In Susan Glaspell's one-act play, Trifles, what is the crisis?A crisis determines the outcome of the action.

The crisis of the story arises when Mrs. Hale and Mrs.
Peters make a surprising discovery in Mrs. Wright's
home.

Mrs. Wright has been arrested on suspicion of the
murder of her husband and is being held in the jail. The women come to gather some
things to take to their neighbor while she is being
held.

In a kitchen cupboard, they discover an empty
birdcage. In Mrs. Wright's sewing basket, they discover the body of a dead canary,
wrapped as if Mrs. Wright had intended to bury it. The bird seems to have been killed
intentionally. While they women believed Mr. Wright to be a cold, cheerless man, when
they realize that it was probably his hand that killed the bird, they come to the
immediate and chilling conclusion that Mrs. Wright probably did
kill her husband for destroying the one beautiful thing in her
life.

The crisis, then, arises from their knowledge of what
probably took place, and the choice they must make about what to do with their
discovery.

Because the men investigating the house for
clues have been so dismissive about the sacrifices women make to keep a house running
and take care of their families, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters become resentful of the men
who so casually brush aside a woman's homemaking endeavors and related worries as
"trifles."

With a growing sense of camaraderie for their
neighbor who they did not know well enough, but whose suffering they can now understand,
the women choose to say nothing of their discovery, drawing a very real dividing line
between the concerns of the men and their world, and the reality of
a woman's existence at the hands of men.