omaha. This detail establishes the setting as somewhere in the Midwest, where winters can be brutally cold and barren. We also find out that John Wright has been murdered and that his wife has been arrested for the crime.
Even more important, Glaspell deftly characterizes the Wrights through exposition alone. Mr. Hale’s conversation with Mr. Henderson explains how Mr. Wright’s body was discovered, but it also reveals that Wright was a non-communicative man, who refused to share a “party telephone” — that is, a telephone line shared by multiple customers — and who did not consider “what his wife wanted.” Later Mrs. Hale adds to this characterization when she tells Mrs. Peters that though Mr. Wright was an honest, good man who paid his bills and did not drink, he was a “hard man” and “Like a raw wind that gets to the bone.” Mr. Hale’s description of Mrs. Wright sitting in the kitchen dazed and disoriented gives us a picture of a shattered, exhausted woman. But it is Mrs. Hale who again offers further insights when she describes how Minnie Foster, a sweet, pretty, timid young woman who sang in the choir, was changed by her marriage to Mr. Wright and by her childless, isolated life on the farm.
This information about Mr. and Mrs. Wright is worked into the dialogue throughout the play in order to suggest the nature of the conflict or struggle between them, a motive, and, ultimately, a justification for the murder. In the hands of a skillful playwright, exposition is not merely a mechanical device; it can provide important information while simultaneously developing characterizations and moving the action forward.
The action is shaped by the plot, the author’s arrangement of incidents in the play that gives the story a particular focus and emphasis. Plot involves more than simply what happens; it involves how and why things happen. Glaspell begins with a discussion of the murder. Why? She could have begun with the murder itself: the distraught Mrs. Wright looping the rope around her husband’s neck. The moment would be dramatic and horribly vivid. We neither see the body nor hear very much about it. When Mr. Hale describes finding Mr. Wright’s body, Glaspell has the county attorney cut him off by saying, “I think I’d rather have you go into that upstairs, where you can point it all out. Just go on now with the rest of the story.” It is precisely the “rest of the story” that interests Glaspell. Her arrangement of incidents prevents us from sympathizing with Mr. Wright. We are, finally, invited to see Mrs. Wright instead of her husband as the victim.
Mr. Henderson’s efforts to discover a motive for the murder appear initially to be the play’s focus, but the real conflicts are explored in what seems to be a subplot, a secondary action that reinforces or contrasts with the main plot. The discussions between Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters and the tensions between the men and the women turn out to be the main plot because they address the issues that Glaspell chooses to explore. Those issues are not about murder but about marriage and how men and women relate to each other.
The protagonist of Trifles, the central character with whom we tend to identify, is Mrs. Hale. The antagonist, the character who is in some kind of opposition to the central character, is the county attorney, Mr. Henderson. These two characters embody the major conflicts presented in the play because each speaks for a different set of characters who represent disparate values. Mrs. Hale and Mr. Henderson are developed less individually than as representative types.
Mrs. Hale articulates a sensitivity to Mrs. Wright’s miserable life as well as an awareness of how women are repressed in general by men; she also helps Mrs. Peters to arrive at a similar understanding. When Mrs. Hale defends Mrs. Wright’s soiled towels from Mr. Henderson’s criticism, Glaspell has her say more than the county attorney is capable of hearing. The stage directions — the playwright’s instructions about how the actors are to move and behave — indicate that Mrs. Hale responds “stiffly” to Mr. Henderson’s disparagements: “Men’s hands aren’t always as clean as they might be.” Mrs. Hale eventually comes to see that the men are, in a sense, complicit because it was insensitivity like theirs that drove Mrs. Wright to murder.
Mr. Henderson, on the other hand, represents the law in a patriarchal, conventional society that blithely places a minimal value on the concerns of women. In his attempt to gather evidence against Mrs. Wright, he implicitly defends men’s severe dominance over women. He also patronizes Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters. Like Sheriff Peters and Mr. Hale, he regards the women’s world as nothing more than “kitchen things” and “trifles.” Glaspell, however, patterns the plot so that the women see more about Mrs. Wright’s motives than the men do and shows that the women have a deeper understanding of justice.
