Gender Stereotypes In Susan Glaspell's A Jury Of Her Peers

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The Negative Effects of Gender Stereotypes Stereotypes often have negative impacts on a lot of people. A stereotype is a fixed image of a particular person or thing that is not necessarily true. The effects of stereotypes on people are discussed in the short story, “A Jury of Her Peers” by Susan Glaspell. Glaspell begins the story with an investigation of a mysterious murder of a man, where Mrs. Wright, the wife of the victim, is a prime suspect. The sheriff, the county attorney, and the neighbor who found the body, Mr. Hale, investigate the crime scene. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, the sheriff's wife's, discover evidence that proved that Mrs. Wright’s motivation for killing her husband. However, the men are unable to discover any evidence …show more content…

Women should be able to receive equal opportunities, despite their gender and their gender stereotypes. Both men and women should be treated equally. In “A Jury of Her Peers,” Mrs. Hale stated that she could relate to the motive as to why Mrs. Wright could have killed her husband. This illustrates that women were disrespected and treated unfairly. Hale stated that “I know how things can be for women. We live close together and we live far apart. We all go through the same things, it’s all just a different kind of the same thing. ” (Glaspell 84). This demonstrates that multiple women have experienced mistreatment and disrespect by men. To elaborate, this example reveals that women relate to the situation to the extent of it resulting in a murder. The statement “I know how things can be for a women” proves that women have it difficult by their husbands, due to gender stereotypes. This gender stereotype is also discussed in “Philosophical and Political Issues Surrounding Gender.” The main argument of this source is that women are viewed as lesser than men, even though women have accomplished a lot in society. The effects of this gender discrimination is that women are powerless when it comes to many roles in society. In other words, “although great strides have been made by women in the Western world, parity has not been achieved. Women do not hold leadership positions to the extent that men do… and people view more advantages to being male than female” (11). This portrays that women are viewed as insignificant to society despite all the work that women has done for society. Women do not hold as many leadership roles as men do, solely based on their gender, which is gender discrimination. This affects women from stopping them to grow to their greatest potential. Given these points, it is important to acknowledge that women are viewed as unimportant and society as a whole must