“Jury of Her Peers” is a short story that combines murder, lies and sexism while exposing the reader to the truth about women’s abilities and skills. Aside from being a murder mystery about the investigation of the sudden death of John Wright, the story’s theme is more about respect for women and making decisions based on one’s own beliefs and morals rather than allowing others to control them. Glaspell is a firm believer in women’s rights, and she dedicates most of her writing, including this piece, to displaying to society that women are indeed as smart and capable as men are to perform the duties and jobs of everyday life (internet*). The setting is in rural Dickson County, USA, just prior to 1920. This was a period in America’s history when women were seen as household workers only, that men were the only ones capable of making important judgment calls and decisions. Although one of the main characters, Mrs. Peters, lives her life by what the men make her to be, in the end she undergoes a movement that changes her into an independent person of society.
The female characters in “Jury of Her Peers” include Mrs. Peters, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Wright. These are the women who, at different points in their lives, turned the degrading things men did into motivation to go through with actions they never thought possible. For Mrs. Hale, this happened when she was only a girl, and a young boy slaughtered her young kitten in front of her own eyes. As she described it, she felt from that experience that “If they had not held me back I would have…hurt him.” (Glaspell, 277) Likewise, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Wright go through a similar situation regarding how their husbands treat them. Mr. Hale and the Sheriff, Mr. Peter...
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...y, Mr. Hale describes Mrs. Peters as being “married to the law” (Glaspell, 280). In many ways, this statement is true for Mrs. Peters. However, after hearing this, she undergoes a transformation that leads her to conceal the evidence she and Mrs. Hale discover. It is a bold move that shows her ability to stand for what she believes is right, and what she believes the men deserve.
Glaspell’s ideas about women in society were, at the time of their release, very controversial. As time has progressed, women have risen to the challenge and become the very figures she described in “Jury of Her Peers.” Not necessarily people who are willing to kill, but people who stand for something and will openly express their feelings and beliefs without sensing a biased for men. That is what this story is about, and that is what the author wanted everyone to realize.
In A Jury of Peers by Susan Glaspell, the story revolves around the sudden death of John Wright. There are five characters that participate in the investigation of this tragedy. Their job is to find a clue to the motive that will link Mrs. Wright, the primary suspect, to the murder. Ironically, the ladies, whose duties did not include solving the mystery, were the ones who found the clue to the motive. Even more ironic, Mrs. Hale, whose presence is solely in favor of keeping the sheriff s wife company, could be contributed the most to her secret discovery. In this short story, Mrs. Hale s character plays a significant role to Mrs. Wright s nemesis in that she has slight feelings of accountability and also her discovery of the clue to the motive.
Marx’s idea of the estrangement of man from the product of his labor described the suffering of countless hours or work by the laborer, contributing to the production of a product that he could not afford with the wages he made. He helped to produce a product that only those wealthier than he could afford. As the society around him became more object-oriented, he became increasingly more alienated. In the lager, one factor that distanced the laborer from his product was that he no longer worked for a wage, but for survival. In a description of his fellow worker, Levi wrote, “He seems to think that his present situation is like outside, where it is honest and logical to work, as well as being of advantage, because according to what everyone says, the more one works the more one earns and eats.” Levi pitied his fellow worker for his naivety, as the Lager was not a place of labor for prosperity, but strictly a place of labor by force. One worked in order to live, focusing more on the uncertainty of their next meal, day, or even breath than the product of their l...
The central theme in “A Jury of Her Peers” is the place of women in society and especially the isolation this results in. We see this through the character, Minnie Foster and her isolation from love, happiness, companionship and from society as a whole. Not only does the story describe this isolation but it allows the reader to feel the impact of this isolation and recognize the tragedy of the situation.
If your husband had just been murdered, would your first concern be of your jar of preserves bursting? The short story “ A Jury of Her Peers” and play “Trifles” share an abudance of similarities. The setting in both takes place during winter in Dickson County, Nebraska. This is a rutal town located in the farm belt of the United States in the early part of the 1900’s. Glaspell craftfully uses the discussions between the characters and symbolism in both stories to bring focus to and reject how males viewed and treated females in rural America in the 1900’s.
As a strong feminist, Susan Glaspell wrote “Trifles” and then translated it to a story called “A Jury of Her Peers.” These works express Glaspell’s view of the way women were treated at the turn of the century. Even though Glaspell is an acclaimed feminist, her story does not contain the traditional feminist views of equal rights for both sexes.
