A Jury Of Her Peers Analysis Essay

At the beginning of the short drama, “Trifles,” Mrs. Peters, the sheriff’s wife, is painted as timid and submissive wife. She willingly submits herself to the responsibilities she has as a wife. As the play unfolds, Mrs. Peter’s submissiveness begins to diminish. Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale work together to uncover the murder of Minnie Wright’s husband. When the women find the evidence, they refuse to share it with the men. Mrs. Peter’s character transforms into a more confident individual over the course of the play.

The canary helps her remember the joy she had singing. The canary is something she could care for and love. ”If there had been years and years of nothing, then a bird to sing to you, it would be awful-still-after the bird was still” (Glaspell 557). The bird’s cage defines how when she marries Mr. Wright she became trapped in his cage. The broken door symbolizes that she was a broken woman barely hanging on to hope. Mr. Wright cruel and unjust treatment to her and the bird causes retaliation. When he snapped the canary’s neck she is forced to kill him.

In “A Jury of Her Peers” Minnie Wright demonstrates the deranging effect of isolation. She grew up a joyful young women with all her peers, but drifted away when she became Mrs. Wright and wedded Mr. John Wright. Minnie Wright became socially and emotionally isolated in her own home. This caused her to lose her sanity. The effects that isolation had on Minnie Wright negatively affected her own life and the life of those around her, especially including her husband who she murdered. As the story “A Jury of Her Peers,” progresses it becomes more evident that Minnie Foster is in fact for sure the person who is responsible for the murder of her husband. In the time period “A Jury of her Peers” was written women were also victims of a treatment called the “rest cure.” The rest cure isolated women away from society and in some cases drove them mentally insane as shown in “The Yellow Wallpaper”. The story of “The Yellow Wallpaper” is written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

“A jury of her Peers” and Trifles are works of literature. In these works, they depict the murder of Mr. Wright. The men accuse Mrs. Wright to the murder of her husband, however are they are trying to find evidence to prove this. Both works are loosely based on the murder of John Hossack, which Glaspell reported on while working as a news journalist for the Des Moines Daily News. Hossack's wife, Margaret, was accused of killing her husband. However, Margaret argued that an intruder had killed John with an axe. She was convicted but it was overturned on appeal. In the play Trifles and the short story “A Jury of her Peers”, Susan Glaspell conveys how she transforms the play to the short story by change in the plot, the characters, and the themes of Female vs men and freedom

In “A Jury of Her Peers” by Susan Glaspell, Minnie Foster Wright is the main character, even though the reader never sees Mrs. Wright. The story begins as Mrs. Hale joins the county attorney, Mr. Henderson; the sheriff, Mr. Peters; Mrs. Peters; and her husband in a “big two-seated buggy” (188). The team men are headed the Wright house to investigate Mr. Wright’s murder. Mrs. Peters is going along to gather some belongings for Mrs. Wright, who is currently being held in jail, and Mrs. Hale has been asked to accompany Mrs. Peters. As the investigation is conducted throughout the story, the reader is given a sense of how women were treated during this time and insight into why the women ultimately keep evidence from the men.

When the two women come across the empty, broken bird-cage, they ponder the reason for the broken door and the fate of the canary who occupied it. Later they discover the dead bird wrapped in silk with its neck broken, presumably by the hands of Mr. Wright. The bird symbolizes Minnie Foster, the young choir girl. The dead bird symbolizes Minnie after marriage, when she loses her spirit, and the cage symbolizes her husband who mistreats and isolates her. While describing Mrs. Wright, Mrs. Hale compares her to the bird when she says to Mrs. Peters, " She used to sing real pretty herself”. ( 576) Literary critic Janet Stobbs Wright states," Only as a picture emerges of the way in which Minnie Foster has been changed by her marriage to John Wright, is a process of identification between the two women initiated".

From beginning to end, Susan Glaspell’s 1917 short story “A Jury of Her Peers,” has several repetitive patterns and symbols that help the reader gain a profound understanding of how hard life is for women at the turn-of-the-century, as well as the bonds women share. In the story two women go with their husbands and county attorney to a remote house where Mr. Wright has been killed in his bed with a rope and he suspect is Minnie, his wife. Early in the story, Mrs. Hale sympathizes with Minnie and objects to the way the male investigators are “snoopin’ round and criticizin’ ” her kitchen. In contrast, Mrs. Peters, the Sheriffs wife, shows respect for the law, saying that the men are doing “no more than their duty”. However, by the end of the story Mrs. Peters unites with Mrs. Hale in a conspiracy of silence and concealing evidence. What causes this dramatic transformation?

Other significant symbols in the story are the bird and the birdcage. Mrs. Hale describes Minnie, before her marriage, as "kind of like a bird herself-real sweet and pretty, but kind of timid and fluttery"(glaspell 165). The bird is caged just as Minnie is trapped in the abusive relationship with John. John figuratively strangles the life out of Minnie like he literally strangles the bird. When he kills the bird, he kills the last bit of Minnie and her spirit. Mrs.Hale and Mrs. Peters find Minnie's bird cage in the cupboard, but they don't realize the importance of it until they find the dead bird with its neck twisted to one side. The birdcage symbolizes Minnie's life. The bird and the birdcage is a private symbol which is also representative of the role women are forced into in society, the bird being women and the cage being men. Minnie then strangles the life out of John like he strangled the life out of her bird.

