Preview

Susan Glaspell's A Jury Of Her Peers

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
240 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Susan Glaspell's A Jury Of Her Peers
“A Jury of Her Peers” is a short story created Susan Glaspell, that demonstrates differences in how genders perceive things. This story takes place in Dickinson County, Iowa in the early 1900s. The story consists of the murder of John Wright, and the arrest of his wife for the murder. The whole story occurs the day after the murder, when the sheriff, the sheriff’s wife, the county attorney, and a couple that live nearby, visit the Wright’s house to figure out what actually happened the day before. This story makes it sound as if people see things differently based on gender, but in my opinion, the main reason for their difference in how they see things is prejudice and sexism. It was not necessarily that the women in this short story see so

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Glaspell’s story is from the perspective of Martha Hale, who has been called to the home of Minnie Foster Wright, a neighbor, that has been accused of killing her husband. While you may focus on the storyline of the woman killing her husband as I did at first, once you reread the story you can grasp the message of women banning together to protect once another. Mrs. Hale responds to the county attorney of his comment on the state of Minnie’s home that, “There’s a great deal of work to be done on a farm…….Men’s hands aren’t always as clean as they might be.” (690). While the attorney is being scornful of the state of home, Mrs. Hale has a quick retort in the defense of her neighbor. Just as in Reddy’s song stating “I am woman, hear me roar/In numbers too big to ignore” (lines 1-2). In other words, women stick together and by doing so we have a strong voice. Both Glaspell and Reddy show how woman are always quick to defend our sex. It could be that we have a better understanding of each other and in that will extend our understanding to the most unlikely of…

    • 1081 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In “A Jury of her Peers” by Susan Glaspell, the story uses symbols to show the life of a young woman in 1917, whose life was sweet and pretty and ends lonely, messy, and broken. The location of the Wright homestead symbolizes the loneliness and emptiness Minnie Foster Wright endures. Glaspell tells us the Wright farm “looked very lonesome this cold March morning. It has always been a lonesome looking place.”…

    • 160 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The women characters in "A Jury of Her Peers" are quiet, looked down upon, and are to be kept in their place as women and nothing more; but it's because of the Observant personality trait of Mrs. Hale that leads you to the stories conclusion. Much of the tension in this story is a result of what the women find out on their own that the men are blind too. The story starts off with Mrs. Hale thinking to herself "But what her eye took in was that her kitchen was in no shape for leaving her bread already for mixing, half the flour sifted and half unsifted."(172) it was because of this type of thinking that she was able to figure out evidence that the men were not. She is not the type to leave anything half done and notices when tings are not finished or out of place. "The cover was off the wooden bucket, and beside it was a paper bag half-full."(177) "She was putting this in there," she said to herself-slowly."(177) Without consciously thinking that it was evidence against Mrs. Wright, Ms. Hale was slowly piecing together the thoughts that were going through Mrs. Wright's…

    • 1247 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “Trifles” is a classic feminist play about two women’s secret discovery of a woman murdering her husband. “A Jury of her Peers” is another edition of this story. During the 1830’s, the “Temperance Movement” which was the very first American reform campaign to emphasize the brutality of domestic violence. Insisting that domestic violence was the direct influence of alcohol the reformers believed that survival of the alcoholic’s wife was dependent on her rights to control her own earnings, gain custody of her children, and to seek a divorce on her own and none of these were options at that time for most women.…

    • 359 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Martin Luther King once said, “I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.” King’s idea is relevant to the various texts in the sense that gender and race play a large role in how people perceive one another. Whether or not it is fair does not matter as that is a separate topic entirely, but this is a serious issue that is present even today. The main characters in the texts Susan Sontag’s “Woman’s Beauty: Put-Down or Power Source?”, Joan Didion’s “On Self-Respect”, and James Baldwin’s “Stranger in the Village” have all experienced to varying degrees some sort…

    • 1891 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Men and women do not always see things the same way, and often time’s, men consider themselves as superior to women because of their way of thinking. In “Jury of Her Peers”, the men, Mr. Peters, Mr. Hale, and Dr. Lloyd, are trying to solve the murder case and leave the women to their “trifles” in the kitchen while they work on the case. The men in the story seem to think that they are the only ones who are smart enough to solve the case or to know what evidence is, and in the end it is this misconception that allows the women to hide the evidence they find from the men. Susan Glaspell uses these gender…

    • 1423 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Susan Glaspell’s writings “Trifles” and “A Jury of Her Peers’ are two pieces of literature that tell the tale of two women at a crime scene. With the exception of one scene, the two works are nearly identical in terms of story. Glaspell’s decision to write the story as both a play and a short story gives us a unique opportunity, the chance to view the story from a multitude of viewpoints. The play gives no clear protagonist, yet because of the nature of short stories Mrs. Hale is thrust into the role in “A Jury of Her Peers”. Looking deeper into them, is it possible that this has negative effects on the stories as a whole? Could it possibly lessen the meaning of each piece?…

