Character Analysis
Mr. Henderson may be the antagonist of Trifles, but that doesn't mean he's a typical mustache-twirling bad guy. He's a young, probably attractive County Attorney investigating a gruesome murder. Sounds like he could be the lead on like every cop show ever.
As the play begins, we see him driving the action by interrogating Mr. Hale on all the details the farmer knows about the crime. If we didn't know any better, the first few minutes of the play would fool us into thinking Henderson is the protagonist and that we're about to watch a story of an upright lawman solving a crime.
We suddenly realize that the County Attorney isn't as perfect as he originally seems, when we hit this set of lines:
HALE: Well, women are used to worrying over trifles.
(The two women move a little closer together.)
COUNTY ATTORNEY: (with the gallantry of a young politician) And yet, for all their worries, what would we do without the ladies? (The women do not unbend. He goes to the sink, takes a dipperful of water from the pail and pouring it into a basin, washes his hands. Starts to wipe them on the roller-towel, turns it for a cleaner place) Dirty towels! (Kicks his foot against the pans under the sink.) Not much of a housekeeper, would you say, ladies? (32-33)
So Hale makes the sexist comment that gives us the title, saying that women only worry about things that don't matter. Then, for a hot sec, Henderson looks like he might be the enlightened male in the room, when he points out that men depend on women. But our feelings of warmth for the Attorney last no time at all since he immediately gets so mad that there are dirty towels that he kicks Mrs. Wright's pots and pans.
It becomes really clear really fast that Henderson is a typical male of his time and only sees women as housekeepers. In his mind, any woman who fails at these things is a failure as a human being.
As Henderson makes one condescending comment after another to Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, he steadily comes to represent misogyny as a whole. (Wouldn't his mother be proud?) Since Henderson is also the highest-ranking lawman in the play, we can't help but think about the fact that the law itself is misogynist. At this time, women couldn't vote, so they had absolutely no say in the laws they were expected to live by.
So at the end of the play when our protagonist Mrs. Hale and her trusty sidekick Mrs. Peters hide the evidence the Attorney seeks, it's all to clear that Henderson is the antagonist we're supposed to root against. No, George Henderson isn't corrupt or conniving. As far as we can tell, he's an honest man trying to his job. He just has the bad luck of representing the male-dominated society that the play is out to rebel against.
So what do you think... can he still be a good guy?
George Henderson's Timeline