In Susan Glaspell’s 1917 short story “A Jury of Her Peers,” two women join their husbands and a county attorney to an isolated house where a farmer named John Wright has been choked to death in his bed with a rope. “A Jury of Her Peers” first uses irony to illustrate the contrast between male and female intuition. The men go to the farmhouse looking for clues to the murder of John Wright. Little did they know that the women would actually end up finding all of the clues. In the house, the men are looking for something out of the ordinary. They want to find an indication that Minnie has been provoked into killing her husband. The men do not think that their wives will be much help to the case after getting there. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters …show more content…
Many men seem to believe that women cannot comprehend and understand information the same way that they can. The story points more to the women’s thoughts and findings by proving that the women can find the evidence and come to a conclusion on their own. Male domination was the way of life when Susan Glaspell’s play “Trifles” was written. Men controlled most women throughout that time. In the play, Mr. Wright was made as a symbol of all the men in the community.
Social historian, Elaine Hedges, argues that such details would not have been lost upon Glaspell’s readers. On her own, Mrs. Peters discovers clues about the murder. Her findings lead her to pick up a basket filled with quilt pieces and then to notice something strange, a sudden row of badly sewn stitches. “What do you suppose she was so—nervous about?” asks Mrs. Peters. Mrs. Peters also spots many other clues on her own, including an empty birdcage and a broken door and hinge, making her believe that the cage has been roughly handled. Mr. Wright had put a stop to the birds singing, making the town quit again. Although, as a farmer’s wife, Mrs. Hale understands the loneliness of life on the farm. She found the bird to be a new and refreshing