VCCS Litonline Introduction to Literature
English 112 (English Composition II)

A student from India sees progress in the U. S. regarding treatment of women and has hope, therefore, about the treatment of women in India.

Treatment of Women in Trifles vs. a Real Case from India

by MD Haque [Rpt. by permission]

“Trifles” is a short story written in a screenplay format which starts with a murder investigation and gradually moves into a completely different direction. The theme behind the story initially seems a regular mystery which centers around the investigation of a murder by the Sheriff, Henry Peters, and the county attorney, George Henderson. Also in the cast of characters, the sheriff’s wife, Mrs. Peters, and a neighboring farmer and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Hale. The whole story takes place in the abandoned farmhouse of John Wright, the man murdered, and his wife, Minnie Wright, who has been taken into custody as the suspect of the murder of her husband.

On First Reading of ‘Trifles’

As already mentioned, the initial impression from the story makes the readers consider it as a mystery. But as it is analyzed dialogue by dialogue, the original theme behind the story gets clearly visible the same way a picture gets visible from the negative.

As the story ends, it ends up teaching a great lesson. It shows how different people perceive different ideas from a single issue. As human beings, we have different ways of thinking and our variant thoughts play a major role in influencing our knowledge. That’s why to handle a specific problem some people are more effective than others. In the story, the real focal point is women, who have remained in the house. The men, though they are not "bungling idiots," don't look beneath the surface of the things that end up being of serious importance to the crime scene because they are "womanly" things, or “trifles.” They are sure that whatever made someone commit this crime will be more significant.

After reading the play, two things came to my mind. Firstly, the human mind does not vary by sex. Secondly, nothing should be considered useless while performing a critical act like investigation.

Women versus Man

The play took place in a male-oriented society where women were considered ineffective in handling a critical issue like investigation of murder. But the story shows how women can be as effective as men in handling issues like this. The men went about the crime scene looking for clues, but they had a hard time finding one, mainly because they were looking for clues with the wrong perspective. They were looking for things like blood, signs of a struggle, and a clear cut motive. And in doing it they totally overlooked the kitchen because "that is a women's domain". They thought there would be no possible clues there, but the women managed to find a dead bird in Mrs. Wright's sewing box. The two women had all the clues in their hands. But they sympathized with Mrs. Wright as they realized how oppressed the woman would be to kill her husband and just got rid of the evidence.  These things that were "trifles" to the men had been the keys to solving the crime.

The Man-oriented Society

We see a completely different picture in “Trifles,” a male-dominated society where the husbands treat their wives as their personal property. They don’t really care about their feelings and don’t value their likings and preferences. Eventually, a woman was almost like a different animal, which was only productive if giving birth to a child and taking care of a household. Not only in John Wright, but we can see the same kind of negligence in the other male characters. They don’t even realize that they were investigating a murder case and they needed to look for every possible clue through searching every single place inside the house. But just for the sake of “Ego of manliness” they even forgot their responsibilities of being the key players of law enforcement agencies. 

Practical Experience Clicked [Warning: This section contains a case report with some graphic details of a burning.]

Because of being from the Indian subcontinent, I have had an opportunity to come across the same social structure practically. Traditionally, people of India have always recognized that women shape the future of a country. The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that governs the world. But the harsh reality is that women have been exploited in the society over centuries. Old customs like dowry still prevail and there are dowry deaths reported from time to time.

Two years ago, a writhing, semiconscious Sunita Vir, 20, burned over 96% of her body, was brought to a hospital. She was beyond medical help. In her dying declaration, Sunita said her father-in-law, Subh Ram, and brother-in-law, Dalbir, held her down on a cot while Chand Vir, her husband of less than two years, doused her with kerosene. Then her  mother-in-law, Savitri, lit the match. It was the family's way of punishing Sunita for her father's failure to deliver an additional dowry of new appliances. This summer a district court for the village of Lowakhurd in the north Indian state of Haryana sentenced Sunita's husband and in-laws to life imprisonment for the pitiless murder.

