A Jury of Her Peers: Character Analysis It wasn’t until 1942 that women got the right to act in a jury in the United States. 25 years earlier, in 1917, Susan Glaspell wrote “A Jury of Her Peers”, s short story based on a real life case in which a woman was suspected of murdering her husband. However, back when that case took place, only men served on juries. So they judged her as any man would at that time; frail, dainty, and ignorant. Martha Hale is not one such woman. Despite what men would like to think, Martha is an intelligent, observant, and strong woman. These traits are what allow her to see the faults in the observations of the men and maybe piece together what happened that night in Dickson County. Martha is the one character throughout the whole story who we can completely see, so she is sort of our protagonist. From the very beginning Martha is shown as a hard worker with a distaste for unfinished work. We see this when it is commented that, “She hated to see things half done…” (1)She is brought along with her husband to the home of John and Minnie Wright. Minnie is an old friend of Martha’s; however, since her marriage to John Wright, she’s changed from the young, fun-loving girl she used to be. After Mr. Hale explains what he saw, the men leave to investigate the upstairs and leave the women in the kitchen. However, the details that the men brushed off as mere” kitchen things”, tell another story when the women see