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A Jury Of An Hour Feminist Analysis

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During the 19th and 20th centuries, women relentlessly faced discrimination throughout most of their lives, and society considered them unequal to men. The authors Kate Chopin, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Susan Glaspell wrote about the suppression of women during this time, exposing the unequal treatment that they suffered. Their literary works contain common themes of freedom from the discrimination and harsh treatment of male figures that played a prominent role throughout their lives. In these stories, the main characters freed themselves from unhappy marriages, the inability to express ideas and emotions, and abuse. Through the use of symbolism in Chopin’s “Story of an Hour,” Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and Glaspell’s “A Jury of …show more content…

Mr. Hale finds the body of John Wright, who was murdered by his wife, Minnie Foster Wright. Minnie Wright’s husband abuses her, which is the motive to kill him. The story focuses on whether or not murder is morally acceptable in her case. After murdering her husband, Minnie Wright becomes freed from her abusive marriage. While uncovering the evidence with Mrs. Peters, the sheriff’s wife, Martha Hale and she discover an empty bird-cage that is clearly mangled and broken, which raises the question: What happened to it and the bird? The story describes the cage’s appearance as someone had been “rough with it” (Glaspell 13), which is revealed as the work of Mr. Wright, who also killed the bird. The two women find an empty decorative box with the dead bird inside. The dead bird and broken cage symbolize the relationship between Mr. and Mrs. Wright. The story states that Minnie Wright “was kind of like a bird herself. Real sweet and pretty…” (Glaspell 14). Minnie Wright’s personality was suppressed by her husband’s abuse; she no longer sang like she used to in the choir, and she wore dark clothing, which was unlike her old self. The bird-cage represents Mrs. Wright because just as her husband was “rough with it,” he was also rough with her. The bird represents Mrs. Wright as well because her personality was put to an end when she married her husband. The symbolism in this story brings to light the moral awareness of murder when it is under the same circumstances as Mrs.

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Three women, Minnie Wright, Martha Hale, and Mrs. Peters express sisterhood by hiding of incriminating evidence such as the dead bird while the men fail to prove of her complicity. This essay focuses on themes of sisterhood and gender roles, and the passiveness that manifests in the process of gathering evidence. The theme of Sisterhood. As the plot unfolds to ascertain the murder of John Wright, Mrs. Hale says, “it looked very lonesome this cold morning, it had always been a lonesome place” (Glaspell, 1992), while referring to the house of Minnie Wright.

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The scene begins to unfolds in their minds. Mr. Wright yanking open the cage door, taking out the bird, and breaking its fragile neck was enough to make Mrs. Wright lash out, and in a heat of passion, kill her husband. As the trifles collect,  the women worry that the men will see their findings, and have what they need to prove Mrs. Wright guilty. Though the men believe her to be the murderer, the women are trying their best to hide the evidence that will prove it.

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The men of the group, much like John in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” consider themselves more capable than the women and refuse to consider Mrs. Wright as anything other than irrational. The men leave the women to their “trifles” on the first floor, where they discover a broken bird cage, and the bird’s body, broken, carefully wrapped in a small, decorative box. They realize that Mr. Wright had wrung the neck of his wife’s beloved bird and broken its cage. Mrs. Wright, once known for her cheerfulness and beautiful singing, she stopped singing when she encountered Mr. Wright. Just like he did with the bird, Mr. Wright choked the life out of his wife until, finally, Mrs. Wright literally choked the life out of her husband.

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664 Words | 3 Pages

Kate Chopin, the author of “The Story of an Hour,” was inspired to write her stories based from what had happened to her in her life. All the man in her life died, which affected her deeply and writing was the thing that helped her keep going. Susan Glaspell on the other hand, was the author of “A Jury of Her Peers,” who at the time rebelled against society’s expectations. Both women a the time were trying to address the issue that women were being thought as inferiors by man and were also mistreated. In the two stories there was irony, women were being viewed as inferior by the man, and the role of a women was the same in both stories.

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874 Words | 4 Pages

The bird is Mrs. Wright. It was locked up in a cage as was Mrs. Wright when her husband was alive. He wasn’t a very “cheerful” man, therefore, people didn’t come to visit them. Over the twenty year time period of their marriage she became lonely, which resulted in her buying a bird and the drastic change in personality. The broken door to the cage represents Mrs. Wright’s freedom from her husband.

