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Mr. Wright never appears on stage, but his character looms large as a symbol of patriarchal oppression and injustice. Mr. Wright opens the play as a victim, and people in town say he is a “good man” because he pays his debts and doesn’t drink, but there are many hints throughout the play that he is in fact a cold and potentially cruel husband. Mrs. Hale calls him a “hard man” who treated Minnie with indifference and kept visitors away with his aloof manner. Notably, the County Attorney quickly changes the subject any time John Wright’s character comes up, saying he wants to talk about that “later.” This apparent indifference to John Wright’s character illustrates the fundamental blindness of the justice system to patriarchal oppression. It takes a pair of women to discover the murdered canary, John Wright’s final abusive act as a husband. By the end of the play, Minnie’s revenge against John Wright seems less like a crime than an act of poetic justice. 

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