Trifles {The Role of Women​}

The Canary is a multifaceted symbol in Trifles. This bird belonged to Minnie and gave her comfort during her lonely life. As Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters are investigating Minnie's kitchen, Mrs. Peters finds the bird dead in a box. The bird was strangled with a rope around its neck--which is just how John Wright was killed. This is the moment when the two women simply have to look at each other to know what the canary means. It was Minnie's only happiness and hope, a symbol even of her glory days in her youth, yet murdered. The women become sure that no one except John Wright could have killed Minnie's bird, and it would have given Minnie good reason to want vengeance on him.

 

One can look at the canary's symbolism in another way: as the canary was trapped in a cage, so were women entrapped in society. Of course, Minnie is an example of one of these entrapped women as she had to live in an isolated home without a friend and without children. In addition, as a woman she was denied many rights that men had. Glaspell uses the canary here to help us sympathize with the situation of not only Minnie but of all women of this time period.