Trifles

"Trifles", by Susan Glaspell, is a one act play about a murder investigation. In the play, we are presented with a murder scene, which the main characters are investigating. To be more specific, two men are investigating the house where the murder took place, and they have brought their wives with them. The victim's wife was the only person present in the house when the murder took place.
Whilst the men are investigating the house, the women are looking for things to take to the victim's wife, who is being held in the county jail. In their search, the women start finding odd things like a quilt's sewing pattern, the way the kitchen looks, and a box with a dead bird inside. The men regard the women's search as meaningless. They think the women worry about thing of little importance. Their biased views of men and women prevent them from even suspecting the victim's wife of commiting the murder. Throughout the story they make fun of what the women are doing by saying things like: "Women worry about such trifles", meaning that the women are not capable of finding anything of use in the crime. It may seem very primitive, but these were the views of the times. Men were regarded as the only ones capable of this type of work; the women were regarded merely as housewives. In the end, the women realize that the person responsible for the murder was the victim's wife, but the men in their arrogant state of minds never stop to consider this.