Many plays are plotted in what has come to be called a pyramidal pattern, because the plot is divided into three essential parts. Such plays begin with a rising action, in which complication creates conflict for the protagonist. The resulting tension builds to the second major division, known as the climax, when the action reaches a final crisis, a turning point that has a powerful effect on the protagonist. The third part consists of falling action; here the tensions are diminished in the resolution of the plot’s conflicts and complications (the resolution is also referred to as the conclusion or dénouement, a French word meaning “unknotting”). These divisions may occur at different times. There are many variations to this pattern. The terms are helpful for identifying various moments and movements within a given plot, but they are less useful if seen as a means of reducing dramatic art to a formula.
Because Trifles is a one-act play, this pyramidal pattern is less elaborately worked out than it might be in a full-length play, but the basic elements of the pattern can still be discerned. The complication consists mostly of Mrs. Hale’s refusal to assign moral or legal guilt to Mrs. Wright’s murder of her husband. Mrs. Hale is able to discover the motive in the domestic details that are beneath the men’s consideration. The men fail to see the significance of the fruit jars, messy kitchen, and badly sewn quilt.
At first Mrs. Peters seems to voice the attitudes associated with the men. Unlike Mrs. Hale, who is “more comfortable looking,” Mrs. Peters is “a slight wiry woman” with “a thin nervous face” who sounds like her husband, the sheriff, when she insists, “the law is the law.” She also defends the men’s patronizing attitudes, because “they’ve got awful important things on their minds.” But Mrs. Peters is a foil — a character whose behavior and values contrast with the protagonist’s — only up to a point. When the most telling clue is discovered, Mrs. Peters suddenly understands, along with Mrs. Hale, the motive for the killing. Mrs. Wright’s caged life was no longer tolerable to her after her husband had killed the bird (which was the one bright spot in her life and which represents her early life as the young Minnie Foster). This revelation brings about the climax, when the two women must decide whether to tell the men what they have discovered. Both women empathize with Mrs. Wright as they confront this crisis, and their sense of common experience leads them to withhold the evidence.
This resolution ends the play’s immediate conflicts and complications. Presumably, without a motive the county attorney will have difficulty prosecuting Mrs. Wright — at least to the fullest extent of the law. However, the larger issues related to the theme, the central idea or meaning of the play, are left unresolved. The men have both missed the clues and failed to perceive the suffering that acquits Mrs. Wright in the minds of the two women. The play ends with Mrs. Hale’s ironic answer to Mr. Henderson’s question about quilting. When she says “knot it,” she gives him part of the evidence he needs to connect Mrs. Wright’s quilting with the knot used to strangle her husband. Mrs. Hale knows — and we know — that Mr. Henderson will miss the clue she offers because he is blinded by his own self-importance and assumptions.
Though brief, Trifles is a masterful representation of dramatic elements working together to keep both audiences and readers absorbed in its characters and situations.
Lynn Nottage wrote her first play in high school and has contributed consistently and importantly to the American theater scene ever since. She has twice won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, in 2009 for Ruined and in 2017 for Sweat (which also won an Obie Award, which is an award given to an “off-Broadway” play that is not necessarily poised for commercial success). A native of New York City, Nottage earned her B.A. from Brown University and her Master’s of Fine Arts degree from Yale. She currently teaches at Columbia University. Nottage’s work is varied in terms of setting and plot, but her characters tend to be from the margins of their society, such as the working class from beleaguered Reading, Pennsylvania in Sweat, or women surviving a civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo in Ruined. The following one-act play is considerably lighter and more humorous than of her work, but it addresses weighty subjects nonetheless.
CHARACTERS
Samuel, Loureen’s husband
Loureen, a demure housewife, early thirties
Florence, Loureen’s best friend, early thirties
TIME
The present
PLACE
Kitchen
A NOTE
Nearly half the women on death row in the United States were convicted of killing abusive husbands. Spontaneous combustion is not recognized as a capital crime.
Darkness.
Samuel (In the darkness): WHEN I COUNT TO TEN I DON’ WANT TO SEE YA! I DON’ WANT TO HEAR YA! ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR —
Loureen (In the darkness): DAMN YOU TO HELL, SAMUEL!
(A bright flash.
Lights rise. A huge pile of smoking ashes rests in the middle of the kitchen. Loureen, a demure housewife in her early thirties, stares down at the ashes incredulously. She bends and lifts a pair of spectacles from the remains. She ever so slowly backs away.)
