Had Minnie Wright not married, but become a singer instead of a lonely farmwife, she may have felt fulfilled and had a heart of joy, for music, as do other fine arts, feeds the soul. In a sort of reversed pathetic fallacy, then, when the little bird as a emissary of her own soul dies, it is as though life has ended for Minnie Wright. Perceiving Mr. Wright, the "hard man," as her executioner, she, then, retaliates against him, murdering him because he has killed her voice with which she could have lived a rich life.