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How Does Susan Glaspell Use Suspense In A Jury Of Her Peers

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The Internal Struggle of Equal Rights “Her eyes felt like fire. She had a feeling that if he took the basket she would snatch it from him”(118). Susan Glaspell, author of “A Jury of Her Peers,” uses the element of suspense while telling the story of the internal struggle women face against men. The women in this story must make choices that will affect themselves, their loyalty to each other and the law. Using suspense to influence the reader, Glaspell creates the theme of the internal struggle women face to remain loyal and strong in the face of unequal rights between themselves and men. Susan Glaspell influences the reader regarding woman’s rights, by utilizing the literary technique of suspense to captivate the reader in every aspect. …show more content…

This in turn results in the ultimate suspense story. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters both slowly uncover the truth about the murder and choose friendship over the law.When Mrs. Hale first arrives at Minnie’s house she feels a “sinking feeling of the mother whose child is about to speak a piece” (110). This is the first of many confusing and suspenseful occurrences that take place. Mr. Peter and Mr. Hale express their idea of how a woman is lower in rank by judging Minnie Wright’s home without knowing the truth. “Dirty towels! Not much of a housekeeper, would you say ladies?” (112). Both Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale start to find things half done which leads to the theory of how miserable Minnie must have been. Although both woman discern that something truly deleterious has taken place within the Wright’s home, their concern for their friend Minnie is more important than the sickening dread they feel and how they are being treated by the men. The author uses the element of suspense to share her ideals about the way the women are being treated unequally by the men. In addition to the men being sexist, there are similar situations in this short story that imply that men are somehow more worthy …show more content…

Mrs. Hale faces her own internal struggle when she must choose to follow the law, along with the men, or protect her friend. The debate that Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters face is monumental. They must decide whether or not Minnie deserves to face the law or if there a deeper truth hidden. “The law is the law- and a bad stove is a bad stove” (114). Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale come to the conclusion that Minnie did commit the murder and slowly the pieces start coming together. They decide to hide the truth from the law and the men by finishing the quilt. The internal struggle Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters encounter causes both women to understand the truth about the murder and realize how Minnie has been treated by her deceased husband. Additionally Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters struggle with their loyalty to their friend Minnie. They decide to support Minnie because they understand what she has been through with her husband. “Mrs. Hale’s hand went out to the bird cage. ‘We don’t know who killed him,’ whispered Mrs. Peters wildly. ‘We don’t know’” (117). Although “the law is the law” (114). Mrs. Peters and Mrs, Hale choose to stay loyal no matter the consequences. This shows that Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters both have compassion for Minnie because they understand the situation she is in. Despite the fact that they know the truth about what Minnie had done, they

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In the short story “A Jury of Her Peers” written by Susan Glaspell, Mrs. Peter and Mrs. Hale utilize their investigative skills with the help of the police department to convey most of the plot to the reader. The story begins with Mrs. Wright being suspected as the murderer of Mr. Wright and she is then arrested. The dead body was found by Mr. Hale the day before Mrs. Peter and Mrs. Hale, as well as the county attorney, arrive at the house to search for evidence pertaining to the murder case. While the men on the site focused on searching for the larger clues, the women were left to investigating the kitchen. They found a messy kitchen and a dead canary bird.

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When Mrs. Hale and her friend, Mrs. Peters, stumbled upon the evidence, they knew they couldn’t let the sheriff see it. They determined that it was right to hide it because they believed Minnie was the

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Hale as he confesses his affair with Abigail Williams. Though Goody Proctor lies to Danforth about why they fired Abby, Hale now understands “it is a natural lie to tell” to protect her husband and despite it not being his place to have an opinion on the subject, he openly recognizes the “private vengeance [] working through [the] testimony” under the control of Abby and the other young women (105). This point of revelation that Rev. Hale has is the turning point for him in the rest of the play. After this point he recognizes the corruption that has settled into the court and religious logic of the court system. Hale even goes as far as encouraging the accused to give a false confession because “God damns a liar less than he that throws his life away for pride” and he cannot bear to see another innocent life be thrown away at the cost of staying faithful to a religion run by corrupt individuals and practices (122).

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Furthermore, Reverend Hale assigns himself to preserving innocent lives. He councils the convicts, begging them to confess to witchcraft. Although the confessions are lies, Hale knows these people’s innocence is true. Ironically, lying is the only option to save truly faultless lives. Hale’s need to preserve the truth uncovers why he attempts to save these lives.

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“The British Crime Survey statistical bulletin has reported that domestic abuse affects one in four women and one in six men, accounts for 16% of all violent crime and has more repeat victims than any other crime.” In A Jury of Her Peers, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters go to Minnie and Mr. Wright’s house. Mrs. Hale described the Wright house as a lonesome looking place. They are there because Minnie Foster is being taken in as a suspect for her husband's murder. As they are looking around her house they find evidence that could hurt Minnie so they decided to take it to save her.