Hedges, Elaine. A. "Small Things Reconsidered: Susan Glaspell's 'A Jury of Her Peers'. " Women's Studies 12.1 (1986): 89. Literary Reference Center Plus. Web.
In Susan Glaspell’s “A Jury of Her Peers”, female characters face inequality in a society dominated by the opinions of their husbands. The women struggle to decide where their loyalty rests and the fate of a fellow woman. Aided by memories and their own lifestyles the women realize their ties to a woman held for murder, Minnie Foster Wright. Through a sympathetic connection these women, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters have greater loyalty to a fellow woman than to their husbands and even the law; this greater loyalty ultimately shows the inequality between genders.
Grose, Janet L. “Susan Glaspell’s Trifles and ‘A Jury of Her Peers’: Feminine Reading and
In 1917 when "A Jury Of Her Peers" was written, women were the homemakers. Although Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale fit the domest...
Men always have the tendency to judge too quickly. In “A Jury of Her Peers”, by Susan Glaspell, Mrs. Hale, Mrs. Peters, and Minnie Foster and Mr. Henderson are attempting to look for the motive of Minnie killing her husband. The story starts by Mr. Peters informing the group, except for Minnie, while she waits in jail, that when he stopped by the day before to give Mr. Wright a telephone because the couple lived really removed from the rest of the town, he asked Minnie where Mr. Wright was and she calmly answered that he had been hung the night before. Then, the men head upstairs to look at the crime scene, while the women sit around the kitchen to talk. Accidentally, the women figure out the motive of the murder by talking about kitchen supplies, “trifles” as the men call it. They decided not to inform the men to keep Minnie from being convicted because her husband was equally guilty as her. In the short story, “A Jury of Her Peers”, Glaspell employs strong details and details devices to argue that the purpose of the story is how Glaspell portrays men, that a person must not be judged based on off of the external appearance and that the little details in life always are important.
Throughout history, a plethora of different classes of people, cultures, and races have undergone some form of prejudice. Partiality against women has occurred, and continues to occur, in America. Susan Glaspell, author of "A Jury of her Peers," depicts a story of a close-knit community in the process of solving the mystery of a man's death, thought to be caused by his wife. In the investigation of Mr. Wright’s death, the women helping to search through the Wright farm for clues pointing to evidence of Minnie Wright’s murder of her husband were thought of as useless, when in reality, the women were solely responsible for finding and understanding Mrs. Wright's motives for murdering her husband. Glaspell uses imagery and a woman's point of view to depict how a woman may feel bound by limits set by society--- a feeling most easily understood by women who share the same perception of life.
Susan Glaspell wrote two different forms of literature that have basically the same plot, setting and characters. This was during a period in which the legal system was unsympathetic to the social and domestic situation of the married woman. She first wrote the drama version “Trifles” in 1916 and then the prose fiction “A Jury of Her Peers” in 1917. The main difference was the way the prose fiction version was presented. Glaspell effects emotional change in the story with descriptive passages, settings and the title. The prose fiction version has a greater degree of emotional penetration than the drama version.
Marx’s theory of alienation describes the separation of things that naturally belong together. For Marx, alienation is experienced in four forms. These include alienation from ones self, alienation from the work process, alienation from the product and alienation from other people. Workers are alienated from themselves because they are forced to sell their labor for a wage. Workers are alienated from the process because they don’t own the means of production. Workers are alienated from the product because the product of labor belongs to the capitalists. Workers do not own what they produce. Workers are alienated from other people because in a capitalist economy workers see each other as competition for jobs. Thus for Marx, labor is simply a means to an end.
In his philosophical text, The Republic, Plato argues that justice can only be realized by the moderation of the soul, which he claims reflects as the moderation of the city. He engages in a debate, via the persona of Socrates, with Ademantus and Gaucon on the benefit, or lack thereof, for the man who leads a just life. I shall argue that this analogy reflecting the governing of forces in the soul and in city serves as a sufficient device in proving that justice is beneficial to those who believe in, and practice it. I shall further argue that Plato establishes that the metaphorical bridge between the city and soul analogy and reality is the leader, and that in the city governed by justice the philosopher is king.
The synopsis of Marx’s Theory of Alienation is the belief that in a contemporary industrial society driven by capitalism, the working class will eventually lose jurisdiction over their lives by relinquishing control over their work. Prior to capitalism, tradesmen would be the proprietors of their own workplace, be able to set and keep their own hours of operation, be the driving force behind developing and producing the product, have the ability to create and maintain their working conditions, as well as have input on how the commodity is bartered or sold, and the associations and rapport with the people whom he worked with and had dealings with had a more intimate character to them.