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“I might have known she needed help! I know how things can be—for women. I tell you, it’s queer, Mrs. Peters. We live close together and we live far apart. We all go through the same things—it’s all just a different kind of the same thing.”

Mrs. Hale speaks these lines after she and Mrs. Peters discover the dead canary and put the clues together. Mrs. Hale’s words express a deep empathy for Minnie, suggesting that all women experience similar forms of oppression by men. She blames herself for not offering Minnie more support, claiming that she should have recognized that Minnie needed the companionship of another woman. Interestingly, Mrs. Hale chastises herself more than the man responsible for Minnie’s oppression, almost as if she does not expect men to treat women any better. Instead, she seems to imply that women must help each other cope with their lot as women in an oppressive, male-dominated society.

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