The short story “A Jury of Her Peers” written by Susan Glaspell is about a murder investigation that has taken place in a rural farm house. This story describes vividly how families lived in rural America and the challenges that they faced. Although readers never meet the murder suspect Mrs. Wright, they understand her due to how her peers perceive her. Mary Bendel-Simso explains in her essay that there is a difference between genders and the only people who can judge Mrs. Wright are her female peers. The men in the story want to punish Mrs. Wright without question, but the women show sympathy for her (Bendel-Simso). The story “A Jury of Her Peers” is an excellent example of how men and women view events differently even though it is set in the early 1900’s.
The plot of a story can be defined as the relationships and patterns of events. The plot in Glaspell’s story is the investigation of an apparent murder of a man by his wife in the viewpoint of men and women. The males in the story, Mr. Hale (who discovered the murder), Mr. Peters (the Sheriff) and Mr. Henderson (the County Attorney) are at the farmhouse where the body was discovered in an attempt to reconstruct the crime. The wives of Mr. Hale and Mr. Peters are also present and stay mainly in the kitchen. Although the women were not there to investigate the crime, they learn more about how the Wright couple lived than the male investigators. While gathering items for Mrs. Wright to use in jail, the women find a damaged bird cage and later the body of a strangled bird. The male investigators come in and out of the room and pay little attention to what their wives are doing as they considered it unimportant. The women silently agree to keep the motive for the murder from their husbands in a sense of sisterhood they felt with Mrs. Wright.
The characters in this story are the people the author creates. In “A Jury of Her Peers” the characters consist of Mr. and Mrs. Wright, Mr.