A Jury Of Her Peers Theme
In Susan Glaspell’s short story “A Jury of Her Peers” multiple themes are present such as freedom, compassion, and sympathy, but the main theme the author focuses on is oppression, specifically towards women. In order to reveal this theme the author uses the literary device allusion, and also cause and effect and ethos. The use of allusion helps reveal the theme with indirect implications. Cause and effect helps the reader see how the way Mrs. Wright was being treated and how that caused her to allegedly kill her husband, and finally ethos emotionally connected the female characters, adding to evidence of the theme of oppression.
The author uses allusion to help reveal the theme of the story. Allusion is first used in the title because the author implies without directly saying that the two women Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, are Mrs. Wright’s jury of her peers, knowing that back in that time period she would not get a fair jury of her peers that would understand what she was going through. “Martha Hale snatched the box from the sheriff’s wife, and got it in the pocket of her big coat just as the sheriff and county attorney came back into the kitchen.” (Glaspell 259). The allusion in this example and the title also provides irony because the jury of peers Mrs. Wright was given were all men. This is ironic because the setting of the poem is about 1910-1917, which was around the same time the Women’s Suffrage Movement was gaining momentum. During that time period there were a lot of things women could not do, and serving as a juror was one of them. To have the women symbolically serve as a jury of Ms. Wright’s peers meant a lot and showed that in court the jurors would not have viewed the case with an open mind or insight into the female mind because to men women were considered inferior. Overall the use of allusion helped the author with revealing the theme by providing an ironic and dual meaning to “A Jury of Her Peers”.
The author also uses cause and effect to
The author uses allusion to help reveal the theme of the story. Allusion is first used in the title because the author implies without directly saying that the two women Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, are Mrs. Wright’s jury of her peers, knowing that back in that time period she would not get a fair jury of her peers that would understand what she was going through. “Martha Hale snatched the box from the sheriff’s wife, and got it in the pocket of her big coat just as the sheriff and county attorney came back into the kitchen.” (Glaspell 259). The allusion in this example and the title also provides irony because the jury of peers Mrs. Wright was given were all men. This is ironic because the setting of the poem is about 1910-1917, which was around the same time the Women’s Suffrage Movement was gaining momentum. During that time period there were a lot of things women could not do, and serving as a juror was one of them. To have the women symbolically serve as a jury of Ms. Wright’s peers meant a lot and showed that in court the jurors would not have viewed the case with an open mind or insight into the female mind because to men women were considered inferior. Overall the use of allusion helped the author with revealing the theme by providing an ironic and dual meaning to “A Jury of Her Peers”.
The author also uses cause and effect to
Cited: Glaspell, Susan. A Jury of Her Peers.