As with any author's decision to use 1st person, her intention most likely -- in this story -- was to get her readers to go along for the ride into madness and cultivate a certain amount of sympathy for the narrator and her plight. The constant use of "I" puts readers in the narrator’s head and allows them to empathize with her.
Answer:
And yet, for all their worries, what would we do without the ladies? (The women do not unbend.) ... it characterizes the County Attorney as someone desirous of showing respect to women, even if he does not mean it. Read the excerpt from part one of Trifles. HALE.
This type of figurative language is a simile. This person is is being compared to a hornet, which aren't "mean" insects.
To lead confidently in times of distress
C. He rode through Massachusetts warning the people that the British were coming