Unmarried girls lived very sheltered and conservative lives, in which any sort of freedom was restricted due to the practice of the blind traditions and double standards. For example, the loss of their virginity is a deadly sin for the unmarried girls. A family's honor is confirmed by a daughter's marriage into a family of the appropriate status. To protect marriage prospects for their daughters, men carefully monitor their unmarried daughter's behavior to limit their interactions with unrelated men. In Indian customs, women are taught early on to be obedient wives and good mothers and are forbidden to interact with anyone outside the home.

These beliefs resulted in the girls not being allowed to attend schools. In some cases, girls were taught in the privacy of their homes, but only to read religious texts. This left all women illiterate for the most part of India's history. The fact that the girls were not welcome and considered burdens in the first place led to their being married off even before they reached puberty, sometimes as young as eight years old. However, most of the married girls would stay in their parents’ home until they were considered ready for married life for example at the age of sixteen. Child marriages were rampant among the Indian society due to the beliefs and detrimental custom that is written in ancient texts. No one dared to break this custom and no legal age requirement was set. The practice of child marriage was part of the society for a long time, but eventually was abolished and is now regarded as illegal.

Ancient customs also dictated marriage in the sense that girls were forbidden to know their husbands prior to their wedding day. This is why marriages were arranged by the parents of the bride and groom. Without batting an eyelash, girls had to accept men whom they had never met or seen as their husbands. During this time, they survived ill-fated lives as infants, children and brides, only to suffer further mental and physical anguish as married women. Being married was similar to being held captive as a slave to their husbands. It was believed that the perfect wife was one without a voice or opinion.

For a devout wife, her husband was literally a God. To please him, the wife was required to be willing to do anything. Her main reason to live was to serve her husband and abide to his every wish. A wife was to eat only after her husband had finished and to eat from his dirty plate. After marriage, they were also required to observe an ancient custom called "Purdah" which meant that she must cover her head and face from all men except her husband.

During the early days of Indian culture, the married women were to become Sati. This was the ritual of wives allowing themselves to be burnt alive on the funeral pyre of their husbands. This tradition was a chance for the Hindu wife to prove her eternal devotion to her dead husband. This practice was favored because Hindus believed that the woman is nothing without her husband, and she does not deserve to live without him.

Lesson learned from Trifles 

Trifles is a mirror, which reflects the successful transformation that the society in the United States has achieved. This could be a model story for Indian women development programs, which shows that women or womanly things are not trifles. They are all important parts of our lives. They are not animals; they are human beings and they have all the rights to share the same life that we males are living. Trifles is an example of foolishness of discrimination, an egoistic act that proves to be very costly.

We have had famous literary works of this kind by Indian writers and poets, including a few by Nobel Prize winner Rabindranath Tagore, and others, such as Sharatchandra Chattarjee and Bivitibhushan Bondopaddhaya. Most of their writings are focused on emotional aspects. As someone reads through them, the stories will make him feel sad for the women who have been victims of our socio-cultural disorders. They invite the male-oriented society to open their eyes for the distressed women by showing their selfless acts  for the family as a mother, as a sister, as a wife, as a relative or even as a neighbor. On the contrary, “Trifles” is rather directed towards pointing out mistakes and outcome of the mistakes in the most effective manner. “Trifles” is not a poisonous piece of writing by a male hater feminist writer. This is a lesson for the blind male oriented society but an encouragement for the women who have always been taught that being woman their life is restricted.

As a society India is still in the process of social transformation slowly but steadily. As we see that the ascension of a woman, Indira Gandhi, to the highest position in the world's most populous democracy was especially significant for Indian women, who had traditionally been subservient to men. In addition, she was also an inspiration to people in other Third World nations. But we still have a long way to go. And we need to have stories like “Trifles” that can teach us more about the importance of man and woman share the world together to make it better.

Is “Trifles” a Justified Name?

If I was given a choice to rename “Trifles” based on the scenario, I would still pick “Trifles”. This undoubtedly is the best name one can ever come up with. One of the darkest sides of our civilized society is the discrimination towards a race or sex. This discrimination is the outcome of the ignorance that we as a society develop over a period of time. The ignorance is spread through the society as an infectious disease. And people start considering the particular race and sex as “Trifles”. Throughout the history we have experienced it and it will go on as long as we, the human being do not realize that the hatred and considering other human being as “Trifles” can’t make the world the place it deserves to be. It never gave us the best possible solution to a problem. Together as human being we can make this world a better place, not as a particular race or sex.