Analysis of A Jury of Her Peers by Susan Glaspell

While I mulled over what to write for this weeks essay, I skimmed through the contents of my literature book. A Jury of Her Peers by Susan Glaspell caught my attention so I turned to page 154 and began to read. I am really glad that I read this story. Susan Glaspell is an excellent writer. I was pulled into the world she wrote about. I became emotionally involved with the characters. My heart went out to Minnie Foster/Wright.

Although the story is about Minnie, Mrs. Hale seems to be the central character. The story starts in her kitchen as she is leaving for the Wright house. Mrs. Hale is a strong person. She is also a very neat person who pays attention to detail and is a sharp observer. Mrs. Hale seems to want thing to be proper and in order. She doesn't like to leave anything unfinished. Throughout the story Mrs. Hale is able to keep her voice and tone even. She carefully chooses everything that she says.

Mrs. Peters is the female character in the story. Mrs. Peters is married to the sheriff. Where Mrs. Hale seems strong and confident, Mrs. Peters seems almost timid and a little unsure at times. In spite of Mrs. Peters quiet demeanor and shrinking manner, Mrs. Hale later thinks that perhaps Mrs. Peters sees "a long way into things." (pg 161) At the end of the story Mrs. Peters shows compassion and empathy for Minnie when she tries to hide the dead canary. This took great courage on her part, especially after the county attorney made a comment about her being "married to the law." (pg 168)

The men in the story are a bit chauvinistic in their speech and action. The county attorney seems to be the instigator in this. First he makes a joke about the insignificance of kitchen things. He seems to talk down to the women through the whole story. Then he makes insensitive comments about the condition of the kitchen and what a bad housekeeper Minnie is. He also makes light of all the hard work Minnie put into her preserves. He says that she has bigger things to worry about than her preserves. His overall opinion of women is that they are just simple, trivial creatures.

The county attorney also is sarcastic when he speaks of Minnie and plans to make fun of her at her trial for not waking up when her husband was murdered. Later he pokes fun at the women for occupying themselves with little things while the men were investigating. He later underestimates the women when he doesn't investigate the things they have packed for Minnie. He doesn't feel they could possibly pick out anything dangerous.

At one point Mr. Hale makes a remark about the women being able to comprehend a clue if they came across it. Ironically, the men completely miss all the clues about the motive for the murder. The women uncover many clues that would be incriminating to poor Minnie.

First Mrs. Hale notices half finished work. There is a bag of sugar next to a bucket that Minnie never finished combining. The table is half wiped. Then Mrs. Peters discovers that Minnie was working on a quilt. All of the squares are sewn with excellent craftsmanship except one. Mrs. Peters thinks that she must have been nervous about something when she was working on this square. Next Mrs. Peters finds a birdcage with a broken door. The final incriminating clue is a dead canary with a wrung neck.

By the end of the story the women are sure that Minnie is guilty. I feel that Mrs. Hale has known from the beginning that Minnie was guilty but didn't want to believe it. When Mr. Hale is telling the county attorney his story Mrs. Hale is silently hoping that Mr. Hale will not say anything to make trouble for Minnie. Later when she notices the sugar she turns away from it so that Mrs. Peters will not see this unfinished business. Later Mrs. Hale rips out the bad sewing on the quilt square and fixes it.

As Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale are left alone in the kitchen they observe many signs of an unhappy life. Minnie's story is told through their observations. We see that Minnie Foster was a young girl full of life, with pretty cloths, and who sang in the choir. Then for some reason she married Mr. Wright, who ironically isn't Mr. Right. Mr. Wright is said to have been tightfisted. Mrs. Wright didn't have anything nice. Her oven was broken. Her clothes were old and had been repaired many times. The community thinks of Mr. Wright as a good man because he paid he debts and kept his word. Mrs. Hale says that he was a hard man and that to spend time with him was "like a raw wind that gets to the bone." (pg 164) Mrs. Hale repeats many times through the story that she should have visited but it's always been such a cold and lonely place.

In this era women didn't get divorced. Minnie was forced to be with this cold, hard man. He was such a cold person that most people didn't want to be near him. Minnie was completely isolated and cut of from her happy youth. In a sense she was a caged bird. I don't know how she endured all of this for twenty years.

The final straw for Minnie is when her husband wrings the neck of her canary. Minnie loved the canary and it was the last happy thing in her life. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters are horrified as they uncover these aspects of Minnie's life. Mrs. Peters, who in the beginning said that the murderer must be punished, shows her empathy in the end when she tries to shove the box with the dead canary, the damning evidence, into her purse.

This story really affected me on many levels. I was offended by the manor in which the men treated the women. I would say that it's probably an example of feminist literature. Mrs. Hale seems very irritated at the demeaning way women are treated. I was incredibly saddened when I contemplated the life that Minnie had. I really thought about how bad something would have to be to think that murder was the only way out. I was also depressed at the realization that most often times when something bad is happening in a person life people tend to stay away. What kind of world is this where we abandon the people that need us the most?