Samuel? Uh! (Places the spectacles on the kitchen table) Uh! … Samuel? (Looks around) Don’t fool with me now. I’m not in the mood. (Whispers) Samuel? I didn’t mean it really. I’ll be good if you come back … Come on now, dinner’s waiting. (Chuckles, then stops abruptly) Now stop your foolishness… And let’s sit down. (Examines the spectacles) Uh! (Softly) Don’t be cross with me. Sure I forgot to pick up your shirt for tomorrow. I can wash another, I’ll do it right now. Right now! Sam? … (Cautiously) You hear me! (Awaits a response) Maybe I didn’t ever intend to wash your shirt. (Pulls back as though about to receive a blow; a moment) Uh! (Sits down and dials the telephone) Florence, honey, could you come on down for a moment. There’s been a … little … accident… Quickly please. Uh!
(Loureen hangs up the phone. She gets a broom and a dust pan. She hesitantly approaches the pile of ashes. She gets down on her hands and knees and takes a closer look. A fatuous grin spreads across her face. She is startled by a sudden knock on the door. She slowly walks across the room like a possessed child. Loureen lets in Florence, her best friend and upstairs neighbor. Florence, also a housewife in her early thirties, wears a floral housecoat and a pair of over sized slippers. Without acknowledgment Loureen proceeds to saunter back across the room.)
Florence: HEY!
Loureen (Pointing at the ashes): Uh! … (She struggles to formulate words, which press at the inside of her mouth, not quite realized) Uh! …
Florence: You all right? What happened? (Sniffs the air) Smells like you burned something? (Stares at the huge pile of ashes) What the devil is that?
Loureen (Hushed): Samuel … It’s Samuel, I think.
Florence: What’s he done now?
Loureen: It’s him. It’s him. (Nods her head repeatedly)
Florence: Chile, what’s wrong with you? Did he finally drive you out your mind? I knew something was going to happen sooner or later.
Loureen: Dial 911, Florence!
Florence: Why? You’re scaring me!
Loureen: Dial 911!
(Florence picks up the telephone and quickly dials.)
I think I killed him.
(Florence hangs up the telephone.)
Florence: What?
Loureen (Whimpers): I killed him! I killed Samuel!
Florence: Come again? … He’s dead dead?
(Loureen wrings her hands and nods her head twice, mouthing “dead dead.” Florence backs away.)
No, stop it, I don’t have time for this. I’m going back upstairs. You know how Samuel hates to find me here when he gets home. You’re not going to get me this time. (Louder) Y’all can have your little joke, I’m not part of it! (A moment. She takes a hard look into Loureen’s eyes; she squints) Did you really do it this time?
Loureen (Hushed): I don’t know how or why it happened, it just did.
Florence: Why are you whispering?
Loureen: I don’t want to talk too loud — something else is liable to disappear.
Florence: Where’s his body?
Loureen (Points to the pile of ashes): There! …
Florence: You burned him?
Loureen: I DON’T KNOW! (Covers her mouth as if to muffle her words; hushed) I think so.
Florence: Either you did or you didn’t, what you mean you don’t know? We’re talking murder, Loureen, not oven settings.
Loureen: You think I’m playing?
Florence: How many times have I heard you talk about being rid of him. How many times have we sat at this very table and laughed about the many ways we could do it and how many times have you done it? None.
Loureen (Lifting the spectacles): A pair of cheap spectacles, that’s all that’s left. And you know how much I hate these. You ever seen him without them, no! … He counted to four and disappeared. I swear to God!
Florence: Don’t bring the Lord into this just yet! Sit down now … What you got to sip on?
Loureen: I don’t know whether to have a stiff shot of scotch or a glass of champagne.
(Florence takes a bottle of sherry out of the cupboard and pours them each a glass. Loureen downs hers, then holds out her glass for more.)
He was…
Florence: Take your time.
Loureen: Standing there.
Florence: And?
Loureen: He exploded.
Florence: Did that muthafucka hit you again?
Loureen: No … he exploded. Boom! Right in front of me. He was shouting like he does, being all colored, then he raised up that big crusty hand to hit me, and poof, he was gone … I barely got words out and I’m looking down at a pile of ash.
(Florence belts back her sherry. She wipes her forehead and pours them both another.)
Florence: Chile, I’ll give you this, in terms of color you’ve matched my husband Edgar, the story king. He came in at six Sunday morning, talking about he’d hit someone with his car, and had spent all night trying to outrun the police. I felt sorry for him. It turns out he was playing poker with his paycheck no less. You don’t want to know how I found out … But I did.
Loureen: You think I’m lying?
