Name : Qurrota Hadie A’yuni

NIM : 112154015

1. The Sheriff and the County Attorney consider that the women can not help to find
the evidences, even they deride and laugh at the women because they prefer to
discuss about ‘trifles’ instead of about the case. In the play, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peter
do not care about being the men’s object of ridiculous. They actually do not intend
to intervene in the investigation, but eventually they find the evidence telling that
Mrs. Wright is the murder.

2. As an County Attorney, Henderson should prove what he has suspected that Mrs.
Wright is the murder of her husband. In the beginning of the play, it is shown that
Mr. Henderson get the evidence from Mr. Hale regarding the oddity of Mrs. Wright’s
attitude while she tells him about her husband’s death. However, after he and the
other men do the investigation, they do not get any evidence that will sent Mrs.
Wright to prison.

3. Glaspell shows us that women tend to be a housewife in this early twentieth-

century which emphasizes that women are lack of power and authority. It is proven
by the men who start the investigation in the kitchen and then remark on what a
bad housekeeper Mrs. Wright was and the women who comment on how much they
would hate people poking around and criticizing their housekeeping. Those
conditions expose that women at that time are very liable to their house and make
housekeeping as their main duty in which it makes them have no chance to express
their own desires.

4. The play reveals that the married life of the Wrights is unhappy and gloomy as it is
discussed by the women that Mrs. Wright used to be pretty and lively when she was
Minnie Foster, before she married John. According to Mrs. Hale, John is known as
an unpleaseant and hard man. The unhappy condition in the Wrights’s life can be
caused by the loneliness as the result of their lack of children or any acquintance in
her married life due to their isolated house. Moreover, he husband kills the only
companion of her, that is the canary. This conditions compel Mrs. Wright to do
unpredictable deed, murdering her husband. Essentially, married life is the
intimate union and equal partnership of a man and a woman which propose them to
always understand and respect each other, and also share sadness and happiness
in their life. Hence, there will not be any reason to hate.

5. The setting of this play is only around the Wright’s house and focuses on several
rooms that more often visited by women, such as living room, kitchen and bedroom.
The living room is a place where the scene was begun, when Mr. Hale found Mrs.
Wright with her bizarre attitudes while telling her husband’s death. The kitchen is a
place chosen where the investigation is started since this room has very close
 relationship with women. It is enough to show us that Mrs. Wright lives unhappy
marriage life because she even does not care about the important place for women,
kitchen, leaving it messy and chaotic, whereas housekeeping is the main duty of
women at that time. The last is bedroom where people mostly keep their personal
stuff inside. Here, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters find the evidence, the dead canary, in
Mrs. Wright’s sewing basket.

6. Mrs. Wright reveals her anger and sadness by sewing a quilt. Mrs. Hale and Mrs.
Peters notice the sewing is perfect until a patch where it is messy, then Mrs. Hale
suddenly takes it and mends it. As the reader, we will suppose that Mrs. Hale wants
to hide the evidence, eventhough the men will not be aware that the quilt is an
evidence.

7. At this point, the bird is a pet of Mrs. Wright. While she find the canary was dead
with silk wrapped around its neck, she is very angry. As she know that there was no
person but her and her husband in the house, she then concludes that John Wright
is the killer and decide to kill him in the same way as he killed the canary. The
reason is because Mrs. Wright actually was suppressed with her life of marriage and
can not accept the way of Mr. Wright treats her lovely pet.

8. Beside the thought about Mrs. Wright’s happiness before she married John, Mrs.
Hale and Mrs. Peters also try to put theirselves into that kind of conditions. Mrs.
Hale remembers a boy killing her kitten with a hatchet and how she felt and Mrs.
Peters remembers when her baby died. They agree that the method of the murder
was gruesome but without speaking directly and finally they agree to hide their
evidence because of the stories and emotions that they ever felt too.

9. In the beginning of the story, Mrs. Peters ascribes the concept of law and order is
connected with duty and justice. Consequently, whenever Mrs. Hale criticizes the
men for their rough methods of investigation, Mrs. Peters, who is also the sheriff's
wife, apologizes for the men because she sees them as performing their duty. It is
different with Mrs. Hale who is angry towards the condescencion shown to her by
the men in general and Henderson in particular because of her gender and domestic
occupation.

10. “We call it-knot it, Mr. Henderson.”

The statement is said by Mrs. Hale that gives different interpretation between the
men and the women. In one sense, Mr. Henderson will interpret “knot” with its “real
meaning”, that is tying two things together. But, Mrs. Henderson as the speaker has
different interpretation. When she says, "Knot it," she realizes that Minnie strangled
her husband as he had done to her bird.
11. On the moment of Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peter has their own observation in the
kitchen.
After she has said this they look at each, then start to glance back at the door. After an
instant Mrs. Hale has pulled at a knot and ripped the sewing.
It shows the moment Mrs. Hale reveal that there is somthing weird staring at the
sewing because woman who has peaceful mind would not make her sewing like
that. Therefore, the two may realize that something must has gone wrong. And the
two respond was also different. To support their gender, Mrs. Hale repaired the
stiches right away to hide the things that might become a motive. On the other hand,
not knowing what should she did, Mrs. Peter did neither stop nor agree with Mrs.
Hale action.

Another moment was on the last scene of the play. After finding the uttermost
motives - the dead canary - we can see expicitly how the two women try to hide the
motives and put the dead canary in their own pocket from the men. With the
encouragment from Mrs. Hale, finally Mrs. Peter could not stand on what have
happened with Mrs. Wright anymore. She came to realize that she has to fight men
for their own sake, as women.

12. The major themes of the play are revenge, loneliness, empathy and protection. After
Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale discover the dead canary in Mrs. Wright's sewing basket,
they realize that she murders her husband is only not caused by her the
unhappiness of her marriage, but also the unableness to think of the most fitting
revenge that she must give to the killer of her pet bird. As Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale
note, John Wright was a hard man and did not provide the companionship needed.
It makes Mrs. Hale blame herself for never having visited to offer Mrs. Wright a
respite from her loneliness. Both women suspect that the canary had been a
substitute for Mrs. Wright's lack of children and other friends. The conditions make
the empathy grow among the women because they come to realize the similarities
between the murderer and themselves (based on their own experience about losing
something they love), they decide that Minnie Wright is worthy of their protection,
which has several meanings for the women. Most obviously, they protect her by not
telling her the truth about her ruined preserves.

13. We can see the age of the play, that is first produced in 1916, from how the
playwright portrays the setting, the character role’s, thought, the problem of life,
and so on. It is still remakably new in our society since some of the case such as
murder, marriage problem, sorrow, are still experienced by people these days.

14. Although we have already known about the murderer, the way of characters find
out the evidence is one of the reason that will makes the audiences sit through the
rest of the play. Moreover, the situation represents inability of the County Attorney
and the Sheriff to discover evidence about what they have suspected. Another
reason is the effort of the women, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, to hide the evidence
they found to protect Mrs. Wright from the jail. It show us that women is easy to
share their empathy to those who are in trouble.