Monday 31 July 2017

What was Susan Glaspell trying to argue in "A Jury of Her Peers"?

Although many possible arguments emerge in interpreting "A Jury of Her Peers," the fact that Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale intuit the motive for Mrs. Wright to kill her husband while the men miss all the illustrative details in the kitchen suggests that Glaspell believes women to be more intuitive and sympathetic than men. 


The nature of the circumstances that compelled Mrs. Wright to kill her husband build sympathy for the isolation and privation of...

Although many possible arguments emerge in interpreting "A Jury of Her Peers," the fact that Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale intuit the motive for Mrs. Wright to kill her husband while the men miss all the illustrative details in the kitchen suggests that Glaspell believes women to be more intuitive and sympathetic than men. 


The nature of the circumstances that compelled Mrs. Wright to kill her husband build sympathy for the isolation and privation of poor rural women.  Her barely functional stove, rundown house, shabby clothes, and isolation are pitiable, and Mrs. Hale, and eventually Mrs. Peters, feel for Mrs. Wright. Their discovery of the murdered canary and what it must have meant to her is the tipping point as they suppress the evidence that could help to convict Mrs. Wright.


Because the story is called "A Jury of Her Peers," and Mrs. Wright's peers consider her "case" and find her homicide justifiable, it certainly can be read as a feminist story. The men are characterized as officious, oblivious, and ineffectual as "the law." 

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