A Jury Of Her Peers Rhetorical Analysis

Hale and Mrs. Peters find a dead canary and a broken bird cage, it becomes obvious that Mr. Wright was an aggressive and controlling husband. Mrs. Hale states, “No, Wright wouldn’t like the bird- a thing that sang. She used to sing. He killed that, too” (1012). The canary represents Minnie Foster. Before she married Mr. Wright, she was a joyful girl who sang in the church choir. After her and Mr. Wright get married, she is forced to stop singing and is stripped of her happiness. The broken cage represents Mr. and Mrs. Wright’s controlling marriage. The bird cage is violently broken to represent how Mrs. Wright violently escaped her marriage. The women’s discoveries cause Mrs. Peters to sympathize with Mrs. Wright. Ultimately, Mrs. Peters decides to stand up for what she believes.

She had got the canary a year ago. When her husband killed the canary it was like killing her last connection to her old world. She snapped and started planning his murder, she saw how the bird’s neck was broken and she broke his. Mrs. Peters says that “somebody-wrung- its-neck.”

Wright when discussing Mr. Wright. “‘...Look at it! Its neck-look at its neck! It’s all-other side to.’... ‘Somebody wrung its neck,’” (10) Unwrapping the bird from the small silt fabric like a Christmas present, the wives connected the bird and Mr. Wright’s death together. The canary’s neck snapped in half which killed from liveliness and singing. Mr. Wright died from a rope tied around his neck that would snap the cervical vertebrae and damage the spinal cord. Just like Mr. Wright wanted the singing to come to a dead halt, Mrs. Wright wanted the torture to end not caring about the repercussion that followed behind her actions. No one understood the loneliness and abuse granted each day to Minnie Wright until after the fact of killing Mr. Wright. If Mrs. Hale, Mrs. Peters, or Mrs. Gorman got set in the exact situation as Minnie, drastic measures would get taken to enable oneself the freedom to survive in a dark lifestyle lined with heartbreak and pain. To truly make sense of a particular situation, one must undergo it themself, which the women in A Jury of Her Peers get due to Mrs. Wright happens to reflect identical characteristics in each

Therefore, Mrs. Wright murdered her husband simply because he murdered her pet bird, and she did so the same way he murdered the bird, making the motive is unethical. Mrs. Hale finds a dead bird with a broken neck inside of Mrs. Wright’s sewing box wrapped in a cloth. Obviously as lonely as Mrs. Wright was the death of her bird would have been catastrophic for her. This is evidence of a motive proving Mrs. Wright killed her husband out of sheer revenge of the death of her bird, it was the last thing he was ever going to take away from her. Along with the broken cage Mrs. Peters states, “Why, look at this door. It’s broke. One hinge is pulled apart” (8). Then Mrs. Hale comments, “Looks like someone must have been rough with it” (8). This is how it happened, Mr. Wright came home from work in

Wright’s trapped and when Mr. Wright wrung it’s neck, Mrs. Wright felt as her husband took her child’s (canary) life. While Mrs. Wright is investigated, Elisa tended herself to the chrysanthemums, like they were all she had.

Wright so deeply that her whole view of right and wrong is distorted. Her decision to murder her husband in the name of her bird shows how corrupted her mind really is. Years and years of silent torture drove this woman to the brink of insanity. Her insanity symbolizes other women in that time that chose to stay in a loveless marriage rather than make a bold move like Nora did and go out into world on their own. Nora’s courageous choice empowered women to think for themselves, while Mrs. Wright’s choice revealed to them exactly how a loveless marriage can damage one’s mind to the point of no repair.

This was an interesting play, especially when there really was not any physical evidence that proved Mrs. Wright was guilty. It was all suspicion - the signs that made Mr. Peters think Mrs. Wright committed the murder: Mrs. Wright giggling when Mr. Hale asked where Mr. John Wright was; he came to see if he wanted to go with him to see about a party telephone, the house was cold, and she seemed more concerned about her preserves than worrying about her dead husband.

When Minnie Foster, Mrs. Wright, was young she was, “kind of like a bird herself – real sweet and pretty, but kind of timid and – fluttery” (780), but according to Mrs. Hale, things changed. When she married John Wright, things changed. When a woman gets married, she is immediately dominated by the man. She takes on her husband’s name; therefore she is his and is changed for life. Mrs. Wright was trapped in the marriage, just like the bird was trapped in the cage. Being that Mr. Wright killed her bird, she was sick of her marriage and her husband. She plotted her revenge. She gave him a taste of his own medicine. As told by Mrs. Peters, “Killing a man while he slept, slipping a rope around his neck that choked the life out of him” (782). She strangled him with a rope just like he did to her canary. When Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale discovered this, they decided to keep it to themselves because the men had made fun of them for paying attention to the girly insignificant things.