    • 1167 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The story “A Jury of Her Peers” was first published in 1917 and was based on a authors one act play “Trifles”. “Trifles” was written in 1916 by Susan Glaspell. Glaspell wrote the play after an experience she had while working for a Des Moines newspaper.…

    • 787 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In “A Jury of Her Peers” by Susan Glaspell, the state of the things in Minnie Wright’s life show the state of the relationship she has with her husband. This is shown through the terrible state of her house, the piecing together of her quilt, and constantly state of being alone. These also give light to key themes Glaspell is portraying throughout her story.…

    • 1181 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “Good Country People” by Flannery O’Connor tells a story about a girl who lost her leg and has to live with her mother, and they get fooled by a con artist. The characters in the story are all female, with an exception of the one male, who is the con artist. The lives of the women in the story would be very different if they were male. Also, the setting of the story would be different. Writers use specific genders in their stories to tell a certain story like O’Connor did, and the gender he used was very crucial to this story.…

    • 312 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    However, in the new culture of the 20th century, the tides begin to change. Instead of men being privileged women now lead in social superiority. This is a result of overcompensation. A specific place where this new gender bias is illustrated, can be found in chapter 18 of To kill a Mockingbird. Mayella Ewell sits before the judge, and tells her alibi (238-254). Because of her feminine touch to the situation the jury end up letting her go. Mayella lied to the jury, and got away with it. Many would say that this was because she was white, but there may have been a twinge of gender bias in the jury’s decision. The reality that gender bias could hurt both men and women is slowly creping up on…

    • 642 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    How often do you see sexist remarks about women anywhere? Not as often as you would have 20 years ago and beyond. Though the thought that women have to take on certain roles has faded it’s not the only gender stereotype out there. The rise of feminism has brought forth both good and bad ideas as well as change towards a brighter future. To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel, by Harper Lee, which takes place during the Great Depression. Around this time there were a lot of different stereotypes about different kinds of people such as, Racial, Gender, Class, and Social stereotypes just to name a few. The main character, Jean Louise “Scout” Finch, is a girl and as a result faced a lot of Gender related stereotypes which still appear in today's society…

    • 693 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    When it comes to sexual assault, it is the common belief that the offenders are male and the victims are female, but this is not always the case. In 2014, a study was done looking at the effects of victims, offender and juror gender could impact decisions in child sexual assault cases (Quas, Bottoms, Haegerich & Nysse-Carris). This case study was done by having mock jurors read scenarios of a man or a woman defendant accused of molesting a 15-year-old boy or girl. There were four different versions of the scenario where the 15-year-old student was allegedly assaulted by a 36-year-old teacher, who was also the soccer coach; the only difference in these scenarios was changing of the genders. The mock jurors would then state their verdicts and rated both the defendant…

    • 445 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In this short piece, “Our Daughters, Ourselves” by Stevie Cameron the many feats that woman have overcome in recent years are highlighted, as are the many setbacks. This piece is basically a summation of a daughters life from an over-cautious parents point of view. Although this is a short piece of writing, it does indeed touch on some of the sexual differences that still exist in our society today such as male-dominated post-secondary fields like engineering and how equally qualified woman don’t usually receive the same level of jobs as men with similar academic credentials. The piece is told from the perspective of what I can assume is a mother that went through the same sexual differences in her era and is only hoping that her daughter does not have to go through the same hardships, only to find that society still isn’t equal no matter how much progress we have made. Cameron supports her whole piece of work at the end by mentioning the tragic events of the Montreal Massacre and how all of their lives parents have been telling their daughters that they can do whatever they want and have equal opportunity only to have their dreams burned down by a sexist male who could blamed woman for his failures. I found this article interesting as I found a correlation between the reading and many topics that I learn about in my Human Resources courses such as creating equality in the workplace and equal opportunity for both sexes.…

    • 704 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Jury Stereotypes

    • 941 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Both the person under inquiry and the jury scrutinizing the defendant are effected by the presence of the media and that they use to portray their information. It can be seen in the previous examples that women are put on a culture based pedestal and any deviation from what they are “meant” to do is damaging to their reputations and can lead to issues in convincing those who fall into the media’s jargon filled trap of anything other than the opinions that they have already established. As women fight to break free of the stereotypes that they are held to, this begs the question whether society has really come as far as it is portrayed in the case of feminism. Is society intelligent enough to handle media in trials and still hold their own opinions rather than falling into the opinions established by others? This leads to a bigger question as to whether the media has enough benefits to trials to still be allowed in court rooms and to portray their opinions to the public with the possibility of jurors being swayed. The answer seems to be no. The mindset of the viewers and jurors seems to be too easily manipulated to match whatever news that the media has chosen to spew to them as proven by the previous…

    • 941 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays