Trifles (Susan Glaspell)
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40 free Trifles (Susan Glaspell) trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Susan Glaspell's Trifles can be read in a single sitting and has been taught in American classrooms for decades. A farmer is dead, his wife is in custody, and the men in charge search the farm for evidence while two women wait indoors and notice everything the men walk past. It is a murder mystery in which the detectives are the people nobody thought to ask. This quiz covers the plot and its small, telling details, the characters on stage and the couple who never appear, and what the title means. It also goes behind the script: the real case Glaspell knew at first hand, the company that first performed the play, her later career, and A Jury of Her Peers, the retelling she published the following year. One question even settles where the word trivia comes from, for anyone who has mixed it up with trifle. It suits students revising for a class test, book-club readers and anyone who enjoys a tightly built mystery. Every answer comes with a brief explanation, so you finish knowing why each clue mattered.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In Trifles, what kind of pet bird do the two women find dead, wrapped in a piece of silk?
A canary
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.
Q 02In Trifles, how was the farmer John Wright killed while asleep in his own bed?
Strangled with a rope
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.
Q 03The whole of Susan Glaspell's Trifles takes place in which room of the Wright farmhouse?
The kitchen
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.
Q 04The line that gives Trifles its title mocks Minnie Wright for worrying about what while in jail?
Her fruit preserves
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.
Q 05As Trifles ends, where does Mrs. Hale conceal the box that holds the dead bird?
In her coat pocket
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.
Q 06What job brought Susan Glaspell into contact with the 1900 farmhouse murder that later inspired Trifles?
Newspaper reporter
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.
Q 07In Trifles, what does the county attorney say the case against Minnie Wright still lacks?
A motive
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.
Q 08In Trifles, what do the women tell the county attorney became of the bird from the empty cage?
A cat got it
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.
Q 09Susan Glaspell reworked Trifles as A Jury of Her Peers, a piece in which literary form?
A short story
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.
Q 10In Trifles, Mrs. Peters has come to fetch clothes for the prisoner as the wife of which local official?
The sheriff
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.
Q 11In Trifles, how do Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters see that Minnie Wright's pet bird was killed?
Its neck was wrung
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.
Q 12In the closing line of Trifles, which way of finishing her quilt do the women say Minnie Wright had chosen?
Knotting it
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.
Q 13In Trifles, which item does the jailed Minnie Wright ask for that Mrs. Peters calls a funny thing to want?
An apron
Q 21Which theatre company, co-founded by Susan Glaspell, first staged Trifles in a converted wharf building?
Provincetown Players
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.
Q 22Which playwright, introduced in the same 1916 season as Trifles, is Susan Glaspell credited with discovering?
Eugene O'Neill
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.
Q 23Which TV anthology series adapted A Jury of Her Peers, Susan Glaspell's retelling of Trifles, in 1961?
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.
Q 14In Trifles, Lewis Hale called at the Wright farmhouse hoping John Wright would share the cost of what?
A party telephone
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.
Q 15Which piece of furniture, where Lewis Hale found Minnie Wright sitting, does Mrs. Hale later avoid in Trifles?
The rocking chair
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.
Q 16In Trifles, which pastime of the young Minnie Wright does Mrs. Hale say John Wright killed, along with her bird?
Singing
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.
Q 17In Trifles, which failing of her own toward Minnie Wright does Mrs. Hale call a crime that nobody will punish?
Never visiting her
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.
Q 18In Trifles, what damage to the empty birdcage makes Mrs. Hale say someone was rough with it?
A broken door hinge
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.
Q 19In Trifles, which sign of poor housekeeping does the county attorney complain about after washing his hands?
A dirty towel
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.
Q 20In which Midwestern state did the real 1900 farmhouse murder behind Susan Glaspell's Trifles take place?
Iowa
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.
Alfred Hitchcock Presents
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.
Q 24In Trifles, what does Mrs. Hale do to the one badly sewn block of Minnie Wright's quilt?
Rips out the stitches
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.
Q 25In Trifles, what was Minnie Wright's maiden name, which Mrs. Hale still uses when recalling her lively girlhood?
Foster
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.
Q 26Which quilt pattern, traditionally built around a red centre square, was Minnie Wright piecing in Trifles?
Log cabin
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.
Q 27In Trifles, Mrs. Peters recalls wanting to hurt a boy who killed which pet of hers when she was a girl?
A kitten
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.
Q 28John Hossack, whose 1900 murder inspired Susan Glaspell's Trifles, was attacked in his bed with which tool?
An axe
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.
Q 29The word trivia, a cousin in meaning of the trifles in Glaspell's title, comes from a Latin word for what place?
A crossroads
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.
Q 30Susan Glaspell's Trifles, a staple of American literature anthologies, is written in which dramatic form?
A one-act play
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.