Explain specifically what the play says about the nature of male-female relationships. Feminism comes in many varieties. What is the precise nature of the feminist statement the play makes?

In her play Trifles, Susan Glaspell presents a tale of female oppression through the voices of Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters. These women accompany their husbands to an investigation of the death of Mr. Wright; and as they work to tidy up the Wrights' home, they discover evidence that would lead to the conviction of the wife, Minnie Wright: they find the broken body of a canary in Mrs. Wright's sewing box and a broken birdcage. This leads them to understand that Mrs. Wright lived a hard life, one devoid of beauty and song, because her husband forced her into an existence that centered on him. She was to keep the house clean, prepare meals, and provide any other services he might require of her.
As a young unmarried woman, Minnie Wright wore pretty clothes and sang in the church choir—as symbolized by the canary she had. When Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters look through her possessions, they discover drab clothing and the corpse of her beloved bird. In his efforts to control his wife, Mr. Wright took away any beauty she had in her life, forcing her to wear dreary clothing and to abandon her singing. When they find the canary's corpse, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters understand Mr. Wright killed the bird and that this act caused Mrs. Wright to snap. She killed him out of anger and frustration.
This play was written in 1916, a time when women were to be subservient to the men in their lives. Any hobbies they had were considered to be trivial, or "trifling." As Mr. Hale and Mr. Peters demonstrate in their response to their wives' roles in the investigation, these men considered anything that the women might be doing to be relatively insignificant. Through her creation of these strong women, especially Mrs. Hale, Glaspell demonstrates that the women were being unfairly treated and undervalued by the men in their lives.