Florence: I certainly hope so, Loureen. For your sake and my heart’s.
Loureen: Samuel always said if I raised my voice something horrible would happen. And it did. I’m a witch … the devil spawn!
Florence: You’ve been watching too much television.
Loureen: Never seen anything like this on television. Wish I had, then I’d know what to do … There’s no question, I’m a witch. (Looks at her hands with disgust)
Florence: Chile, don’t tell me you’ve been messing with them mojo women again? What did I tell ya.
(Loureen, agitated, stands and sits back down.)
Loureen: He’s not coming back. Oh no, how could he? It would be a miracle! Two in one day … I could be canonized. Worse yet, he could be … All that needs to happen now is for my palms to bleed and I’ll be eternally remembered as Saint Loureen, the patron of battered wives. Women from across the country will make pilgrimages to me, laying pies and pot roast at my feet and asking the good saint to make their husbands turn to dust. How often does a man like Samuel get damned to hell, and go?
(She breaks down. Florence moves to console her friend, then realizes that Loureen is actually laughing hysterically.)
Florence: You smoking crack?
Loureen: Do I look like I am?
Florence: Hell, I’ve seen old biddies creeping out of crack houses, talking about they were doing church work.
Loureen: Florence, please be helpful, I’m very close to the edge! … I don’t know what to do next! Do I sweep him up? Do I call the police? Do I …
(The phone rings.)
Oh God.
Florence: You gonna let it ring?
(Loureen reaches for the telephone slowly.)
Loureen: NO! (Holds the receiver without picking it up, paralyzed) What if it’s his mother? … She knows!
(The phone continues to ring. They sit until it stops. They both breathe a sigh of relief.)
I should be mourning, I should be praying, I should be thinking of the burial, but all that keeps popping into my mind is what will I wear on television when I share my horrible and wonderful story with a studio audience … (Whimpers) He’s made me a killer, Florence, and you remember what a gentle child I was. (Whispers) I’m a killer, I’m a killer, I’m a killer.
Florence: I wouldn’t throw that word about too lightly even in jest. Talk like that gets around.
Loureen: You think they’ll lock me up? A few misplaced words and I’ll probably get the death penalty, isn’t that what they do with women like me, murderesses?
Florence: Folks have done time for less.
Loureen: Thank you, just what I needed to hear!
Florence: What did you expect, that I was going to throw up my arms and congratulate you? Why’d you have to go and lose your mind at this time of day, while I got a pot of rice on the stove and Edgar’s about to walk in the door and wonder where his goddamn food is. (Losing her cool) And he’s going to start in on me about all the nothing I’ve been doing during the day and why I can’t work and then he’ll mention how clean you keep your home. And I don’t know how I’m going to look him in the eye without …
Loureen: I’m sorry, Florence. Really. It’s out of my hands now.
(She takes Florence’s hand and squeezes it.)
Florence (Regaining her composure): You swear on your right tit?
Loureen (Clutching both breasts:): I swear on both of them!
Florence: Both your breasts, Loureen! You know what will happen if you’re lying. (Loureen nods; hushed) Both your breasts Loureen?
Loureen: Yeah!
Florence (Examines the pile of ashes, then shakes her head): Oh sweet, sweet Jesus. He must have done something truly terrible.
Loureen: No more than usual. I just couldn’t take being hit one more time.
Florence: You’ve taken a thousand blows from that man, couldn’t you’ve turned the cheek and waited. I’d have helped you pack. Like we talked about.
(A moment.)
Loureen: Uh! … I could blow on him and he’d disappear across the linoleum. (Snaps her fingers) Just like that. Should I be feeling remorse or regret or some other “R” word? I’m strangely jubilant, like on prom night when Samuel and I first made love. That’s the feeling! (The women lock eyes) Uh!
Florence: Is it …
Loureen: Like a ton of bricks been lifted from my shoulders, yeah.
Florence: Really?
Loureen: Yeah!
(Florence walks to the other side of the room.)
Florence: You bitch!
Loureen: What?
Florence: We made a pact.
Loureen: I know.
Florence: You’ve broken it … We agreed that when things got real bad for both of us we’d … you know … together … Do I have to go back upstairs to that? … What next?
Loureen: I thought you’d tell me! … I don’t know!
Florence: I don’t know!
Loureen: I don’t know!
(Florence begins to walk around the room, nervously touching objects. Loureen sits, wringing her hands and mumbling softly to herself.)
