ARTIFACT 5: Critical Analysis

Jennifer Hancock
D. Reiss
ENGL 202-400
7 August, 2005

The Knots in Glaspell’s Trifles

Many lines in Susan Glaspell’s one-act play, Trifles, carry below-the-surface meanings beneath what is actually being said. The following lines are no exception:

Mrs. Peters: She was piecing a quilt. (She brings the large sewing basket
and they look at the bright pieces.)
Mrs. Hale: It’s a log cabin pattern. Pretty, isn’t it? I wonder if she was
goin’ to quilt it or just knot it? (Footsteps have been heard coming down
the stairs. The Sheriff enters followed by Hale and the County Attorney.)
Sheriff: They wonder if she was going to quilt it or just knot it! (The men
laugh, the women look abashed.) (Glaspell 1253)
And the play continues later with:
County Attorney (facetiously): Well, Henry, at least we found out that she
was not going to quilt it. She was going to—what is it you call it, ladies?
Mrs. Hale (her hand against her pocket): We call it—knot it, Mr. Henderson.
(Glaspell 1257)

These lines about quilting and knotting, like many lines in this particular play, have an almost hidden meaning—hidden to the male characters at least. There are many uses and metaphors of quilting and knotting spoken in the dialogue between Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale, and made light of by the Sheriff and the County Attorney.

Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale were curious about Minnie Wright’s plan to either quilt or knot the log cabin pattern they found in the sewing basket beside her rocking chair. Quilter’s Online Resource and Sew-whats –new.com describe knotting (also known as tying) as an alternative for quilting that is easier than actually quilting (“Tying Your Quilt”; “Tying a Quit”). Sew-whats-new.com says “when quilters choose to tie their quilts, it is usually because they need the quilt finished quickly or it’s going to be well used,” (“Tying Your Quilt”). This explains why Mrs. Wright would be knotting—because of the cold temperatures and harsh farm life described by the characters in the play this quilt was needed quickly to keep warm and it would last longer on the farm than a regular sewn quilt. But there is deeper meaning behind the knotting on which Mrs. Wright was working.

Much more was being tied together in the Wright house than is evident at first glance. First of all this knotting could represent the knot tied in the rope that was used to strangle Mr. Wright—the murder of which Mrs. Wright was being accused. Phyllis Mael from Pasadena City College saw the act of quilting as a connection to the murder that Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale were casually solving (281). Mael said, “Through their attentiveness to the ‘trifles’ in her life, the kitchen things considered insignificant by the men, the two women piece together, like patches in a quilt, the events which may have led to the murder,” (281).

The topic of knotting, which was a laughing matter to the men in the play, came up again between all the characters in the final lines of the drama. This too had meaning according to Suzy Clarkson Holstein’s article in The Midwest Quarterly (290). Holstein describes the play’s final line as “replete with several puns” and says:
Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters intentionally ‘knot’ their knowledge and do ‘not’
share it. Their silence has become a mark of their solidarity, a refusal
to endanger a sister. For the men in the play, their secret remains an
undiscovered trifle. (290)

Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale have a deep understanding as to why Mrs. Wright would have killed her husband, because, as we can see, they experience the same authoritative, you’re-stupid-because-your-a-woman attitude from men as Mrs. Wright did from her husband. That is why the two curious tag-along wives do not share what they have uncovered with their husbands or the County Attorney—these women protect each other like a knot protects a quilt from unraveling. Much like the knots Mrs. Wright was preparing to tie on her quilt, the actions and thoughts of Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale were much the same—their pride and the pride of Mrs. Wright were more durable this way.

There are many hidden meanings found in Glaspell’s one-act play, Trifles. And the question Mrs. Peters raises about whether Mrs. Wright was knotting or quilting the log cabin pattern found next to the widow’s rocking chair is just one example. The fact that she was knotting could represent many things including the knot used to strangle Mr. Wright, the way Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale stuck together regarding the evidence they pieced like quilt patches to probably solve the murder, and the way the women did “not” tell the men what they had found. The knotting may also represent the way Mrs. Wright had “not” received the love she longed for as well as the durability of knotted quilts to undergo harsh conditions within a cold house—a physically and emotionally cold house for Mrs. Wright.


Works Cited

Holstein, Suzy C. “Silent Justice in a Different Key: Glaspell’s ‘Trifles’.”
Midwest Quarterly: A Journal of Contemporary Thought 44 (Spring 2003):
282-290. EBSCOhost. Clemson University Libraries Research Tools, Clemson,
SC. 26 July 2005. .

Mael, Phyllis. “Trifles: The Path to Sisterhood.” Literature Film Quarterly 17
(1989): 281-284. EBSCOhost. Clemson University Libraries Research Tools,
Clemson,SC. 26 July 2005. .

“Tying A Quilt.” Quilters Online Resource (1997). 1 August 2005 com/~mgdesign/qor/begin/tying.htm>.

“Tying Your Quilt.” Sew-What’s-New (2002). 1 August 2005 new.com/tying.shtml>.