In the short story “A Jury of Her Peers,” Susan Glaspell subtly brings attention to the presence of sexism in a time when women were beginning to play a much larger role in American politics. The story, was published in 1917, only 3 years before women were allowed to vote, due to the passage of the 19th amendment in 1920. By using three strong female characters, one of whom is not even present in the text, Glaspell brings light to a woman’s ability to be obedient yet an individual, in a time when women may as well have been the property of their husbands. Susan Glaspell saw and wrote of women as people, rather than simply objects, by giving them complex emotions and an upper hand in the mystery, all the while having them remain “in their place” …show more content…
In early 20th century America, women rarely worked outside of the house, because they had certain duties as housewives. All three female characters in Glaspell’s story represent stereotypical housewives, and because of this, their display of depth and intelligence are less anticipated by a reader. The woman of the house is expected to do household chores, such as tending to the kitchen. When the chores around the kitchen are done shoddily by Minnie Foster, Mrs. Hale suspects something is awry. Mrs. Hale notices something is fishy when “She looked around the kitchen. Certainly it was not "slicked up." Her eye was held by a bucket of sugar on a low shelf. The cover was off the wooden bucket, and beside it was a paper bag--half full…. She had been interrupted, and had left things half done. What had interrupted Minnie Foster? Why had that work been left half done?” (Glaspell 249). . Mrs. Hale remarks “a bad stove is a bad stove. How’d you like to cook on this?” (251). Household repairs, such as fixing a …show more content…
Mrs. Peters is married to the sheriff, and she knows the consequences of withholding evidence. But she also has morals and knows of the prejudice against women, which is why “she sank into the chair” (256) after lying to the county attorney about the cat; she knew lying in a criminal investigation was legally wrong, but in this case was morally right. Although it is not directly stated by Glaspell, we can infer this by the way Mrs. Peters “sinks” into the chair, rather than simply sitting, and the way Mrs. Hale shoots her a look before she speaks. “Sinking” indicates the worry and strain Mrs. Peters is feeling after lying, and “the look” implies Mrs. Hale nonverbally pressuring Mrs. Peters into telling the lie – to take her side as well as Minnie Foster’s. Even in this small, four-sentence example -- “Mrs. Hale shot… into the chair” -- we see an array of internal conflict and emotions in the Sheriff’s wife, who is described as being “small and thin and didn’t have a strong voice” (243), as she defends what she believes. Glaspell’s story also includes the strong female character of Minnie Foster – strong, in this context, meaning well-written and multifarious, which was rare for female characters in this time – without even having her present in the story. The reader gets a good mental image of Minnie Foster when Mrs.
In A Jury of Peers by Susan Glaspell, the story revolves around the sudden death of John Wright. There are five characters that participate in the investigation of this tragedy. Their job is to find a clue to the motive that will link Mrs. Wright, the primary suspect, to the murder. Ironically, the ladies, whose duties did not include solving the mystery, were the ones who found the clue to the motive. Even more ironic, Mrs. Hale, whose presence is solely in favor of keeping the sheriff s wife company, could be contributed the most to her secret discovery. In this short story, Mrs. Hale s character plays a significant role to Mrs. Wright s nemesis in that she has slight feelings of accountability and also her discovery of the clue to the motive.
When Mrs Hale and Mrs. Peters first walk into Minnie Wrights house, they see how lonely and unkept her house was. The men could not understand why a woman would keep her house in that condition, but the women determine how sad and depressed Mrs. Wright was. "'I might 'a' known she needed help! 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! If it weren't—why do you and I underst...
