Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters decide not to reveal the evidence they find that implicates Mrs. Wright in the murder of her husband. The main clue they uncover is Mrs. Wright's dead bird, which is in its cage with a broken neck. They put together what might have happened and think that Mr. Wright killed his wife's beloved bird and that she killed her husband in retaliation.
Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters decide to hide the evidence in part because they think the men will not believe them or consider the evidence they found important. Mrs. Peters says that the men will laugh if they hear her story, though Mrs. Hale is not so sure. They are used to the men discounting what they say and thinking that women do not understand weighty, serious affairs like murder. In addition, they conceal the evidence because they are sympathetic towards Mrs. Wright. Earlier in the play, they say that it was a crime that Mrs. Wright, who once was so lively, had to live in an isolated farmhouse with no company. When they see that Mrs. Wright's canning has exploded, they sense that Mr. Wright was cruel to his wife by not heating the house adequately. For these reasons, they to some degree believe Mrs. Wright's murder of her husband was justified.
There are at least two broad categories of ethics: absolute or Kantian ethics and situational ethics. In both cases, it can be argued that Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters behaved ethically in not revealing the evidence they found pointing to Mrs. Wright's guilt.
Absolutist ethical systems argue that there are strict categories of right and wrong. For instance, telling the truth is a moral absolute. No matter what the situation—even if it means exposing a runaway slave to torture and death—if asked point blank, you have to tell the truth to be ethical. In this system, you base your behavior on whatever is the right thing to do, not on the possible outcome.
Situational ethics, in contrast, says you must evaluate the context of a situation. Slaves, for example, have an overriding ethical right to freedom that makes it ethically correct to lie to save them from a horrible fate. Situational ethics thus takes into account power dynamics and realizes that the situation of the powerless is different from that of the powerful. A situational ethicist would say it is not wrong for a man to steal a loaf of bread to feed his starving children.
Based on situational ethics, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale show a deep understanding of how Minnie Wright has been oppressed by her tyrant of a husband, a person on whom she was economically dependent. They realize how her isolation and his cruelty in killing her beloved bird could cause her to snap. Given her situation, the two women have behaved ethically in not exposing her to more abuse by a patriarchal society that has no understanding of what it is like to be a woman.
The absolutist position is more difficult, but several factors work in Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale's favor. First, they are not the police investigating the case. As the men make clear, the case is really none of their business. Second, the men never ask them if they have found out anything. The women could ethically argue that given that the men never ask and the fact that the responsibility for finding evidence and solving the case lies with the men, they have done nothing wrong in staying silent.
The ethics of the decision of Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters to shield Mrs. Wright from criminal prosecution are certainly debatable, even today. (One can only imagine the response of audiences in 1916, when the play premiered.) However, when we consider that the play dramatizes the conflict between social norms and the needs of an individual, between who we are expected to be and who we really are, audiences are probably more likely to respond with understanding regarding Mrs. Wright's predicament and to empathize with Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters in concealing evidence. The two women are shown to be smarter than the county attorney and the sheriff, for they understand Mrs. Wright's motive for killing her husband. Glaspell is keenly aware of this irony, and she illustrates it through the condescending attitudes of the county attorney and the sheriff toward Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters. The play deals with the unraveling of the motive—the kitchen is a mess, the birdcage is empty, and the quilt is oddly stitched. It turns out that these "trifles" that make up the evidence are in fact the most important things, for they delineate Mrs. Wright's distracted state of mind. When the two women discover the bird wrapped up in the box, they fully understand the spousal abuse Mrs. Wright has endured and decide to cover for her. By the time of this scene, Glaspell has swayed audience sympathies toward the belief that shielding Mrs. Wright is the far more ethical thing to do, given the abusive circumstances of her marriage.
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