Inequality in “A Jury of Her Peers”
Susan Glaspell’s, “A Jury Of Her Peers” is a well appreciated literary classic revolving around the murder of John Wright. Minnie Wright is accused of first degree murder of her husband and is incarcerated until court officials find a motive. Throughout the story, five characters participate in the investigation of this murder. Their job is to find a clue to a motive that will link Minnie Wright, the primary suspect, to the murder. However, the women feel resentment towards the men because they treat the women as second class citizens. The women’s growing empathy for Minnie Foster is caused by there observations, and is prompted by there negative reactions to the condescending comments of the male characters. Throughout the story, traditional gender roles create tension with the male and female characters. Though this problem, the traditional gender hierarchy causes the crime and prevents the men from solving the crime.
Glasspel shows that traditional gender roles prevent the men from seeing the women as equals. For example, Mr. Hale says, “I didn't know as what his wife wanted made much difference to John”(3).Through the use of symbolism, Glasspel shows how John Wright is dismissive to his wife's wants. For example, Minnie Wright’s rocking chair, “dingy red, with wooden rungs up the back, and the middle rung was gone, and sagged to one side,” () illustrates that John Wright did not care about his wife’s wants. Minnie Wrights wants were neglected throughout her marriage with John Wright which stopped her from loving him. Throughout the years of harsh treatment and imprisonment Minnie Wright felt that murdering her husband would be the only way to emancipate herself from this lifestyle. Also,...
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... have killed him. Minnie Wright endured twenty years of imprisonment, yet the male investigators over look her hardship and belittle her because of dirty towels.
With Mr. Hale, the county attorney, and the women readers can see that the Glaspell is arguing equal status between men and women. This problem is significant, because it can give us insight to what the Glaspell intentions and purposes might be for writing this piece. In a marital relationship women are not property of men. The women overcome much adversity, ironically they are viewed as the strongest characters. The women ultimately solve the murder case of John Wright and are viewed as the jury for Minnie Wright. Overall, Glaspell is revealing that being prejudice towards any group of people can put one at a disadvantage. Within our patriarchal society people can overcome resist, sexist and misogyny.
The power of women is different than that of men. Women display a subtle and indirect kind of power, but can be resilient enough to impact the outside world. In Trifles, Susan Glaspell delivers the idea that gender and authority are chauvinistic issues that confirm male characters as the power holders, while the female characters are less significant and often weak. This insignificance and weakness indicated in the play by the fact that the women had the evidence to solve a murder, but the men just ignored the women as if they had no value to the case at all. This weakness and inability of the female to contest the man’s view are apparent. According to Ben-Zvi, “Women who kill evoke fear because they challenge societal constructs of femininity-passivity, restraint, and nurture; thus the rush to isolate and label the female offender, to cauterize the act” (141). This play presents women against men, Ms. Wright against her husband, the two women against their spouses and the other men. The male characters are logical, arrogant, and stupid while the women are sympathetic, loyal, and drawn to empathize with Mrs. Wright and forgive her crime. The play questions the extent to which one should maintain loyalty to others. Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale try to withhold incriminating evidence against Mrs. Wright, and by challenging the reader to question whether
The character Mrs. Wright is portrayed as a kind and gentle woman. She is also described as her opinion not being of importance in the marriage. It is stated by Mr. Hale that “ I didn’t know as what his wife wanted made much difference to John” .(745) Her neighbor, Mrs. Hale, depicts her as “She─come to think of it, she was kind of like a bird herself─real sweet and pretty, but kind of timid and─fluttery. How─she─did─change”. (752) It appears that Mrs. Wright is a kind and gentle woman, not capable of committing a murder. But, with the evidence provided and the description of Mr. Wright’s personality it can also be said that the audience will play on the sympathy card for Mrs. Wright. She appears to be caught in a domestic violence crime in which she is guilty of, but the audience will overlook the crime due to the nature of the circumstances. By using pathos it will create a feeling that Mrs. Wright was the one who was suffering in the marriage, and that she only did what she felt necessary at the
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.
She got the idea for the play and short story, after she covered a murder of a woman on a farm. In both of Glaspell’s pieces, the main character, Mrs. Wright, is accused of killing her husband. Minnie Wright was a farmer’s wife who didn’t have much contact with the outside world. The murder investigation took place inside her home. Three men are used to investigating the case and two women come with them.
