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A Jury Of Her Peers

Decent Essays

A Jury of Her Peers
“A Jury of Her Peers” tells the story of two men and their wives discovering the details of a murder scene. While the men search for blatantly obvious clues around the scene, the women notice small details that piece together the story of why Minnie strangled her husband John in his sleep. The story revolves around the gender roles that the women were forced into. These roles helped them to understand what Minnie was going through and what happened to her husband. The irony in the differences between the women’s roles and their husbands is what solved the case.
The story is written from Mrs. Hale’s point of view with a third-person limited approach. This allows the reader to understand the details from a woman’s point of view, which is important as it give insight into the state of the house that the men did not notice. Mrs. Hale is also an important character because she brings previous knowledge of Minnie before she was married and how she has changed through the years. She is also the only one who can explain the real John Wright. She says that he was publically considered “good…he didn’t drink, and kept his word as well as most…and paid his debts” (555). However, she knew that he was a “hard man” (555) and must have been difficult to live with.
In the early 1900s women were seen as inferior to men. Mr. Peters and Mr. Hale reflect this attitude on several occasions, mocking the women for “worrying over trifles” (547). Ironically, the “trifles” the

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