In Susan Glaspell's one-act play, "Trifles," through the inspection of the "trifles," how did the women find their identification?Identification is...

The women, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale, come to Mrs.
Wright's house to gather some things to take to the jail where Mrs. Wright is being held
for the murder of her husband.

When they arrive, they do
not know Mrs. Wright well, and do not  feel a connection to
her.

In looking through the things that are of importance
to Mrs. Wright, the men dismiss them, and the worries women have
for them, calling them "trifles." This makes the two women defensive and
resentful.

As they look for clothes and other items to take
with them, the women find an empty birdcage, and soon, in the sewing box, the mangled
body of a canary that Mrs. Wright must have intended to bury. The women deduce that Mr.
Wright must have killed the bird, which sent Mrs. Wright into a fit of rage so that she
killed her husband in his sleep.

With this discovery, Mrs.
Peters recalls a boy who murdered her kitten with a hatchet when she was a child. She
was devastated and admits that had she had the chance, she would have...hurt...the boy.
In this she can sympathize as to how traumatic it was for Mrs. Wright when Mr. Wright
broke the bird's neck.

Mrs. Peters also understands how
disconcerting the stillness in the house would have been after losing the bird. Mrs.
Peters had lost a two-year old child years before, and the stillness in the house almost
was her undoing. The women can only imagine how hard it must have been for their
neighbor to no longer hear the joyful sound of her bird singing around her, the only
bright spot in her dismal life.

The men that have
accompanied the women have insulted the work and world of women several times since they
all arrived. For Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, this has made it easier to see the men in a
manner in which they had not done so before: it dramatically demonstrates to them how
different men and women are, and how little regard the men have for the struggles and
hardships of women. This is something that helps them decide not to
share their discoveries with the men.

At the same time,
they can more easily understand how isolated Mrs. Wright felt at the hands of her
husband, how lonely she was for company, and how much all of the women actually have in
common, though they hadn't felt connected to her until
now.

The women find their "identification" in learning
about the difficulties and realities of life that they have in common: in studying the
"trifles" in their lives. In discovering that they are alike after all, the women can
sympathize with Mrs. Wright, and they have a clearer image of their own lives in the
midst of a world controlled by men.

As a side note, this
play was based upon a true story.