Susan Glaspell's A Jury Of Her Peers

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When America branched out from England, we continued the mindset of men being the dominant and women being lesser. Slowly over the years, women have been fighting for a higher role in societies eyes. Susan Glaspell expressed how she felt about societies mindset on women in a short story “A Jury of Her Peers”. This story is about a woman, Minnie, who is accused of murdering her husband. A group of officials, a witness and their wives went to the crime scene to find evidence. While they are trying to piece together what had happened, Glaspell shows many different ways women were looked down upon, whether it was disguised in jokes, blatant statements, or just the men’s carelessness.
First of all, they have the mindset that even though they didn’t …show more content…

They saw the broken birdcage and dead bird as a sign of anger, but Minnie would’ve loved the bird, so who killed it? They also noticed that some of the stitching on the quilt was sloppy, which made them believe that Minnie was stressed about something, why was she stressed? While looking through the kitchen they realized how unorganized it was, and some of the food was going bad, what women would leave her kitchen like this? When the men saw these things they just made comments like “have you decided whether she was going to quilt it or knot it?” “There was a laugh for the ways of women”, and “Dirty towels! Not much of a housekeeper, would you say, ladies?". While the men look for “real evidence”, the ladies try to figure out what had happened. They come to the conclusion that the reason all these things were the way that they are because of the husband mistreating Minnie. She use to sing, be happy, and then she married Mr. Wright and it all changed. Mrs. Hale blames herself for not checking up on Minnie, but she thinks Minnie is justified in whatever …show more content…

In the past the jury of a court was all men, who looked upon women as inferior, so the women were pretty much set up to fail in court. In courts today, women are held at an equal standard and respect as men. The jury would be co-ed; therefor Minnie would have a more fair chance of winning the case. Suspect wise, Minnie would be the first suspect, because of her being at the crime scene and seemingly having no care about what had happen to her husband. Defense wise, they might plead insanity, for she was undisturbed and seemed to have a past of abuse. The ideas that Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters thought of about Minnie’s stressful, terrible life would have been used for an emotional appeal from the jury. The defense could use the dead bird as evidence that Mr. Wright was an angry and harmful person. The main thing that wouldn’t be used in today’s courts is the mindset that women are inferior and the bias that goes with that. Overall, Mrs. Wright probably would’ve been sent to get help at a rehab/psychologist

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