Also, when the county attorney asked Mr. Hale what happened the day before, Mrs. Hale was worried that he would add unnecessary comments and make things harder on Minnie Foster. This indicates that Martha Hale immediately sympathized with Minnie Foster although she had done something as wrong as killing. Instead of acknowledging the fact that Minnie Foster committed murder, she looks past this and inquires what could possibly induce her to do so.
Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters are left in the kitchen by the busy men to talk of "inconsequential" things that actually lead them to the probable motive of the murder. An underlying current of hostility runs through the conversations. The men look down on the trifling concerns of women: the broken preserves, the quilt, the bird cadge. The sheriff says, " 'Nothing here but kitchen things,' he said, with a little laugh for the insignificance of kitchen things" "(300). The men continue this insensitive chitchat, and the separation of the sexes is made clear when the story says, "The two women had drawn nearer, and now the sheriff's wife spoke." " "Oh-her fruit""(300). This line shows the bond between these women as they endure the condescending and unconsciously demeaning remarks from the male side. The gender bond shown here foreshadows Mrs. Peter's and Mrs. Hale's understanding and support of Mrs. Wright' s so-called sin at the end of the story.
But what separated the men from the women was when the sheriff decided that there was nothing but "kitchen things" in the kitchen which lead them upstairs in search for evidence. As the men moved upstairs, there were a number of significant differences in the way the men and women conducted the investigation. First of all, the men went upstairs and the women remained in the kitchen both in hopes of finding convicting evidence. The men, being more logical went straight to the crime scene, yet the women were more concerned with Minnie Foster's whereabouts and what she was doing around the time of the murder.