Triffles_Is Mrs. Wright a person who is abused?

Does Mrs. Wright have the mental/emotional characteristics of a person who is abused?

            There are various types of abuse: physical, mental/emotional, verbal, and sexual. For example, physical abuse consists of anything one person does to another that causes physical pain. This includes slapping, pinching, punching, pushing, throwing objects at another person, assaulting someone with an object or anything that brings about physical pain or discomfort to another. In the play, this type of abuse isn’t shown literally on Mrs. Wright. Unlike physical abuse, where a single incident constitutes abuse, emotional abuse is made up of a series of incidents, or a pattern of behavior that occurs over time. Emotional abuse is more than just verbal insults, the most common definition of emotional abuse. Emotional abuse is a series of repeated incidents- whether intentional or not to another person. The pattern of one or more abuses may include: insults, criticisms, aggressive demands or expectations, threats, rejection, neglect, blame, emotional manipulation and control, isolation, punishments, terrorizing, ignoring, or teasing. In the play, after Mr. and Mrs. Wright wedding, it’s clear Mrs. Wright was emotionally abused by being isolated and ignored by her husband. Time passed and she started dressing differently, being less happy. He didn’t give her the attention she needed.

In Susan Glaspell play, Trifles, Mrs. Wright was domestically abused by her husband Mr. Wright at the heart of her loneliness, whose tyrannical behavior causes his wife to murder him. During the period she was abused, her behavior changed. Before she married him, she was cheerful, happy, friendly, and liked to sing. Mrs. Hale described her as “Minnie Foster when she wore a white dress with blue ribbons and stood up there in the choir and sang”. When she married him, her behavior changed: she started to dress differently as Mrs. Hale describes her: “Wright was close. I think maybe that's why she kept so much to herself. She didn't even belong to the Ladies Aid. I suppose she felt she couldn't do her part, and then you don't enjoy things when you feel shabby. She used to wear pretty clothes and be lively, when she was Minnie Foster, one of the town girls singing in the choir. But that—oh, that was thirty years ago. This all you were to take in?” This quote explains how her behavior changed during the period she was abused by her husband. His husband as Mrs. Hale describes, “he didn't drink, and kept his word as well as most, I guess, and paid his debts. But he was a hard man, Mrs. Peters. Just to pass the time of day with him—(shivers) Like a raw wind that gets to the bone, (pauses, her eye falling on the cage) I should think she would 'a wanted a bird. But what do you suppose went with it?”. He treated her badly, as if she was a property that her only job was to do chores. At that time period, men didn’t appreciate women; they act as if the work of women do is inconsequential.

Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters found a dead bird in Mrs. Wright toolbox, they implied that Mr. Wright killed the bird. The bird symbolizes Mrs. Wright desire for freedom and happiness. Her husband killed the bird, as he symbolically killed her. She was mentally and emotionally abused, causing her to change drastically. Just after she “killed him”, she was acting very queer and strange when Hale entered the house. He describes her: “And then she—laughed […]rockin' back and forth”.