In "A Jury of Her Peer," by Susan Glaspell, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters realize from the
Twentieth century society places few stereotypical roles on men and women. The men are not the sole breadwinners, as they once were, and the women are no longer the sole homemakers. The roles are often reversed, or, in the case of both parents working, the old roles are totally inconsequential. Many works of literature deal with gendered roles and their effect on society as a whole or on an individual as a person. "A Jury Of Her Peers" and Trifles, both written by Susan Glaspell, are works of literature that deal with socially gendered roles during the early nineteenth century. The two works are almost exactly alike in that the dialogue from "A Jury Of Her Peers" becomes the actor's lines in Trifles. The gendered roles in the early 1900s place the woman in the kitchen, serving meals, baking bread, and canning fruits and jellies. She was also expected to be a mother to her children and a caretaker to her husband. The man, on the other hand, was expected to take care of his family, providing the home and the food that the wife would prepare. Often when gender plays too much a part in a household, communication is lost. The husband can not see a person when he looks at his wife. This was the case in "A Jury Of Her Peers" and Trifles. The men totally ignored their wives' thoughts and roles, and, therefore, they missed the entire point of the real motive behind Mr. Wright's murder. The social gap between men and women in the early 1800s provided the basis for Glaspell's story, "A Jury Of her Peers" and her play, Trifles.
The introduction is followed by seven chapters that describe the manner in which women from Colonial to Antebellum lived and how their work in the home changed and was valued: "An Economical Society," "A New Source of Profit and Support," "How Strangely Metamorphosed," "All the In-Doors Work," "The True Economy of Housekeeping," "The Political Economy of Housework," and "The Pastoralization of Housework." The last chapter acts as the conclusion where she states how the Antebellum woman felt devalued in her role as housewife and that women today are still devalued in the home
In Susan Glaspell’s “A Jury of Her Peers,” Minnie Foster is accused of killing her husband. This accusation forces Mrs. Peters to choose between the law and her inner feelings. Her husband is the sheriff of Dickenson County, Iowa. It has always been a small, quiet town where nothing really happens. Mrs. Peters is faced with an internal struggle. On one side, she is married to the law and on the other side she understands what Minnie has been through. Her husband used to mentally abuse her to the point where she is now basically secluded from everyone and everything in the world. Mr. Hale even makes the comment, “Though I said at the same time that I didn’t know as what his wife wanted made much difference to John” (260). The reader feels sympathy for Minnie throughout the story and gets a feeling of justification for her killing her husband and getting revenge. Mrs. Peters seems to have a hard time deciding whether to side with her inner feelings and cover for Minnie or to side with the law. Up to this point she had always thought that murder was murder and there were no exceptions to the law. Mrs. Peters says, “The law has got to punish crime, Mrs. Hale” (278). Now, for the first time in her life, she sees that Minnie might have had justification for killing her husband.
Glaspell is showing how both men and women view households in a different perspective. All the men who were asked to go to Minnie to find evidence to convict her as they took their wives. The two ladies kept coming across clues of a disordered household that the men mocked as to be nothing. The women found an unfinished quilt with a weird pattern, and a strangled canary. They women insinuated that these small details were the motivations of Minnie murdering her husband. The women were sympathetic towards Minnie and talked about her husband being controlling. Glaspell had created a courtroom and women had become the jurors and decided that Minnie was not guilty for her actions. They judged on humanity and not legal aspects. The whole time they withheld the evidence they found from the men investigators because they are supposed representatives of the law in this story. Relating to the story since the men are the law or authorities, they presumably ignore or reject many elements of life or explanation; like unequal rights.
Hale states “Well, women are used to worrying over trifles” (561). The same trifles he states women are worried over, are the trifles that if men paid attention to they would have plenty of evidence against Minnie Wright. In “A Jury of Her Peers” Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peter basically decided the fate of Minnie. In “A Jury of Her Peers” Glaspell shows how there is criticism of a legal system that denied women the change of a fair trial by an all-man jury. They found evidence that the men could not find and decided “not to turn it in. All of this held a significant role in the story, but they are the ones that solved the case. In the play the sheriff mocks Mrs. Hale “They Wonder if she was going to quilt it or just knot it” (563). He also said something in “A Jury of Her Peers” on page 575 line 159. There are not many changes between the play and the short story. Most of the changes happen in the opening of the story when it is more detailed, as to where the play is all about action. If you are watching the play it is much better than the story because you can see all the action and
In the early 1900’s, around the time the story takes place; women were expected to be care takers of the home, to be clean, well dressed and mannered. All of these
Social gender separations are displayed in the manner that men the view Wright house, where Mr. Wright has been found strangled, as a crime scene, while the women who accompany them clearly view the house as Mrs. Wright’s home. From the beginning the men and the women have are there for two separate reasons —the men, to fulfill their duties as law officials, the women, to prepare some personal items to take to the imprisoned Mrs. Wright. Glaspell exposes the men’s superior attitudes, in that they cannot fathom women to making a contribution to the investigation. They leave them unattended in a crime scene. One must question if this would be the same action if they were men. The county attorney dismisses Mrs. Hale’s defenses of Minnie as “l...
