At the abandoned farmhouse of John Wright, who has been found strangled, the district attorney Henderson and sheriff Peters investigate the murder alongside the neighbor, Lewis Hale, while Wright’s wife, Minnie, the prime suspect, claims she was asleep when the crime occurred. While the men search upstairs for “serious” evidence, their wives, Mrs Hale and Mrs Peters, remain in the kitchen and, by observing seemingly insignificant “trifles” – a piece of unfinished stitching, a bird cage – gradually piece together the true story. They discover that Wright killed Minnie’s canary, an act of cruelty that drove the long-abused and isolated woman to murder him in a fit of rage.

Rather than hand the crucial evidence to the men, the women conceal it, recognizing in Minnie’s suffering something of their own experience, and in doing so, they render their own quiet moral verdict on justice.