An Analysis Of The Feminine Victory In A Jury Of Her Peers

Brynn Miller
English 300
Dr. Van Noy
December 10, 2014
An Analysis of the Feminine Victory
After reading such works as “The Yellow Wallpaper” or “A Jury of Her Peers,” one might believe that female characters around the turn to the 20th century were helpless to the men surrounding them. Yet upon close examination of these stories, that is evidently untrue. Although they may be somewhat skewed in the eyes of modern readers, the women in those stories have clearly achieved small victories over their male counterparts. While the oppression of women is a prevalent theme in works around the turn of the century, the triumph of women over men is not: any established feminine success is a “backwards victory.” A comparison of female characters in “The

Hale and Mrs. Peters find and withhold evidence that could convict Minnie Wright of murder. The women are reluctant to admit that they have found proof of motive for Wright’s murder; Mrs. Peters repeats “We don’t know who killed him,” to Mrs. Hale (502). The very last sentence of the story, spoken by Mrs. Hale, “We call it—knot it, Mr. Henderson,” plays on the women absolving Mrs. Wright of any guilt for her crime, deciding that she is “not it” and not guilty (504). With that in mind, readers may question what right Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters have to pardon Mrs. Wright from her crime. As Bendel-Simso states, “while the women can seek Justice for other women, the men in charge of the case . . . can seek Justice only for men (their peers), and can only impose Law upon women.” Without understanding what women of the time were going through, how could the men in the story judiciously decide a punishment for Minnie Wright or even determine her

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