Character Analysis of Susan Glaspell's A Jury of Her Peers

“A Jury of Her Peers” is refers to the people who are judging Minnie Wright for her crime.  In the story, Mrs. Hale and the sheriff’s wife, Mrs. Peters, are the peers whom the author is referring to and who are judging Minnie Wright.  These women know Mrs. Wright and their views of her are altered by the fact that she is their neighbor and also a woman.  The women feel sorry for Mrs. Wright because her husband was emotionally abusive to her.  They do not pay attention to the fact that she did indeed kill someone.  If Susan Glaspell had really wanted women to be treated just like men, she would have written the story so that Minnie Wright had a normal trial.  Minnie Wright should have gotten a trial with a jury consisting of people who did not know her or anything about her past.

I have always felt that a good piece of writing causes the reader to think about and analyze a given set of circumstances so that he expands his worldly understandings. Such writing is stimulating and often includes an element of controversy. The short story “A Jury of Her Peers” by Susan Glaspell is one example of this provocation in which the writer conveys her views on sexual injustice. In a way that is conceptually intriguing, Glaspell expresses her ideas about the misunderstandings between men and women during the early twentieth century. While personally disagreeing with the interpretive outcome of the story as well as the message that it is intended to present, I must admit that it did provide me with insight into the mind

Mrs. Wright eventually deteriorated just has her environment, her rocking chair, and the canary. In “Jury of Her Peers” Minnie Wright’s situation illustrates many women of the world. In the story and in our society many woman are stereotyped in the marriage to complete all home duties and take of care the children while consumed in pleasing their husband. While doing so we lose ourselves. While reading the store I also realized how blessed I am to be symbolized as a modern

In “A Jury of Her Peers,” Minnie Wright grows up in Dickson county along with: Mr. Lewis Hale, Mrs. Martha Hale, Harry Hale, Mrs. Peters, Mr. Peters, Mr. John Wright, and Mr. George Henderson. Minnie Foster is known to others as a sweet and cheerful young girl. After  marrying John Wright, Minnie Wright is not seen or spoken of throughout the town, “Time and time again it had been in her mind ‘I ought to go over and see Minnie Foster’--she still thought of her as Minnie Foster, though for twenty years she had been

In Susan Glaspell’s, “A Jury of her Peers”, it is the women who take center stage and captivate the reader’s emotions. Throughout the feministic short story, which was written in 1917, several repeating patterns and symbols help the audience to gain a deeper understanding of the difficulty of prairie life for women and of the bond that women share. The incredible cunning the women in the story demonstrate provides insight into the innate independence that women had even during days of deep sexual discrimination. In “A Jury of her Peers”, the hardships women of the early twentieth century must endure and the sisterhood that they can still manage to maintain are manifested as a mysterious, small-town murder unfolds.

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.

“A Jury of Her Peers,” is a story about a farmer’s wife who is accused of murdering her husband. Referred to fundamentally as a writer, Glaspell's short fiction went to a great extent unnoticed until 1973 when her short story, "A Jury of Her Peers" was rediscovered. Despite the fact that the creator of forty-three short stories, Glaspell's "A Jury of Her Peers" is her most broadly anthologized bit of short fiction and is dependent upon a real court case Glaspell secured as a news person for the Des Moines Daily. The story, which she acclimates from her one-enactment play Trifles in 1917, has pulled in the consideration of feminist researchers for its medication of sexual orientation related topics. On its surface, "A

Wright's life in their hands to do with what they will.  Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale find the evidence needed to convict Minnie Wright and they suppress it.  They were women who understood the plight of loneliness and the death of a beloved pet.  Mrs. Hale understood that Mr. Wright was a hard man to live with and she knew that he had not only killed Mrs. Wright's bird but he had also killed the real Minnie Foster, the girl she had been.  The men in the story, Sheriff Peters, Mr. Hale, and the young unmarried County Attorney, see only surface things.  They believe that the motive for John's murder lies in the bedroom or in the barn.  The men flounder around ignorantly searching for something they will never find because they can not think as Minnie Wright did.  If the women had told them about the discovery of the dead bird, they would probably laugh and say that the women needed to go back to their quilting and their jellies.  The ragged and uneven sewing that suggests a misplaced state of mind in Minnie Wright would also have been laughed at.  The men wanted to find something concrete that would easily convince an all male jury but they never would.  To men, dead canaries are dead canaries, they would never read into it what Mrs. Hale, Mrs. Peters, and Mrs. Wright did.

“A Jury of Her Peers” is a short story written by Susan Glaspell in 1917 illustrates early feminist literature. The two female characters, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale, is able to solve the mystery of who the murderer of John Wright while their male counterparts could not. This short story had been adapted from Glaspell’s one-act play Trifles written the previous year. The play consists of the same characters and plotline as the story. In both works, Glaspell depicts how the men, Sheriff Peters and Mr. Hale, disregard the most important area in the house, the kitchen, when it comes to their investigation. In the end, the women are the ones who find clues that lead to the conclusion of Minnie Wright, John Wright’s wife, is the one who murdered him. Both of Glaspell’s female characters illustrate the ability to step into a male dominated profession by taking on the role of detective. According to Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide, written by Lois Tyson, a reader-response critique “focuses on readers’ response to literary texts” and it’s a diverse area (169). Through a reader-response criticism from a feminist lens, we are able to analyze how “A Jury of Her Peers” and Trifles depict how a patriarchal society oppresses women in the early twentieth century, gender stereotypes confined both men and women and the emergence of the New Woman is illustrated.

One critic, Leonard Mustazza, argues that Mrs. Hale recruits Mrs. Peters “as a fellow ‘juror’ in the case, moving the sheriff’s wife away from her sympathy for her husband’s position and towards identification with the accused woman” (494). Though this is true, Mrs. Peters also comes to her own understanding. What she sees in the kitchen led her to understand Minnie’s lonely plight as the wife of an abusive farmer. The first evidence Mrs. Peters reaches understanding on her own surfaces in the following passage: “The sheriff’s wife had looked from the stove to the sink to the pail of water which had been

As the ladies examine the house, while the men are other places, picking clothes and an apron up for Mrs. Wright, Mrs. Hale gains sympathy for her until finally she starts to take action. When they find the block of quilting that has stitching askew, she starts to fix it, perhaps to cover for Mrs. Wright?s distraught state of mind. While Mrs. Hale is finding sympathy for Mrs. Wright, Mrs. Peters offers a counterpoint that tries to justifies the men?s viewpoints and actions. Her comments to Mrs. Hale?s resentful musings on Mrs. Wright?s unhappy life and on the actions of men in regards to women in general all seem to be rote answers programmed into her by society and a desire not to cause any trouble. This all changes as soon as Mrs. Peters finds the bird.

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.

To begin with, “A Jury of her Peers” is about the way women in 1917 were treated by men. The main women characters are Minnie Wright, Mrs. Peters, and Mrs. Hale. The women in the story are confined to their homes; rarely getting to go to town or visit with their friends. The women did not have many

In the early 1900's Susan Glaspell wrote many works, two stand out, the play "Trifles" and the short story "A Jury of Her Peers". Trifles was written in 1920, while "A Jury of Her Peers" was written the following year. Trifles was written in only ten days. The true greatness of these works were not recognized until the 1970's.

All because his hand found the sticky residue of her exploded preserves, a soiled spot on her roll towel, and some dirty pans in the kitchen. Due to the circumstances, Minnie?s mess is entirely due to her dire emotional state. These statements and others made by the men as the play progresses show the men?s shallow view of women?s intelligence and value.