In the short story "A Jury of Her Peers" a woman named Minnie Wright is accused of the murder of her husband. Minnie Wright is a farmer's wife and is also isolated from the out side world. There is an investigation that takes place in the home of the murder. There are three men that are involved on the case and two women accompany, but are not there to really help solve the murder. These two women will

The men?s prejudice is blatant and although it was easy for Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters to pick up on it, they react to it in a variety of ways. Defensively, Mrs. Hale, replies rigidly to the County Attorney?s remark by stating that "there?s a great deal of work to be done on a farm," (958) offering an excuse for Minnie?s lapse in cleaning. Later, he brushes her off when she explains that John Wright was a grim man. To the County Attorney, the women are just there to collect personal items for Minnie, they are not going to give him any valuable insight into the murder. To their credit, the women do not force their thoughts or feelings on the men when biased statements are made in their direction. They hold back and discuss the remarks later after the men go upstairs. Mrs. Peters observes that "Mr. Henderson is awful sarcastic in a speech and he?ll make fun of her sayin? she didn?t wake up" (960). The fact that she believes the men would laugh if they heard the two women discussing the dead canary reveals how sure she is that the men think of them as concerned with the

Finally, the reader is introduced to the character around whom the story is centered, the accursed murderess, Mrs. Wright. She is depicted to be a person of great life and vitality in her younger years, yet her life as Mrs. Wright is portrayed as one of grim sameness, maintaining a humorless daily grind, devoid of life as one regards it in a normal social sense. Although it is clear to the reader that Mrs. Wright is indeed the culprit, she is portrayed sympathetically because of that very lack of normalcy in her daily routine. Where she was once a girl of fun and laughter, it is clear that over the years she has been forced into a reclusive shell by a marriage to a man who has been singularly oppressive. It is equally clear that she finally was brought to her personal breaking point, dealing with her situation in a manner that was at once final and yet inconclusive, depending on the outcome of the legal investigation. It is notable that regardless of the outcome, Mrs. Wright had finally realized a state of peace within herself, a state which had been denied her for the duration of her relationship with the deceased.

The protagonist, Mrs. Wright, is trying to keep from being accused of murder and this is why she hides the dead bird. The two women, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, begin to warm up to what really has happened and throughout the story continue to grow more sympathetic towards Mrs. Wright. The suspense is built up very well trying to figure out whether or not she will get convicted. In the climax, the two women find Mrs. Wright's dead bird and realize what has happened. They are faced with the dilemma of whether or not to turn her in for what they now know she is guilty of. The reader does not find out what happens but is left to assume the best ending. Although the plot of this story is not very exciting, it does achieve its central purpose of showing the women leaving the men out in the cold and uniting together. Throughout the plot and structure they were some instances of irony that were used very well.

The audience and characters assume that Minnie is guilty, but with due motivation. “Two housewives, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, accompanying their husbands who are investigating the murder of a man by his wife, discover in the kitchen the clues which indicate the motive of the murderess” (Alkalay-Gut 1). The audience assumes that Minnie’s solitude, imposed on her by her husband, has lead her to be depressed. “Alienated from her husband, powerless and silenced by the circumstances of her marriage, and isolated from her neighbors, Minnie is an unseen woman long before she murders John Wright” (Noe 16). What if Minnie’s solitude was self-inflicted? Just as Mrs. Hale could have visited Minnie, Minnie could have visited Mrs. Hale and other women in the area, but chose not to. The audience assumes that John Wright treats Minnie coldly or harshly. Mrs Hale says, “No, Wright wouldn’t like the bird—a thing that sang. She used to sing. He killed that, too.” (Glaspell 1391). “Her life has been made miserable by an individual who has complete control of her” (Alkalay-Gut 3). What

The women empower themselves through silence, particularly in the kitchen communicating and reflecting upon things around them in the limited space they were given. The men dismiss the kitchen finding nothing that is relevant to the murder case. The men keep crisscrossing through the kitchen, ignoring and not realizing they could find the vital evidence through trivial details. Even though they were having difficulty in finding clues that lead to the murder. While the women were alone looking through Minnie’s kitchen they found the most valuable evidence the “missing piece to men’s puzzle” (Holstein 283). Mrs. Hale found the dead bird strangled in the sewing box telling “Mrs. Peters-look at it! Its neck! Look at its neck!” (782). Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters recognize the bird was strangled brutally “their eyes meet. A look of growing comprehension, of horror” (Glaspell 782). Both of them realized the bird was killed the same way as Mr. Wright with the rope around their neck. The strangled bird represents Minnie Foster how her freedom and joy was strangled to death. When the men came in the kitchen, the county attorney noticed the bird cage, wondering if the bird flew away, but Mrs. Hale lied and said “we think the- cat got it” ( Glaspell 782). The county attorney seek only visible evidence for murder he was wasn’t thinking critically what it may mean. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters covered the evidence keeping it between themselves for their own knowledge. They

Hale both decide to make a joke out of a murder. By hiding the truth from the authorities, they could have received charges for obstruction of justice and received jail time ( Cornell ). The other viewpoint would be from the women in the story or possibly anyone reading it. After years of constant neglect and criticism, Mrs. Wright decided to break out the cage of a marriage she was in with her husband. Feeling for her pain, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale mock the men as they investigate the crime scene. By not telling the truth to the Mr. Hale and the County Attorney, the women are getting revenge on the men for the they have been treating them.