Does Susan Glaspell Use The Imagery In 'A Jury Of Her Peers'

Pulitzer Prize winner Susan Glaspell is a pioneer for women of her generation. Ms. Glaspell was born in 1876, a time where women were not considered equal to men. When Glaspell became “of age”, instead of marrying, she went to college and graduated from Drake University in 1899. Glaspell’s career as a writer began when she got a job as a reporter for the newspaper. During that time she wrote several short stories that were published. Glaspell later married George Cook and he is the person that encouraged her to write plays. Due to this encouragement, she wrote one of her most well-known plays, Trifles (International Susan Glaspell Society.) This play is later turned into the short story “A Jury of Her Peers,” Glaspell uses imagery, chauvinism,

and empathy to demonstrate prejudice.
Throughout the story, prejudice against women is a recurrent theme.

Mary M. Bendel-Simso also appears to agree with this theme when she states, “The men, all representatives of the Law (the sheriff, the prosecutor, and a witness” (292). This coincides with the imagery of judge, jury, and execution, during the time period when women were not allowed to sit on a jury. Another form of imagery in the story is when Karen Alkalay-Gut suggests that the mental image of the strangled bird is representation of Minnie having the life strangled out of her by her domineering husband (6). Glaspell uses Mrs. Hale to visualize the young Minnie Foster Wright as a lively girl, and more recently a much subdued woman, and the unsaid cause is that of the formidable Mr.

Wright.
Chauvinism is brought up by Alkaylay-Gut as form of prejudice when she states “The women are in the kitchen and the kitchen work is trivial, while the men study the “layout” of the house and barn, gather what they consider to be significant information”(4). Glaspell shows a discriminatory attitude when she has Mr. Hale state the following line, “But would the women know a clue if they did come upon it?” (266). This thought implies that women are not as smart as men. Alkayla-Gut brings up another comment on this attitude, which is a common attitude of the men of the time period when she states this thought: “Minnie’s existence and her behavior are determined by her man who makes the rules she lives by” (6).
Furthermore; in her short story Glaspell begins to use empathy to overcome the prejudice of men, by having Mrs.

Hale begin to stand up for Minnie. Mrs. Hale tells Mrs. Peters “How’d you like to cook on this?” as she refers to the bad stove. (270) Readers can imply that Mrs. Hale has some attitude behind her statement. Bendel-Simso expresses how the men want to punish the killer but not look into the “why” of the murder, and how the woman begin to see Minnie’s side.(292) Mrs. Hale sympathizes by the memory of a kitten that was murdered, and Mrs. Peters empathizes by remembrance of the loss of her child. Glaspell shows the women begin to band together using their losses as an emotional stepping stone, when they silently agree to hide the dead

bird.
Prejudice is often thought to be one race trying to feel superior to another race, in this instance it is male versus female. The men of the story are shown through imagery to represent that they believe they are the only ones capable of deciding the fate of someone who is a suspect of a crime. The chauvinism throughout the story constantly implies the men think they are smarter than women, the men were often putting the women down, or in their place. In the story Mrs. Hale appears to finally have had enough of the way the men have spoken to her, and through empathy is able to get Mrs. Peters to begin to side with her so that they may in some way fight the prejudice of the men that surround them. The story is a representation of the time period. The prejudices of the women in the story are what women were suffering through during that era.