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What kind of person was Minnie Foster before she married
Susan Glaspell's play, Trifles, is a one-act play that reflects women and their lives, concerning of women living in a male dominated society. This play takes place in the kitchen, the domestic sphere and revolves around the lives of women. The story reveals, through Glaspell's use of formal literary conventions, the role that women are expected to play in society, and the harm that it brings not only the women, but the men as well.
Glaspell successfully conveys the changes of a woman who has to live under the pressure that her own husband does to her; with these brutal actions Minnie Foster has changed from a sweet and pretty young woman to a frightened wife. Glaspell describes Minnie Foster through the opinion of Mrs. Hale as a lively girl who likes to sing.. "I hear she used to wear pretty clothes and be lively when she was Minnie Foster . . ." Mrs. Hale says. She talks about Minnie again: "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". The image of Minnie Foster is used to show, by contrast, what John Wright had done to Minnie. "How—she—did—change" says Mrs. Hale. John Wright abuses Minnie by denying her personality and individuality, and eventually Minnie kills John to escape that abuse. By extension of the analogy between the Wrights and men and women in general, the idea is that it is only a matter of time before women who are forced to conquer themselves to a male dominated society get fed up and seek revenge on their oppressors.
To understand the reasons why Minnie has changed, it is necessary to identity and understand the play's two major metaphors. The first of these is the bird/bird-cage metaphor. Mrs. Hale describes Minnie (before her marriage to John) as "kind of like a bird herself— real sweet and pretty, but kind of timid and— fluttery". Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters find Minnie's bird cage in the cupboard, but they do not realize the importance of it until they find the dead bird with its neck twisted to one side. The comparison here is between Minnie and the bird. The bird is caged just as Minnie is trapped in the abusive relationship with John. John Wright figurative strangles the life out of Minnie like he literally strangles the bird. When John kills the bird, he kills the last bit of Minnie, but he makes a mistake in doing so. The broken bird cage represents Minnie's freedom from the restrictive role of "Mrs. Wright." Once she is free she takes her revenge for all of the years of abuse and oppression. She strangles the life out of John like he strangled her spirit and her bird. The bird/bird-cage metaphor is also representative of the role women are forced into in society, the bird being women and the cage being the male dominated society. [next page]