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When thinking about the role of women in the community, what comes to mind? Are their jobs and rights, are they the same as men’s? The mere idea that women didn’t have as many rights as they do now is astounding to modern thoughts towards women’s rights. In Trifles Susan Glaspell uses the women and literary elements such as diction, syntax, and tone of the story to show the sexism of the times.

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First Generations: Women of Colonial America, written by Carol Berkin, is a novel that took ten years to make. Carol Berkin received her B.A. from Barnard College and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University. She has worked as a consultant on PBS and History Channel documentaries. Berkin has written several books on the topic of women in America. Some of her publications include: Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America's Independence (2004) and Civil War Wives: The Life and Times of Angelina Grimke Weld, Varina Howell Davis, and Julia Dent Grant (2009).

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The story opens with Mrs. Wright imprisoned for strangling her husband. A group, the mostly composed of men, travel to the Wright house in the hopes that they find incriminating evidence against Mrs. Wright. Instead, the two women of the group discover evidence of Mr. Wright’s abuse of his wife. Through the women’s unique perspective, the reader glimpses the reality of the situation and realizes that, though it seemed unreasonable at the time, Mrs. Wright had carefully calculated her actions. When asked about the Wrights, one of the women, Mrs. Hale, replies “I don’t think a place would be a cheerful for John Wright’s being in it” (“A Jury of Her Peers” 7).

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In the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, author Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses many literary techniques to allow the reader to understand the universal truth that a woman’s class is seen as lower than that of a man’s, due to their sex. We see this truth throughout the literary work, when the main character who is a woman, is put in confinement and later becomesdistraught and mentally unstablebecause her husband and brother who are both Physicians diagnoses her as “nervously depressed”. Two techniques author Gilman uses is tone and diction to illustrate how the narrator, among most women in that time period is treated as below men in class, with little say in their own mental or physical issues. Gilman utilizes tone to illustrate the universal truth of gender being in hand with class status, effectively. In the literary work,the narrator’s tone shifts from hopeless in the beginning, to determine in the end.

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'Martha!' now came her husband's impatient voice. Don't keep folks waiting out here in the cold." (Glaspell 389). " The author then uses this characterization to allow the reader to relate Mrs. Wright, the murderer, to an average woman, Mrs. Hale.

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518 Words | 3 Pages

By using her story based on the real-life murder investigation and trial, Glaspell uses suggestions throughout in order to comment on the dominance of males in society at the time and supported the women’s rights movement which continued at that time. Her two main characters are focused on during much of the story as they talk about the woman who is suspected of the crime, and it is shown that Mrs. Hale clearly believes that she didn’t do it. At one point, Mrs. Hale asks Mrs. Peters if she thinks Mrs. Wright committed the murder, to which she responds “Oh, I don’t know” and Mrs. Hale quickly affirms “Well, I don’t think she did.” There is also reference made to the likelihood that Mrs. Wright was being abused by her husband,

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734 Words | 3 Pages

“A Jury of Her Peers” is a valuable resource for anyone curious to what life was like for women in the twentieth century for which it demonstrates women struggling to publish and define

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In the short story, “A jury of Her Peers”, the author Susan Glaspell clearly sets a theme of an entitlement to women which would allow two women thereby to act as a jury of Minnie Foster’s peers. Although, the law forbidden women jurors, these two women, Mrs. Hale the wife of the prosecutor and Mrs. Peters the sheriff’s wife were clearly summoned to determine the fate of Minnie Foster Wright. The allegorical courtroom is Minnie’s kitchen filled with evidence and motive of crime that seemingly goes unnoticed by the sheriff as well as the prosecutor. A crime that is hidden far from the outside world much like the home where Minnie lives.

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823 Words | 4 Pages

(kicks his foot against the pans under the sink) Not much of a housekeeper, would you say, ladies?” (Meyer 1389). In an ironic turn, the audience knows that the women have solved the murder mystery while the men remain oblivious of the truth because of their assumptions. The two women end up identifying with Minnie Wright’s abuse at the hands of her husband and feel the murder was justified. They then conspire to conceal the truth from their ignorant husbands and the County Attorney.

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1108 Words | 5 Pages

Peters and the play begins. It is a large change to differ the characters from Glaspell’s original idea. Mrs. Hale is referred to as “married to the law” (Glaspell 989) by the County Attorney because she is the Sheriff's wife. Because a large part of the show is done without the men in the room the characterization of these two women are very clear, and very different. Mrs. Hale is very quick to talk against the men, when they are not around.

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