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What kind of person was Minnie Foster before she married
society. The other major metaphor is the quilt. The quilt represents Minnie's life. She has taken the scraps and put them into a nice, neat quilt. The block she was working on, however, was "all over the place!" "It looks as if she didn't know what she was about!" Mrs. Hale says. When John killed the bird, he destroyed the last bit of personality that Minnie had held for herself. She was angry and confused, and probably literally "didn't know what she was about". The question that is asked about the quilt is whether Minnie was going to 'quilt it or just knot it". This is the decision that Minnie had to make. She either would quilt it, meaning that she would go on enduring the isolation and abuse or she would knot it and decide that her life as it exists was "not it" and she would do something to change it. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters begin to understand and agree with Minnie as they see how she was treated by John, and how she is being treated by the law. Mrs. Hale sums up the women's feeling when she replies to the county attorney's question about the quilt, saying "we call it —knot it, Mr. Henderson".
The feminist agenda of Trifles was never meant to be subtle. Glaspell uses the formal elements in the play to help convey the feminist theme. The title, the character names, and the metaphors all work together to paint not only a picture of Minnie's life with John, but by extension the lives of all women who live oppressed under male domination. Trifles is not just a reflection, however. It is also a call for women to use their perceived powerlessness as a tool to manipulate the system, and a warning to men that a system where one segment of the population dominates and oppresses another cannot and will not be tolerated forever.