Florence: Now you got me, Loureen, I’m truly at a loss for words.
Loureen: Everybody always told me, “Keep your place, Loureen.” My place, the silent spot on the couch with a wine cooler in my hand and a pleasant smile that warmed the heart. All this time I didn’t know why he was so afraid for me to say anything, to speak up. Poof! … I’ve never been by myself, except for them two weeks when he won the office pool and went to Reno with his cousin Mitchell. He wouldn’t tell me where he was going until I got that postcard with the cowboy smoking a hundred cigarettes … Didn’t Sonny Larkin look good last week at Caroline’s? He looked good, didn’t he …
(Florence nods. She nervously picks up Samuel’s jacket, which is hanging on the back of the chair. She clutches it unconsciously.)
NO! No! Don’t wrinkle that, that’s his favorite jacket. He’ll kill me. Put it back!
(Florence returns the jacket to its perch. Loureen begins to quiver.)
I’m sorry. (She grabs the jacket and wrinkles it up) There! (She then digs into the coat pockets and pulls out his wallet and a movie stub) Look at that, he said he didn’t go to the movies last night. Working late. (Frantically thumbs through his wallet) Picture of his motorcycle, Social Security card, driver’s license, and look at that from our wedding. (Smiling) I looked good, didn’t I? (She puts the pictures back in the wallet and holds the jacket up to her face) There were some good things. (She then sweeps her hand over the jacket to remove the wrinkles, and folds it ever so carefully, and finally throws it in the garbage) And out of my mouth those words made him disappear. All these years and just words, Florence. That’s all they were.
Florence: I’m afraid I won’t ever get those words out. I’ll start resenting you, honey. I’m afraid won’t anything change for me.
Loureen: I been to that place.
Florence: Yeah? But now I wish I could relax these old lines (Touches her forehead) for a minute maybe. Edgar has never done me the way Samuel did you, but he sure did take the better part of my life.
Loureen: Not yet, Florence.
Florence (Nods): I have the children to think of … right?
Loureen: You can think up a hundred things before …
Florence: Then come upstairs with me … we’ll wait together for Edgar and then you can spit out your words and …
Loureen: I can’t do that.
Florence: Yes you can. Come on now.
(Loureen shakes her head no.)
Well, I guess my mornings are not going to be any different.
Loureen: If you can say for certain, then I guess they won’t be. I couldn’t say that.
Florence: But you got a broom and a dust pan, you don’t need anything more than that … He was a bastard and nobody will care that he’s gone.
Loureen: Phone’s gonna start ringing soon, people are gonna start asking soon, and they’ll care.
Florence: What’s your crime? Speaking your mind?
Loureen: Maybe I should mail him to his mother. I owe her that. I feel bad for her, she didn’t understand how it was. I can’t just throw him away and pretend like it didn’t happen. Can I?
Florence: I didn’t see anything but a pile of ash. As far as I know you got a little careless and burned a chicken.
Loureen: He was always threatening not to come back.
Florence: I heard him.
Loureen: It would’ve been me eventually.
Florence: Yes.
Loureen: I should call the police, or someone.
Florence: Why? What are you gonna tell them? About all those times they refused to help, about all those nights you slept in my bed ’cause you were afraid to stay down here? About the time he nearly took out your eye ’cause you flipped the television channel?
Loureen: No.
Florence: You’ve got it, girl!
Loureen: Good-bye to the fatty meats and the salty food. Good-bye to the bourbon and the bologna sandwiches. Good-bye to the smell of his feet, his breath and his bowel movements … (A moment. She closes her eyes and, reliving a horrible memory, she shudders) Good-bye. (Walks over to the pile of ashes) Samuel? … Just checking.
Florence: Good-bye Samuel.
(They both smile.)
Loureen: I’ll let the police know that he’s missing tomorrow …
Florence: Why not the next day?
Loureen: Chicken’s warming in the oven, you’re welcome to stay.
Florence: Chile, I got a pot of rice on the stove, kids are probably acting out … and Edgar, well … Listen, I’ll stop in tomorrow.
Loureen: For dinner?
Florence: Edgar wouldn’t stand for that. Cards maybe.
Loureen: Cards.
(The women hug for a long moment. Florence exits. Loureen stands over the ashes for a few moments contemplating what to do. She finally decides to sweep them under the carpet, and then proceeds to set the table and sit down to eat her dinner.)
End of play