In Susan Glaspell's Trifles, character Minnie Foster Wright is a social and active person until she marries an abusive husband who lacks giving her attention, leaving her feeling lonely, and keeping her isolated from society. The mental distress he caused her drives Minnie Wright to murder him. In the early 1900's men were the one's who brought in the money so, women were usually inferior to them. A woman's work was considered just small and insignificant, such as cooking, cleaning, washing clothes, the kind of work that still in today's society goes unnoticed, but yet without it would be hard to live by. A man's job was to work out in the farm, and to provide for the family but led to less quality time for the family. In marriages today both spouses work, this allows you to provide your family with more quality time. Lack of love, attention, isolation and loneliness in a marriage can lead to a divorce, causing emotional distress on both parts.
In John and Minnie Wright's marriage it was important for Minnie to have children, but for John it was not as important. John was a workingman and when he would come home he expected peace and quiet. The fact that Minnie was home all day, she needed companionship. She even asked John Wright to buy her a canary and he refused. The bird was an easier way of not giving Minnie the children she wanted. "They realize that the pet was a kind of child-substitute for the solitary Minnie; the canary's voice was to displace the silence of a coldly authoritarian husband and replace the sounds of the unborn children" (Makowsky 63). The canary in Trifles plays a crucial role; in this case it represents a child that she never had. The canary gives her the hope of having someone there for her, something that will listen yet not able to respond. A companionship that she was not able to find in her husband. It was as if John Wright deprived Minnie from having friends.