Grose, Janet L. “Susan Glaspell’s Trifles and ‘A Jury of Her Peers’: Feminine Reading and
The central theme in “A Jury of Her Peers” is the place of women in society and especially the isolation this results in. We see this through the character, Minnie Foster and her isolation from love, happiness, companionship and from society as a whole. Not only does the story describe this isolation but it allows the reader to feel the impact of this isolation and recognize the tragedy of the situation.
In the 19th Century, women had different roles and treated differently compared to today’s women in American society. In the past, men expected women to carry out the duties of a homemaker, which consisted of cleaning and cooking. In earlier years, men did not allow women to have opinions or carry on a job outside of the household. As today’s societies, women leave the house to carry on jobs that allow them to speak their minds and carry on roles that men carried out in earlier years. In the 19th Century, men stereotyped women to be insignificant, not think with their minds about issues outside of the kitchen or home. In the play Trifles, written by Susan Glaspell, the writer portrays how women in earlier years have no rights and men treat women like dirt. Trifles is based on real life events of a murder that Susan Glaspell covered during her work as a newspaper reporter in Des Moines and the play is based off of Susan Glaspell’s earlier writing, “A Jury of Her Peers”. The play is about a wife of a farmer that appears to be cold and filled with silence. After many years of the husband treating the wife terrible, the farmer’s wife snaps and murders her husband. In addition, the play portrays how men and women may stick together in same sex roles in certain situations. The men in the play are busy looking for evidence of proof to show Mrs. Wright murdered her husband. As for the women in the play, they stick together by hiding evidence to prove Mrs. Wright murdered her husband. Although men felt they were smarter than women in the earlier days, the play describes how women are expected of too much in their roles, which could cause a woman to emotionally snap, but leads to women banding together to prove that women can be...
Although the dialogues have basically been unchanged from the dramatic version to the prose fiction version, Glaspell has passed her message more effectively in the narrative. While Glaspell uses the characters or actors to vocalize the emotions of the story from the play “Trifles”, she makes the reader feel the emotions in “A Jury of Her Peers” by including descriptive passages to accompany the dialogue in her narration. The opening paragraph of the story was a description of Mrs. Hale’s unkempt kitchen “… which will later serve as a point of comparison with the major scene of the story, Mrs. Wright’s kitchen” (Mustazza). This opening description helps readers foreshadow why Mrs. Hale could easily identify with Mrs. Wright. “Through her brief opening description of the landscape Glaspell establishes the physical context for the loneliness and isolation, an isolation Minnie inherited from and shared with generations of pioneer and farm women before her” (Hedges). The description of the road to Mr. Wright’s farm also helps reveal to readers Mrs. Wright’s “geographical isolation” (Hedges). Glaspell provides the short story v...
Catherine Mackinnon’s radical feminism theory argues that societally is patriarchally dominated by males (MacKinnon 16). The legal system therefore has an inherent male bias. As seen in Susan Glaspell’s short story, “A Jury of Her Peers,” the male-dominated jury would not have acknowledged the psychological trauma of Mrs. Wright’s situation. The facts of the case would have proven her guilt, but the male-dominated legal system would not have accounted for the experiences of Mrs. Wright. As domestic women, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters were able to identity with Mrs. Wright and understand her