Glaspell spent more than forty years working as a journalist, fiction writer, playwright and promoter of various artistic. She is a woman who lived in a male dominated society. She is the author of a short story titled A Jury of Her Peers. She was inspired to write this story when she investigated in the homicide of John Hossack, a prosperous county warren who had been killed in his sleep(1).Such experience in Glaspell’s life stimulated inspiration. The fact that she was the first reporter on scene, explains that she must have found everything still in place, that makes an incredible impression. She feels what Margaret (who is Minnie Wright in the story) had gone through, that is, she has sympathy for her. What will she say about Margaret? Will she portray Margaret as the criminal or the woman who’s life has been taken away? In the short story Minnie Wright was the victim. Based on evidence at the crime scene, it is clear that Minnie has killed her husband; however, the women have several reasons for finding her “not guilty” of the murder of John Wright.
Hedges, Elaine. A. "Small Things Reconsidered: Susan Glaspell's 'A Jury of Her Peers'. " Women's Studies 12.1 (1986): 89. Literary Reference Center Plus. Web.
Evidence, clear and simple is what the official male dominated investigation is looking for when they come to the Wright’s home following the strangulation of Mr. John Wright. If it does not pertain to the normal evidence of a crime scene or spell out murder for them they are utterly disinterested. Mrs. Wright
Men always have the tendency to judge too quickly. In “A Jury of Her Peers”, by Susan Glaspell, Mrs. Hale, Mrs. Peters, and Minnie Foster and Mr. Henderson are attempting to look for the motive of Minnie killing her husband. The story starts by Mr. Peters informing the group, except for Minnie, while she waits in jail, that when he stopped by the day before to give Mr. Wright a telephone because the couple lived really removed from the rest of the town, he asked Minnie where Mr. Wright was and she calmly answered that he had been hung the night before. Then, the men head upstairs to look at the crime scene, while the women sit around the kitchen to talk. Accidentally, the women figure out the motive of the murder by talking about kitchen supplies, “trifles” as the men call it. They decided not to inform the men to keep Minnie from being convicted because her husband was equally guilty as her. In the short story, “A Jury of Her Peers”, Glaspell employs strong details and details devices to argue that the purpose of the story is how Glaspell portrays men, that a person must not be judged based on off of the external appearance and that the little details in life always are important.
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...
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...
In Susan Glaspell’s “A Jury of Her Peers”, female characters face inequality in a society dominated by the opinions of their husbands. The women struggle to decide where their loyalty rests and the fate of a fellow woman. Aided by memories and their own lifestyles the women realize their ties to a woman held for murder, Minnie Foster Wright. Through a sympathetic connection these women, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters have greater loyalty to a fellow woman than to their husbands and even the law; this greater loyalty ultimately shows the inequality between genders.
In Susan Glaspell’s play Trifles Mr. Wright’s murder is never solved because the two women in the story unite against of the arrogance of men to hide evidence that would prove Mrs. Wright as the murderer. The play Trifles is about the death of farmer Mr. Wright and how the town sheriff and attorney try to find evidence that his wife Mrs. Wright killed him. As the play progresses the men’s wives who had come along were discovering important pieces of evidence that prove the men’s theory but chose to hide from them to illustrate the point that their ideas should have been valued and not something to be trifled. The very irony of the play comes from its title trifles and is defined as something that isn’t very important or has no relevance to the situation that it is presented to. In this play the irony of the title comes from the fact that the men find the women’s opinions on the case trifling even though the women solve the crime which ends up being the downfall of the men as they would have been able to prosecute Mrs. Wright if they had listened which made the women’s opinions not trifling. Glaspell was born in an age where women were still considered the property of men and they had no real value in society in the eyes of men except for procreation and motherhood. This attitude towards women was what inspired Glaspell to write the play Trifles and to illustrate the point that women’s attitudes should be just as valued as men’s and to let women have a sense of fulfillment in life and break the shackles that were holding them only as obedient housewives. Trifles was also inspired by a real murder trial that Glaspell had been covering when she was a reporter in the year 1900. Glaspell is a major symbol of the feminist movement of l...
...spect differently and side with their respective sexes. Glaspell intends these men and women to be representatives of their sexes. She shows the differences between men and women and their pros and cons. Most importantly, Glaspell shows the reader that the differences between men and women are definitely not "trifles".
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