40 Fun Facts About Trifles (Susan Glaspell)

In Trifles, what kind of pet bird do the two women find dead, wrapped in a piece of silk?

A canary's death is the clue the men never find: the women conclude that John Wright killed it, and that this is what finally drove Minnie to murder.

In Trifles, how was the farmer John Wright killed while asleep in his own bed?

Strangled with a rope is what puzzles the men most, since a gun was in the house. They want a reason for so odd a method, and the women find one.

The whole of Susan Glaspell's Trifles takes place in which room of the Wright farmhouse?

The kitchen is where the men see nothing worth a look, so they search elsewhere and leave the two women alone with every clue that matters.

The line that gives Trifles its title mocks Minnie Wright for worrying about what while in jail?

Her fruit preserves had frozen and burst their jars in the unheated house. Lewis Hale's reply, dismissing such worries as the trifles women fuss over, ends up as the play's verdict on the men.

As Trifles ends, where does Mrs. Hale conceal the box that holds the dead bird?

In her coat pocket is where it ends up, after Mrs. Peters tries to fit the box into her own bag, finds it too big, and cannot bring herself to touch the bird.

What job brought Susan Glaspell into contact with the 1900 farmhouse murder that later inspired Trifles?

Newspaper reporter was a rare post for a woman then; she filed twenty-six pieces on the case before quitting at 24 to write fiction.

In Trifles, what does the county attorney say the case against Minnie Wright still lacks?

A motive is the one thing the men cannot find upstairs, and exactly what the women uncover downstairs among the sewing things and then keep to themselves.

In Trifles, what do the women tell the county attorney became of the bird from the empty cage?

A cat got it, says Mrs. Hale, although both women know Minnie Wright kept no cat: she was afraid of them. It is an outright lie to the men, told on the spot.

Susan Glaspell reworked Trifles as A Jury of Her Peers, a piece in which literary form?

A short story let Glaspell tell it from Mrs. Hale's point of view, and its new title carries a sting: women of the day were routinely kept off juries.

In Trifles, Mrs. Peters has come to fetch clothes for the prisoner as the wife of which local official?

The sheriff is her husband, which lets the county attorney joke that she is married to the law. By the final curtain she has helped hide the evidence from both men.

In Trifles, how do Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters see that Minnie Wright's pet bird was killed?

Its neck was wrung, and the women at once connect it with the way John Wright died. Told that nobody knows who did it, Mrs. Hale answers only that she knew John Wright.

In the closing line of Trifles, which way of finishing her quilt do the women say Minnie Wright had chosen?

Knotting it is a quilter's term the men do not know, so they repeat it as a joke. They leave without guessing how much the two women have worked out.

In Trifles, which item does the jailed Minnie Wright ask for that Mrs. Peters calls a funny thing to want?

An apron is no use in a cell, Mrs. Peters says, but she guesses it will make Minnie feel more natural. Mrs. Hale takes the request as a sign of innocence.

In Trifles, Lewis Hale called at the Wright farmhouse hoping John Wright would share the cost of what?

A party telephone was what Hale had in mind, though Wright had already put him off once, complaining that people talked too much as it was and that he only wanted quiet.

Which piece of furniture, where Lewis Hale found Minnie Wright sitting, does Mrs. Hale later avoid in Trifles?

The rocking chair stands in for a woman who never appears on stage. Mrs. Hale is about to sit, sees which chair it is and steps back, leaving it rocking empty.

In Trifles, which pastime of the young Minnie Wright does Mrs. Hale say John Wright killed, along with her bird?

Singing in the town choir, in a white dress with blue ribbons, is how Mrs. Hale remembers the lively girl she knew some thirty years before the murder.

In Trifles, which failing of her own toward Minnie Wright does Mrs. Hale call a crime that nobody will punish?

Never visiting her is the guilt Mrs. Hale carries: she stayed away for over a year because the house was cheerless, which she now sees was the very reason to go.

In Trifles, what damage to the empty birdcage makes Mrs. Hale say someone was rough with it?

A broken door hinge, pulled apart, is the first hint of violence in the house. Minutes later the women find the bird itself, hidden among the sewing things.

In Trifles, which sign of poor housekeeping does the county attorney complain about after washing his hands?

A dirty towel draws his sneer at Minnie Wright's housekeeping, and a sharp reply from Mrs. Hale, who blames the grime on the men who wipe their hands on such towels.

In which Midwestern state did the real 1900 farmhouse murder behind Susan Glaspell's Trifles take place?

Iowa was also Glaspell's home state: she was born in Davenport and was not long out of Drake University in Des Moines when the Hossack case broke.

