Sexism in Susan Glaspell's A Jury of Her Peers Essay

“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.

The short story “A Jury of Her Peers” written by Susan Glaspell showed many different aspects of symbolism. Millie Wright is symbolized a traditional woman that lost her way because she is consumed in her many wifely duties. Throughout the story her living situation, her red rocking chair, and her yellow canary had significant symbolic interest. Minnie Wright’s environment is a lonesome-looking place. “It was in a hollow, and the poplar trees around it were lonesome- looking trees(Glaspell 243). At the Wrights’ home there were no children running around to make noise, no telephone to talk with friends and family, no visitors, and most importantly no husband to show her affection. Mr. Wright had a cold attitude, unsociable, and careless demeanor. Mrs. Wright is consumed in her farmer’s wife duties she loses herself. The broken stove displays the lack of instability. The dirty kitchen with the

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

Gender roles throughout history have been portrayed in many works of literature. We imagine that in 2016 our world would be at its absolute best regarding the roles of women considering we just had our first woman from a major party run for the highest office in the nation. Unfortunately, we still seem to have a way to go. Oscar Wilde said, "Women have a much better time than men in this world; there are far more things forbidden to them." It has only been in the past few years that women have stood up and demanded equal pay and equal treatment. There are still many places in the world where women are still very oppressed. In Susan Glaspell 's "Trifles," written in 1916, the theme throughout is that the men are the smart, dominant ones, and therefore very chauvinistic, and the women only concern themselves with sewing and cleaning which is, therefore, insignificant and trifle. The women from the start of the play very clearly see clues to the murder that the men do not ever see. Glaspell tells the story of the murder of Mr. John Wright, who was found strangled in his bed. His wife Minnie is the main suspect. The men in the story, the County Attorney Mr. Henderson, the Sheriff Mr. Peters, and the neighbor who found the body, Mr. Hale, look for scientific clues and totally overlook what is right in front of them. In the 1900 's roles were clearly defined by the men and this is carried throughout the play. The women in this play are the unsung heroes while the men who are

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" opens with debate encompassing Minnie Foster Wright, who is in prison on suspicion that she killed her spouse by strangling him. Mrs. Wright's story is told by implication through a discussion between Martha Hale, whose spouse uncovered the grouping of John Wright, Mrs. Diminishes, the wife of the neighborhood sheriff. The sheriff asks Mrs. Robust to go with them to the Wright's house so she can stay with his wife while the men explore the homicide scene. Put together by condition, the ladies structure a prompt bond as they start assembling some of Minnie's possessions to accumulate to her prison cell. Presuming that there is nothing in the kitchen aside from "kitchen things," the men start their examination in the upstairs of the house and in an outside animal dwelling place. Left alone in Minnie's kitchen, in any case, the two ladies start uncovering their pieces of information about Minnie's conceivable intention in executing her spouse. Step by step, Mrs. Sound and Mrs. Diminishes start perceiving insights about Minnie's life that escape the notice of their spouses. They perceive Minnie's forsaken, separated presence, her broken furniture, the once-over kitchen where she needed to cook, and the battered clothes she was compelled to

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.

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

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 “A Jury of her Peers,” Glaspell makes it clear from the beginning using characterization that Mrs. Peters, who is the sheriff’s wife and one of the three female characters featured in the story, is bound to her roles and stereotypes. Glaspell writes that “the sheriff came running in to say his wife wished Mrs. Hale would come too — adding, with a grin, that he guessed she

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

First of all, Glaspell largely examines the repression of women in the 1900s. Women were highly looked down upon by men, and were seen mostly as housekeepers and child bearers, and were definitely not seen as intelligent people. The women in this play prove that the stereotypes against them are completely wrong. The men in this story are sent out to discover the details of a murder, while the women come along to gather some things for Mrs. Wright, who was accused of killing her husband. Throughout the play, the men mock the

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

Women have been experiencing gender discrimination for years. Gender stereotypes for women are formed by unfair beliefs that all men and women are the same. This discrimination leads to certain effects such as how men expect women to do housework, take care of the children, and take on a passive role. Similar gender stereotypes are seen in “A Jury of Her Peers” by Susan Glaspell. In this short story, the murder of Mr. Wright was investigated by a group of men and women in Mr. Wright’s home. As the men search for evidence of a motive upstairs, the women stay downstairs and accidentally find the evidence needed to solve the murder. In Glaspell’s short story, “A Jury of Her Peers”, and in the article “Philosophical and Political Issues Surrounding Gender” it is made clear that gender stereotypes lead to gender discrimination. This discrimination causes men to assume women’s opinions are not as important as theirs and expect women to do all the house chores.

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