A Jury Of Her Peers Play Analysis

In any writing the author must go through a specific thought process. This would be especially so if they were revising a previously written work and can be seen when comparing the two. The specific works that will be discussed here are the play, Trifles, and the story, “A Jury of Her Peers”, which were both written by Susan Glaspell and explores the suppression of women in a male dominated world and was based on a real-life murder trial of an Iowa woman that the author had reported. Trifles, a one-act play, was written in 1916. As the play opens, it is a frigid winter day and the characters are in the kitchen of the home, which is the crime scene and the main location of the play, of both the victim and the suspect. In comparison, the story

Not only do the actors use movement to get a point across, but they also will show feelings. MRS. PETERS [in a frightened voice]: Oh, I don’t know. (1.1.562)

The brackets are used here to tell the person to show a specific emotion instead of some kind of movement. In a play characters of the story have specific movements and emotions to show to the audience, but how does this change for a story? In the story the actions must be described in detail, so the reader understands what the person is in the story is doing. “The two women had drawn nearer, and now the sheriffs wife spoke”. (571) “Mrs. Peters’ husband broke into a laugh”. (571) “The young attorney set his lips”. (571) Not only is it necessary to describe the actions of the characters, but also their emotions. The author must use descriptive words to elicit or create a feeling in the reader, “A frightened look blurred the other thing in Mrs. Peters’ eyes”. (574) “Their eyes met – something flashed to life, passed between them; then, as if with an effort, they seemed to pull away from each other”. (576) These statements conjure pictures of the feelings that the ladies in the story are having as they seem to realize something about their surroundings. The way feelings are conveyed in a play versus a story are different, but both can have an equal, profound

In trifles, the scene is described to the actors at the beginning of the writing, but the scene is set on stage for the audience. There are props on the stage to set the picture of being inside the farmhouse of Mr. and Mrs. Wright. When the county attorney says “This feels good. Come up to the fire, ladies.”, (1.1.558) there is actually a stove set on stage for them to walk up to. When the attorney needs to wash hands and dry them on a towel roll, [He gives it a pull to expose its full length again.] (1.1.561] there is actually a towel roll for him to use. The entire scene is set up including a backdrop to look like the inside wall of a kitchen. The room would have everything necessary to look like a normal kitchen in a farmhouse of the period. The difference in the story is that it is non-visual, there is nothing to look at. In the same scene where the attorney needed to wash his hands the author uses more words to describe the fact that the towel is dirty and not change; “Dirty towels! Not much of a housekeeper, would you say, ladies?” (572) This short statement allows the imagination to not only see that the towel was dirty but that maybe the rest of the house was also a bit unkept. Powerful words and statements are used in the story to help the reader imagine what the place looked like as the story moves. The scene setting of a play is different than the scene setting of a story. The play