     Next, Mrs. Peters finds a birdcage, and shortly after, Mrs. Hale finds the bird. There are many peculiar things about both of these items. First, the cage has a damaged door, which shows signs of forced entry. Now, Mrs. Wright is said to have loved the bird, and actually was heard to sing to herself more, after she bought the bird. So that leaves only John Wright to be the one who broke the cage. And, after the bird is found, we know why the cage was damaged. The bird, dead in the sewing box, is found strangled to death. Exactly the way that Mr. Wright died in his sleep. This is the single most important piece of evidence, yet both ladies decide to hide it from the detective.

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.

Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale both make the choice to protect Mrs. Wright from the men’s investigation. They believe they are making the right decision in not telling the men because they believe that Mrs. Wright was in an abusive relationship and the killing of her canary finally caused her to snap. In Marina Angel’s analysis of “Trifles”, she says “The symbolism is again clear. Minnie Foster ‘was kind of like a bird herself’… But Mr. Wright had been rough with her” (Angel 805). The dead bird that Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale find is a symbol for Mrs. Wright herself,

“A Jury of Her Peers” by Susan Glaspell can be described as a murder mystery in which the motive was found because of “women…worrying over trifles” (Glaspell L-41). In the story, Mr. Hale and his son Harry find Mr. Wright lying on his bed dead due to strangulation by a rope. His wife, Mrs. Minnie Foster Wright, claims that she does not know who killed him. The sheriff (Mr. Peters), Mr. Hale, and the county attorney (Young Henderson) believe Mrs. Wright killed him because they do not understand how someone could commit the murder and her not wake up even though she was sleeping “in the bed beside him.” Mrs. Wright was taken to jail, and the men decided to go look for evidence. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters go with them to gather “an apron” and a “shawl” for Ms. Wright (Glaspell L-45). Mrs. Peters says, “Mr. Henderson said, coming out, that what was needed for the case was a motive. Something to show anger--or sudden fear” (Glaspell L-45). The men doubt the women will find anything useful; Mr. Hale even says, “But would the women know a clue if they did come upon it?” (Glaspell L-43). The men and women have different thoughts about the house, the quilt, and the birdcage which results in the women successfully finding the motive for Mr. Wright’s murder.

Throughout the play there are three main symbols; the bird, the bird cage and the jar of preserves. The bird symbolized Mrs. Wright and how she loved to sing because the bird was always singing. As the play progresses Mr. Wright grows annoyed with the bird and kills it. The canary’s death represented how Mrs. Wright is dead inside from her neglectful marriage. The bird’s cage symbolized the cage of a marriage Mrs. Wright was in. She felt trapped by her husband’s emotional abuse. When the bird cage broke, it represented the death of Mr. Wright and the freedom that Mrs. Wright felt after breaking free from her long, painful marriage. The last jar of cherry preserves symbolized how Mrs. Wright was still standing. After a failed marriage and losing her bird, which was the one thing she cared most about, Mrs. Wright managed

They were the broken birdcage, dead canary, and wildly stitched quilt. The quilt symbolises the bad mental condition of Mrs. Wright, the birdcage symbolises her broken heart, and the canary symbolises herself. First of all, Mrs. Wright was alone for long period of time, because her husband did not let her go out, and also Mrs. Hale choose not to visit her. This made her mentally tired, and caused her to buy a canary to fill up her loneliness. However, Mr. Wright seems to not like the bird at all, and killed it by twisting its head. This action of Mr. Wright became the final blow for Mrs. Wright, and her heart broke. This is expressed by the broken birdcage. Mrs. Wright decided to kill her husband in the same way he killed the canary, which is choking him with rope. The historical background have connection to this, because Mrs. Wright was one example of female who could not get rid of the male dominated society. Susan Glaspell might have wrote this play to show the irony of the male dominated society. The male dominated society (Mr. Wright) that killed all enjoyable thing in Mrs. Wright was killed by her at the last. The play might be open ended, because if Susan wrote the specific murder, that might have disappointed someone, and the play might not have been played at the first place. Through this play, Susan wanted to show audiences that how ridiculous the male dominated society is, and this is one of the points that shows the feminist aspects in this

Mrs. Wright’s old alias, a canary, is used deliberately as symbolism. But once the women find the dead bird, they realize what happened in the ongoing murder investigation. Because of the bird’s murder, seemingly done by Mr. Wright, revenge was followed through. Previous to finding the bird, Mrs. Hale explained how Minnie us to act before becoming Mrs. Wright, “She was kind of like a bird herself—real sweet and pretty, but kind of timid and—fluttery. How—she—did—change”. Readers can conclude that the bird was used later to symbolize how Minnie was a bird, but her husband killed that side