Which theatre company, co-founded by Susan Glaspell, first staged Trifles in a converted wharf building?

Provincetown Players began in 1915 as friends putting on plays for one another on Cape Cod, and is often called the first modern American theatre company.

Which playwright, introduced in the same 1916 season as Trifles, is Susan Glaspell credited with discovering?

Eugene O'Neill arrived with Bound East for Cardiff, staged that summer on the same wharf. The company's productions went on to launch both writers' careers.

Which TV anthology series adapted A Jury of Her Peers, Susan Glaspell's retelling of Trifles, in 1961?

Alfred Hitchcock Presents aired it on 26 December 1961 with Ann Harding as Mrs. Hale, and put the accused wife on screen, where the play keeps her out of sight.

In Trifles, what does Mrs. Hale do to the one badly sewn block of Minnie Wright's quilt?

Rips out the stitches and sews them again neatly, saying bad sewing makes her fidgety. It is the first piece of evidence the women tamper with.

In Trifles, what was Minnie Wright's maiden name, which Mrs. Hale still uses when recalling her lively girlhood?

Foster belongs to the girl who wore pretty clothes; whenever Mrs. Hale slips back into saying it, she is measuring how much marriage to John Wright changed her.

Which quilt pattern, traditionally built around a red centre square, was Minnie Wright piecing in Trifles?

Log cabin blocks start from a red square standing for the hearth of a warm home, a bitter choice of pattern for a woman in the Wright farmhouse.

In Trifles, Mrs. Peters recalls wanting to hurt a boy who killed which pet of hers when she was a girl?

A kitten, killed with a hatchet before her eyes, is the memory that turns the law-abiding Mrs. Peters: she suddenly knows what Minnie Wright must have felt.

John Hossack, whose 1900 murder inspired Susan Glaspell's Trifles, was attacked in his bed with which tool?

An axe was the weapon, and Margaret Hossack said she had slept through the attack beside him. Glaspell kept the sleeping wife and changed the method of killing.

The word trivia, a cousin in meaning of the trifles in Glaspell's title, comes from a Latin word for what place?

A crossroads, in Latin trivium, was where three roads met and people gathered, so talk fit for the street corner became trivial: commonplace and of little weight.

Susan Glaspell's Trifles, a staple of American literature anthologies, is written in which dramatic form?

A one-act play, it needs just five actors and one set, because the couple at the centre of the plot, John and Minnie Wright, never appear.

Trifles opened in 1916, four years before the Nineteenth Amendment guaranteed American women what nationwide?

The vote became a constitutional right in August 1920, when the thirty-sixth state needed to ratify the amendment did so.

What became of Margaret Hossack, the farm wife behind Glaspell's Trifles, after a second jury could not agree?

She was released and went home to the same farming community, having already served a year in the penitentiary before the first jury's guilty verdict was thrown out on appeal.

Which later play by Susan Glaspell, about a dead poet's family secrets, won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama?

Alison's House, modelled on the life of Emily Dickinson, took the 1931 prize after opening at Eva Le Gallienne's Civic Repertory Theatre in New York.

To which country did Susan Glaspell and her husband move in 1922 after leaving the theatre company behind Trifles?

Greece, at Delphi, was where the couple settled, and where her husband died two years later of glanders, a rare infection he caught from his pet dog.

Which writer, Susan Glaspell's husband, played Lewis Hale in the first production of Trifles?

George Cram Cook, known as Jig, was elected president of the troupe that staged it a month later, when its members agreed to take their plays to New York.

In Trifles, where were Mrs. Peters and her husband homesteading when their first baby died at two years old?

Dakota taught her what stillness is, she says, with no other child in the house. That memory, set beside the silenced bird, is what brings her round to Minnie's side.

Margaret Hossack, the real farm wife behind Glaspell's Trifles, was arrested just after which event?

Her husband's funeral had barely ended when she was taken into custody, walking away from the burial ground. Prosecutors argued that years of abuse had made her snap.

In Trifles, who goes upstairs with Lewis Hale to find the body, a companion the prose version makes his eldest son?

Harry is the one who checks the body, tells Hale to touch nothing and questions Minnie Wright, then hurries off to summon the coroner.

The Wharf Theatre on Cape Cod, where Susan Glaspell's Trifles opened, had been what kind of building?

A fish house on Lewis Wharf was lent by the writer Mary Heaton Vorse, and a makeshift stage went up inside it for the company's first two summers.

Sally Heckel's 1980 film of A Jury of Her Peers, Glaspell's retelling of Trifles, earned a nomination for which honour?

An Oscar nomination went to the thirty-minute film, which cast Diane de Lorian as Mrs. Hale and kept Glaspell's later title.