A Jury of Her Peers by Susan Glaspell - Research Paper Example

Both the story and the play gained much popularity, and many women writers and playwrights included them in their anthologies (Goodman 191). Since Glaspell had been acting as a court reporter in Iowa, she designed a story in which she showed some rural women pondering over the details of the murder of a man, whose wife had killed him. Women take clues from petty things in the murderer’s kitchen, and reach to the disclosure of who killed the man. Glaspell has claimed, after the story received warm appreciation, that it was based on a real court case when she was working as a reporter for the Des Moines Daily.

She reported the murder of a sixty-year-old farmer, named John Hossack, in Indianola, Iowa, in 1900. He was found with a crushed skull on the night when he was sleeping with his wife. Somebody had crushed his skull with an axe. His wife, Margaret, was doubted, but was released due to unconvincing evidence. She said that she did not know who the murderer was. A lot of women of the town attended the trial. A sheriff’s wife showed sympathy with Mrs. Hossack, when she had first testified against her.

This was the woman who depicted the character of Mrs. Peters in the story. Glaspell created a jury of those female peers in “A Jury of Her Peers”, because in real, females were not allowed as jurors in the court trial. This paper intends to discuss the main theme and focus of the play, along with the means and techniques the author used to communicate the idea. To start with, it is better to give a summary of the play, so that the reader gets a better idea about what the storywriter is trying to convey.

The whole story is about the characters (the county attorney George Henderson, the neighbor Lewis Hale, the large Mrs. Martha Hale, The sheriff Henry Peters, and the thin Mrs. Peters) searching for clues to solve a murder case in a dull and messy kitchen of John Wright's farmhouse. The story begins with Mrs. Hale working in her kitchen, making bread, when her husband, Mr. Hale, comes upon her and asks her to leave with him. She is furious for leaving the task she was doing, but leaves to join the county attorney George Henderson, and Mr. and Mrs. Henry Peters, at the place where the Wrights lived.

Wrights were a couple all of them were familiar with. Mr. John Wright has been murdered. His wife, Mrs. Minnie Wright is being under arrest as a suspect. The women refer to her as Minnie Foster. The men- Peters, Henderson and Hale- search through the crime scene for evidence and clues, and mock at the women’s talk about the clues. They make fun of women’s discussion about the quilt, the broken door of the bird cage, and the dead canary. The men consider their interest in these objects as unimportant as Hale says, “Well, women are used to worrying over trifles”.

When men move upstairs to look for evidence, the women search the chaotic kitchen and find clues which point to the guilt of Mrs. Wright. Men had called these things as “trifles” and had said, “Nothing here but kitchen things”. The women form a bond with Mrs. Wright, when they see her shaggy clothing and the run down kitchen. As an objection to men’s mocking, the women decide to keep the evidence to themselves. Ironically, their discussion about unimportant things finally leads to uncovering the truth and solving the murder case.