After Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters find the dead bird hidden amongst Mrs. Wright’s things, Mrs. Hale uses a simile to compare Mrs. Wright to a bird, as seen in the following passage:
She—come to think of it, she was kind of like a bird herself. Real sweet and pretty, but kind of timid and—fluttery.
This comparison accomplishes two things at once. First, it helps readers to understand Mrs. Wright’s character better and feel emotionally connected to this “real sweet and pretty” woman who was “timid” and “fluttery.” The simile is also important as it hints at the symbolism of the dead bird, encouraging readers to understand that, like the bird, Mrs. Wright started out “sweet and pretty” but ended up being trapped in a cage, at the mercy of her cruel husband.
This connection between Mrs. Wright and the dead bird becomes even more explicit a couple pages later when Mrs. Hale shares her thoughts on Mr. Wright’s motive for killing the bird:
"No, Wright wouldn't like the bird," she said after that—"a thing that sang. She used to sing. He killed that too."
Again, Glaspell compares Mrs. Wright to the dead bird. This is her way of highlighting the total subjugation of women to the oppressive will of their husbands—though Mrs. Wright was the one who literally killed Mr. Wright, Glaspell is arguing, Mr. Wright had already killed Mrs. Wright’s spirit.
When Mrs. Hale is describing Mr. Wright’s character to Mrs. Peters, she ends with a simile, as seen in the following passage:
"Yes—good," conceded John Wright's neighbor grimly. "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—" She stopped, shivered a little. "Like a raw wind that gets to the bone."
The simile here—in which Mrs. Hale compares Mr. Wright’s presence to “a raw wind that gets to the bone”—helps readers to viscerally experience Mr. Wright’s unkind and unsettling manner. Though Mrs. Hale does not directly state that Mr. Wright was violent or abusive toward Mrs. Wright, this simile—along with Mrs. Hale’s description of the man as “hard”—communicates that Mr. Wright had a cruel character that he tried to hide by acting like an upstanding citizen.
The implication beneath Mrs. Hale’s characterization of Mr. Wright is that it’s possible he was causing harm to Mrs. Wright in secret, and that this was her motive for killing him. Mrs. Hale’s implicit empathy with Mrs. Wright—and, ultimately, her decision to hide this motive from the sheriff and county attorney—shows that she prioritizes solidarity with abused women over the law (which was, at the time, controlled by men).