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734 Words | 3 Pages

The dead canary and its cage was a pivotal piece of evidence that the women discovered. The dead bird represents the old Mrs. Wright— Minnie Foster and its cage represents how she was

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796 Words | 4 Pages

She sees it as vital information; something that could present them with Mrs. Wright’s state of mind around the time of her death. Mrs. Hale is currently mending the quilt when Mrs. Peters asks where she might “’find a piece of paper, and string.’” This leads Mrs. Peters to discover the empty birdcage inside of the cupboard. Instantly, they both start asking one another questions regarding the cage; they are unable to recall Mrs. Wright ever owning a bird. While talking back and forth, they notice that one of the door’s hinges is broken.

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The women began to pity Mrs. Wright as they knew her before she married to Mr. Wright. The females felt pity, where the men just accessed the situation at hand. After the women examine the empty bird cage they remember the way that Mrs. Wright use to sing and compared her to her former self as Minnie Foster. “Trifles,” introduced the masculinity here from the Sheriff’s side instantly putting his instinct into saying that there was a murder that happened at the farmhouse, was caused by Mrs. Wright without any hesitation. He didn’t look into the sadness, or let the depressing home get to him as much as what his intentions and his well-being come into play before his

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1925 Words | 8 Pages

The canary represented Minnie's desire for freedom and joy while being locked away in her small, isolated cage of a home. The bird even sung like she did in the church choir before getting married to John Wright. The article “Teaching Susan Glaspell's A Jury of Her Peers and Trifles,” by Marina Angel, stated that the broken door to the bird cage is "a sign of extreme anger and violence" from John Wright (Angel 550). That indicates that he had quite the temper just like the average abuser. In his fit of rage, he tore open the cage's door, reached in, and broke the bird's neck, possibly in front of Minnie, effectively killing the last of Minnie's joy.

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980 Words | 4 Pages

Talking about Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters “the two characters begin to reconstruct the accused woman’s life. They do so through several means; memories of her, memories of their own lives (similar to hers in many ways), and speculation about her feelings and responses to the conditions of her life” (Holstein 283.) The two women immediately placed themselves in Minnie Wrights position. And while reconstructing Mrs. Wright life based on their own memories and emotions they acknowledge the murders missing clue “Minnie’s dead pet bird” (Holstein

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1232 Words | 5 Pages

Oppression is defined as prolonged cruel or unjust treatment or control. Cruel and unjust punishment is just the beginning for the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Charlotte Gilman while writing the “The Yellow Wallpaper” deciding to make it into a series of diary entries from a woman who is suffering from post-partum depression. The narrator begins by describing this large home that she and her husband have rented for the summer. Their summer house stands away from the road and contains many locks and little houses.

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690 Words | 3 Pages

Wright killed the canary and is also motive for Mrs. Wright to seek revenge. The women conclude that Mrs. Wright’s bird was her prized possession, the bird even reminds the women of Mrs. Wright, “‘She—come to think of it, she was kind of like a bird herself. Real sweet and pretty, but kind of timid and—fluttery. How—she—did—change.’”

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1499 Words | 6 Pages

Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun presents the rise of feminism in America in the 1960s. Beneatha Younger, Lena Younger (Mama) and Ruth Younger are the three primary characters displaying evidences of feminism in the play. Moreover, Hansberry creates male characters who demonstrate oppressive attitudes towards women yet enhance the feministic ideology in the play. A Raisin in the Sun is feminist because, with the feminist notions displayed in the play, women can fulfil their individual dreams that are not in sync with traditional conventions of that time.

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Her husband was very cruel and strict and could not stand the singing of her bird, so one day the husband had snapped the neck of the poor singing bird with small piece of rope. This was the breaking point for Minnie Foster, so one night while her husband was sleeping she took a rope as well and chocked her husband to death. She re-created the scene of the bird incident because of how much that bird meant to her. The other two women were extremely understanding in Minnie’s situation, “They identify with her, quite literally. In her first line, Mrs. Hale defends the accused women’s house-keeping from the county attorney’s attack” (Holstein, par 7) which showed it common for the house wife at this time.

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758 Words | 4 Pages

The painting contains quite a small bird which can be translated to a powerless and weak figure that can be related to Marion since she is the weak and helpless character in this film being prey upon by Norman who is seen besides hawks in certain scenes. The painting is placed right outside of the bathroom in which Marion is killed showing that the bathroom was the trap for her while Norman, the hawk in this case, killed her in the shower. The painting reflects Marion’s personality as weak and powerless and foreshadows that something wrong was going to happen to Marion similar to the Susannah and The Elders painting. The painting symbolizes Marion since the bird in the painting is also small, powerless, and weak. The painting does an effective job in letting the viewer relate bird to Marion and foreshadows her death since Norman in placed in scenes with bigger birds like a hawk.

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