Women In A Jury Of Her Peers By Susan Glaspell

“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.

Having studied the time period myself, I concur with her real time assessment of these stark separations. However, I strongly disagree with the statement she makes in her conclusion of the story. By having the women forgo their responsibility to uphold justice in the eyes of the law, or, at a bear minimum, not to obstruct it, Glaspell leads the reader to believe that murder, perhaps the worst crime that can be committed by man, or woman, is to be forgiven without reproach because of purported mental abuse! I find the idea sickening. That there are evil people in the world who take the life of others is bad enough, but to consider that some rationalize such activities because of a certain social persuasion is intolerable.

“A jury of her Peers” and Trifles are works of literature. In these works, they depict the murder of Mr. Wright. The men accuse Mrs. Wright to the murder of her husband, however are they are trying to find evidence to prove this. Both works are loosely based on the murder of John Hossack, which Glaspell reported on while working as a news journalist for the Des Moines Daily News. Hossack's wife, Margaret, was accused of killing her husband. However, Margaret argued that an intruder had killed John with an axe. She was convicted but it was overturned on appeal. In the play Trifles and the short story “A Jury of her Peers”, Susan Glaspell conveys how she transforms the play to the short story by change in the plot, the characters, and the themes of Female vs men and freedom

Although “A Jury of Her Peers” and “Trifles” are similar in plot, Mustazza’s article, “Generic Translation and Thematic Shift in Susan Glaspell’s ‘Trifles’ and ‘A Jury of Her Peers’” highlights the differences and similarities between the two. Mustazza’s article may help aid readers to understand the differences between Glaspell’s two works and provide understanding as to why Glaspell may have changed the genre and form of the plot. “Trifles” is a dramatic play whereas “A Jury of Her Peers” is prose fiction. While some differences may be seen on the surface, other differences will need to be inspected closely. Mustazza’s article may help one to understand Glaspell’s works by providing analysis and additional perspectives on both “A Jury of her Peers” and “Trifles”.

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

Twentieth century society places few stereotypical roles on men and women.  The men are not the sole breadwinners, as they once were, and the women are no longer the sole homemakers.  The roles are often reversed, or, in the case of both parents working, the old roles are totally inconsequential.  Many works of literature deal with gendered roles and their effect on society as a whole or on an individual as a person.  "A Jury Of Her Peers" and Trifles, both written by Susan Glaspell, are works of literature that deal with socially gendered roles during the early nineteenth century.  The two works are almost exactly alike in that the dialogue from "A Jury Of Her

“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.

From beginning to end, Susan Glaspell’s 1917 short story “A Jury of Her Peers,” has several repetitive patterns and symbols that help the reader gain a profound understanding of how hard life is for women at the turn-of-the-century, as well as the bonds women share. In the story two women go with their husbands and county attorney to a remote house where Mr. Wright has been killed in his bed with a rope and he suspect is Minnie, his wife. Early in the story, Mrs. Hale sympathizes with Minnie and objects to the way the male investigators are “snoopin’ round and criticizin’ ” her kitchen. In contrast, Mrs. Peters, the Sheriffs wife, shows respect for the law, saying that the men are doing “no more than their duty”. However, by the end of the story Mrs. Peters unites with Mrs. Hale in a conspiracy of silence and concealing evidence. What causes this dramatic transformation?

Susan Glaspell's short story, A Jury of Her Peers, was written long before the modern women's movement began, yet her story reveals, through Glaspell's use of symbolism, the role that women are expected to play in society. Glaspell illustrates how this highly stereotypical role can create oppression for women and also bring harm to men as well.

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 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

In “A Jury of Her Peers,” Susan Glaspell uses the men’s belittlement and the women’s responses to show their differences. For example, when the men laugh about the women’s question of the quilt, Mrs. Hale responds with “our taking up our time with little things while we’re waiting for them to get the evidence. I don’t see as it’s anything to laugh about” (Glaspell 8). Seeing these differences bring the two women, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, closer together. At one point in the story, “the two women moved a little closer together” in response when the men trivialize what trifles women go through (Glaspell 5). The women see things in the house that the men cannot due to the men never having to experience being in the place of a housewife. The men failed to see the little details that women could see. “Belittling the women, the condescending men exclude them from the legal investigation, doubting the women could recognize a forensic clue”, the men doing this causes their view of the crime to be incomplete, and they fail to recognize that the women were the men’s greatest investigators of this case (Kamir). Mr. Hale even completely ridicules the intelligence of the women altogether by saying “But would the women know a clue if they did come upon it?” (Glaspell 6).