Trifles and A Jury of Her Peers by Susan Glaspell - Essay Example

?Compare “Trifles” and “A Jury of Her Peers”  by Susan Glaspell Susan Glaspell (1876- 1948) an American belonged to the Modern period. Susan was a journalist who was honored with Pulitzer Prize for drama in the year 1931. Susan first narrated a story of an abused wife who murders her husband in a form of a play ‘Trifles’ that was enacted in the year 1916, and then this play was converted into a short story called ‘A Jury of Her Peers’. The theme of the story was inspired by a true incident that the author encountered while she was practicing journalism. The period in which Susan Glaspell belonged witnessed lot of changes in the feministic approach. Women before that time were the victims of male abuse in the society. They were denied basic and legal right. In the mid- nineteenth century few movements started to reform the condition of women and this wave of protest ceased many ill treatments on women. After the advent of the feminism women got the right to vote and seek divorce from their abusive husbands. Strict laws were introduced to save the women from slavery and physical abuse. Susan’s works reflect the degrading condition of the female protagonist who killed her husband to relieve herself from mental abuse. The play also highlights an element of dishonesty in the communication of the male and female characters. The women companions of the investigators rose above all the trivial expectations which men had from their female counterparts, and play a role which is for a large cause and pro-feminist in nature. “Trifles” and “A Jury of Her Peers” written by Susan Glaspell was inspired from a true incident that Susan covered in the newspaper Des Moines Daily News as a reporter. Margaret Hossack was condemned for murdering her husband in his sleep. The investigators were unable to find any evidence behind this crime but still she was punished by the law and was given life imprisonment. Glaspell tried her best to build support and empathy of the public for this elderly woman and convinced them that Margaret suffered from physical torture from her husband. After two years the second jury on the basis of her advancing age and weak health released Margaret. Glaspell was immensely haunted by this incident and was inspired to pen down her experiences in a form of a play that became very famous followed by a short story. (Ozieblo and Dickey, 60)  This story is completely women centric. Both the works of Susan Glaspell focus on the secondary position of the women and the perception that the men hold for women. The story begins with the murder of Mr. John Wright who was killed in his sleep by a rope around his neck. His wife Mrs. Minne Foster Wright has been accused of killing her husband and is waiting for the trail. An investigating team was sent to Mr. Wright’s house to gather evidence of the murder against his wife. The team comprised of Sheriff, Mr. Hale and their respective wives Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters though the wives just accompanied their husbands to provide company to each other. Men were concerned about the authoritative aspects of rendering justice as stated by Sheriff, “married to law”, and the women’s world was strictly limited to the boundary of the domestic scenario especially the kitchen. As the men moves upstairs to look for evidence in Mr. Wright’s house the women move to the kitchen and engage themselves in petty works and in the course tries to solve the mystery in their own ways. In the course of their search, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters come across enough evidences against Mrs. Wright but simultaneously formed empathy towards the women who was extremely dominated and mentally abused by her husband. The two men laughed at their wives curiosity to resolve the mystery and passed a sarcastic remark, “they wonder if she was going to quilt it or just knot it.” (Glaspell). Though the men were appointed for this investigation it was the women who actually solved the mystery behind the murder. The two women observed that Mrs. Wright killed her husband by tying a rope around the neck of her husband. They both describe Mrs. Wright as “herself real sweet and pretty, but kind of timid and fluttery. How she did change”. (Glaspell). The two women connected the different events and evidences that reflect the intention of the protagonist to commit the crime. The psychological conflict and the disturbance in Mrs. Wright’s life were strongly depicted through the symbolism of bad sewing of a piece of a quilt. Then the women found an uninhabited birdcage with a wrecked door. The missing bird used to sing very well very similar to Minnie Wright who also used to sing beautifully before her marriage. But her husband’s hard nature and dominance forced her to quit singing and live a claustrophobic life. This mental torture gradually forced Mrs. Wright to kill her husband. When Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters opened the sewing basket of Mrs. Wright, they discovered the dead bird wrapped in a piece of silk and buried inside a beautiful box with a broken neck. Martha Hale commented after seeing the dead bird that, “Wright wouldn’t like the bird… a thing that sang. She used to sing. He killed that too.” (Glaspell). Both the women suffered from uncertainty and uneasiness about the way the men will accept their ability for solving the mystery. According to Mrs.Peters the men will laugh at their assumption regarding the dead bird and the hidden motive behind it, but Mrs. Hale expresses her dilemma by stating, “ may be they would….. may be they wouldn’t.” (Glaspell). The women steadily suppressed the truth of their investigation from their male partners. They blatantly denied the truth that they have solved the mystery of the murder. The men, who already had trivial expectations from both the women, did not suspect them of lying. When the men saw the empty birdcage and asked about the missing bird, the women said that, “ we think the cat got it” (Glaspell). It was easier for both the women to hide the truth from their male partners because their husbands constantly underestimated their abilities. In spite of knowing that Minne Wright murdered her husband, both the women supported and empathized with her and her degrading condition that she has faced all her lives. Suppressing the truth actually turned the case in favor of the women criminal. Women in that period hold an inferior position in the society and in their personal lives. They were not allowed to provide judgement, it was only expected from the male members of the society. But in the works of the author it was the women who solved the mystery of the murder with their own abilities and by hiding the truth both Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters indirectly provided justice to the abused protagonist by turning the entire case in her favor. The impact of the play and the story of Susan Glaspell were different in the minds of the people - “with Trifles she [the author] develops her technique of conscious manipulation of audiences perspectives, so that they can see as she has done, which then allows her feminist and other progressive political views to come to the fore.” (Gainor, 42) and, “many of the major approaches that have characterized feminist literary criticism in the past decade have thus found generous validation in the text of ‘A Jury of Her Peers’. The story has become a paradigmatic one for feminist criticism”. (Ben-Zvi, 49) From the play “Trifles” and the story “A Jury of Her Peers” it was clearly stated that if the women holds the authoritative position then most of the issues and problems related to women could have been easily solved.  Women’s feelings and perceptions towards the male dominant society enforced them to hide the truth and empathize with the criminal women.  Dishonesty in communication and hiding the evidence of murder from their husbands, the women established a larger cause, which was apparently nobler to them. According to the ideology of both the women, it was impossible for an abused women to get fair justice from the man made law.        References Ozieblo, Barbara and Dickey, Richard. Susan Glaspell and Sophie Treadwell, New York: Taylor & Francis, 2008 Gainor, Ellen. Susan Glaspell in Context, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2004 Ben-Zvi, Linda. Susan Glaspell: Essays on Her Theatre and Fiction, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2002  Glaspell, Susan, Trifles, July 22, 2011 from:  http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/eng384/trifles.htm Glaspell, Susan, A Jury of Her Peers, July 22, 2011 from: http://www.learner.org/interactives/literature/story/fulltext.html  Read More