Essay on Elements of Fiction in A Jury of Her Peers

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.

One of the women made the comment that Mrs. Wright used to be pretty and happy, when she was Minnie Foster not Minnie Wright. This is just the beginning of realizing that she was just pushed to far into depression and couldn't live up to John Wright's expectations anymore. The Wrights had no children and Mrs. Wright was alone in the house all day long. The women perceive John Wright to be a controlling husband who in fact probably wouldn't have children and this may have upset Mrs. Wright. They eventually find vacant bird cage and ponder upon what happened to the bird, realizing Mrs. Wright was lonely they figured she loved the bird and it kept her company. The women make reference to the fact that Mrs. Wright was kind of like a bird herself, and that she changed so much since she married John Wright. They begin looking for stuff to bring her and they find the bird dead and they realize someone had wrung its neck. This is when they realize Mrs. Wright was in fact pushed to far, John Wright had wrung her bird's neck and in return Minnie Wright wrung his.

“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

The birdcage symbolizes the Wright’s marriage. It is breaking and past the point of recovery. “ Looks as if someone must have been rough with it” (Glaspell 875). Minnie Wright represents the bird, who is trapped. She is trapped in this marriage where she is mistreated. Though, Mrs.Wright is not killed, but her spirit is. Due to the isolation and neglect, Mrs.Wright’s spirit is killed. David Galens summarizes this drama in his article “Trifles.” He mentions “Neither woman can recall whether she actually had a bird, but Mrs. Hale remembers that Minnie did have a beautiful singing voice when she was younger” (Galens). Mrs.Peters and Mrs.Hale find the dead bird with silk around the neck. Mrs. Peters is in shock: “Somebody—wrung—its—neck” (Glaspell 115). Mrs.Hale does not know the Wright’s well, so she says “ I s’pose maybe the cat got it” (Glaspell 875). Mrs.Peters knows the Wright’s did not have a cat; therefore, the cat is a metaphor to John Wright. This bird is valuable to Mrs.Wright, because it was her only company throughout the long days when her husband works. The loneliness without the bird called for revenge. Minnie is tired of the emotionally abusive man she married. Mrs.Wright wrings John’s neck and kills him for all the things he does to slowly kill

In the short story A Jury Of Her Peers, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters uncover the horrible truth behind the murder of Mr. Wright. During the story the women find out that it was Mrs. Wright who murdered Mr. Wright. Although Mrs. Wright claimed to be asleep during her husband's murder, she did indeed have the motive to murder Mr. Wright as evidenced by the broken bird cage, slaughtered canary, and the errant quilt patch.

In Susan Glaspell's “A Jury of her Peers”, Glaspell uses symbolism to properly exemplify the theme of male obliviousness compared to female analyzation. The women in the story, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, are much more observant of clues and evidence surrounding the cirme that occurred, while the men, Mr. Hale and the sheriff, tend to focus on much less signifcant ideas and leads. The many examples of symbolism in this story offer an alternative view of the situation that unfolds throughout the story.

In the society of the 1920s when the play was written, the confinement of women was at an all-time high, however the breakout of women’s rights was just starting. The tone of this play helps show just this view, by promoting a character such as Mrs. Peters, who is stuck on whose side be on in the mystery of the murder. As they uncover the motive of Mrs. Wright, Mrs. Peters character begins to understand her, although the deceased husband was murdered in such a gruesome way, and know there should be a punishment for the crime for the crime because of her background with her husband as sheriff, who said she is “married to the law”, she comprehends the “stillness” that Mrs. Wright must have felt, with the house being as gloomy as it was on a bright character such as she before she was married. Such as

“Jury of Her Peers” by Susan Glaspell is telling of a wife snapping after a horrifying incident with her husband. The peers seek to find the true behind the killing. The women characters are talk as they are not as important as the men characters. The women hide the bird because, they feel for her due to her husband not allowing her to interact with others and taking what she loved away. The women finding the bird is resolving the fact that Mrs. Wright did kill her husband. The unsolved part is rather the men ever find the bird and convicted Mrs. Wright. The end is satisfying in some parts; the fact the women helped hide the bird is satisfying, but not knowing what happened is unsatisfying. The information about the unfinished

Enter Sheriff and County Attorney Mrs. Peters rises’’ (Glaspell 29). Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peter demonstrate the courageous to hide the evidence before the Sheriff and attorney had seen it. They understand that Mr. Wright was a strict man for his wife’s. Wright was a lonely woman because without children and with a bored husband I, it must be having been lonely for her.’’ Wright wouldn't like the bird—a thing that sang.

Susan Glaspell’s “Jury of Her Peers” “Jury of Her Peers” is a short story that revolves around the strange death of john wright. It is a piece of work that exposes sexism on women. Women have been categorized for some time now based on their gender and not on ability and skills. They have always fell at the short end of the stick when compare against men. Nevertheless, there were many similarities as well as differences in challenges that women faced women. Even in the ancient times, Women play many important roles both in ancient Greece and in modern society.

Mrs. Wright is a tragic hero because the killing of her canary helped solve the murder of her husband. The men did not consider the clue of the birdcage to be important, but the women thought that Mrs. Wright felt caged to her husband, just like her canary was caged. The canary represented her life, and once her husband killed her canary, she lost control and killed her

Mrs. Hale infers that the bird was killed by Mr. Wright, and she says, “‘No, Wright wouldn't like the bird,’ … ‘a thing that sang. She used to sing. He killed that too’” (Glaspell). After a thorough investigation the women figure that Mr. Wright, although to the outside seen as a good man, wasn’t a good husband and abused Mrs. Wright.

In the opening of the play it is given that a murder scene is being unfolded. There in the abandoned farmhouse of John Wright stood an attorney, a sheriff and his wife, Hale and his wife, and Mrs. Wright. Mrs. Wright keeps quiet when Hale asked her questions, making her suspicious to be the criminal in this case. As the men and Mrs. Wright are taken upstairs to find evidence, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters snoop around the house to gather Mrs. Wright’s belongings she will be bringing with her to jail. In their findings was a bird cage; which was strange because there was no reckon of Mrs. Wright ever having a bird. As they opened her sewing basket, they noticed something enfolded in silk. There lied the bird, dead, neck wrung. This could be the

At the end of the play Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters hide the very thing which makes Mrs. Wright the murderer. Instead of turning over the dead bird to the authorities, they hide it to protect Mrs. Wright. In this play women help each other overcome their male dominated environment. Most women bond together over the discrimination they face. Judy Topich states, "Even though the women were not personal friends with Minnie Wright, they still bond together to protect her because of the sympathy that they feel for another woman who has also hurt and suffered". In this play men simply lookout for themselves. The men in this play stick together, but do not lookout for one another like the women

The women conceal the evidence because they knew why Mrs. Wright killed her husband. The women knew if they spoked up and showed the evidence, the men would not take them seriously. The men saw that Mrs. Wright went crazy, if the women’s spoke their opinion on the proof of the death of the bird killed the same; the whole women society would have got into suffering because the men would have thought that all women are irrational. The wives stuck together to save him selves from what society told them to do, because the men saw the women as a thing of little values or importance (Trifles). It was not right to hide of the evidence during a crime but however the women knew how Mrs. Wright was feeling and why she took revenge on her husband. The women did not have a ways to express their emotion during that time, so they had to save themselves because if one women went down all women would have went down. At the end of the played Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters had a decision and they chose to dismiss the evidence in the name of justice and their duty as