Despair and loneliness
Minnie Wright used to be an extremely vibrant young woman, and it was impossible to resist her joyful personality. However, after marrying John Wright, she becomes a veritable recluse. Her house is out of sight and John does not allow her to have a telephone. She has no children and her friends do not visit her. She loses hope, joy, and meaning, and the only thing that brings even a modicum of those things is that bird that her husband brutally kills. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters see the real crime as what John did to his wife: completely cutting her off from society.
"Trifles"
The men in the story are openly derisive of the "trifles" that they see as constituting women's lives. They do not understand (or wish to understand) that men are the ones who organize the world in a way that relegates women to the private sphere—a sphere that is characterized by small, occasionally thankless or invisible tasks and trifles. However, Glaspell demonstrates how such trifles are not at all irrelevant. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters undercover the truth about Minnie's life and why she may have killed her husband.
Men vs. Women
The men of the story possess all the official power and authority. They are the embodiments of the law and impose their worldview. They are loud, active, assertive, and prone to demonstrating their superior position. They denigrate the female, private sphere and make conclusions based on their position of power rather than the reality of the situation. The women, by contrast, are interested more in community and empathy. They know their inferior place and, while they do not outwardly rebel (except Minnie!), they chafe. They know that the small things carry great meaning, and they exhibit compassion, care, and thoughtfulness.
Empathy
Glaspell makes a case for the primacy of empathy when it comes to deciding what is just. The men do not see empathy as relevant in the case at hand—or most cases, for that matter—and prefer to look at simple, black-and-white evidence. The women, however, begin to empathize with Minnie, helping the reader to do so as well. They find the clues they need to piece together what Minnie's cold, cheerless, lonely life actually looks like and why she might have been compelled kill her husband in a veritable form of "self-defense" after he brutally murdered the one thing that brought her any joy. And as Glaspell changes the murder weapon from an axe, the weapon that Margaret Hossack used, to a rope, she changes the interpretation of Minnie from a murderer to an executioner. Only the development of the women and readers' empathy could support such a conclusion.
Law vs. Justice
The law is the law, as Mrs. Peters says, and indeed, Glaspell makes a distinction in this story between the law and justice. In the former, as critic Karen Alkalay-Gut writes, "the imposition of abstractions on individual circumstances," while the latter is "characterized by the extrapolation of judgment from individual circumstances." Minnie will not be understood by the law, which wants to paint her as wicked or crazy. The law is made by men and women have no say in its formation or its execution. Thus, Glaspell suggests that Minnie needs justice, which will account for her particular circumstances and be characterized by empathy. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters silently but impactfully push back against the law and issue their own form of justice in their withholding of the bird, which the men would use to convict Minnie.
Visibility and Invisibility
Glaspell weaves this theme throughout her story. The men focus on visible clues while the women look at the invisible ones. Both Minnie and John are invisible in the text, and Minnie is rendered invisible in her real life by John's treatment of her. The empty rocker highlights Minnie's absence, as does the absent bird. Critic Janet Stobbs Wright notes, "The women...have an imaginative capacity to see beyond what is visible; this is what makes the women a more favorable and possibly fairer jury." This is the case because women are invisible in the law at this time: they are not allowed to vote, run for office, or make laws.
Truth
The story challenges what the "truth" about things really is. For the men, the "truth" is that Minnie murdered her husband and that there is obviously something wrong with her: she deserves to be punished and go to jail. However, the women see things differently: Minnie murdered her husband, yes, but she was driven to do so. She has suffered enough and should not endure more at the hands of the law (which, of course, is devised and enforced by men). The "truth" is that Minnie had a justification to kill her husband, just as he was slowly killing her over the years.
