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What Is The Difference Between The Hossack Murder And A Jury Of Her Peers

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The thrill of life and its mysteries capture the attention of people from all corners of the world, caught in the spectacle. A common idea shared by many around the world, watching a particular show that gives us a taste of the other side of the world out of our reach. In her two works, “The Hossack Murder” and “A Jury of Her Peers” Susan Glaspell is able to present similar messages about justice, gender roles, and the nature of truth during that era without losing their value through different perspectives “The Hossack Murder” is a story based on a true case in 1900 whereas “A Jury of Her Peers” is a fictional take on the same case but with a more entertaining intention. At the very start of “The Hossack Murder” Glaspell states “Sometime around …show more content…

As the two women and their husbands visit Minnie’s house looking for clues the men comment on the women’s attention to what they see as useless details saying “‘... would the women know a clue if they did come upon it?’” (150). The husbands' remarks criticize women, making them feel like they have no voice in the situation. At the same time, the results of the trial in “The Hossack Murder” also portray how women had no strength in court as they declare “We, the jury, find the defendant, Mrs. Margaret Hossack, guilty as charged in the indictment” (193). The justice system was against them, finding her guilty for just being a woman. No considerations were taken to further investigate the motives or any underlying problems before the murder. This lack of effort leads to an unjust system where people have no chance in defending themselves. Both The Hossack Murder and A Jury of Her Peers explore the treatment of women in early 20th-century America. In The Hossack Murder, Margaret Hossack is subjected to a harsh interrogation by the male authorities, who are convinced of her guilt simply because she is a woman. Similarly, in A Jury of Her Peers, the women are marginalized and dismissed as unimportant by the male investigators. The men believe that the information they seek cannot be among the trivialities …show more content…

In “A Jury of Her Peers” Glaspeel introduces the main characters Mrs.Hale and Mrs.Peters along with their husbands Mr.Hale and Mr.Peter. Nowhere in this story do the people involved in the murder appear, they are only mentioned. In this story, Minnie Wright is the wife of the victim Mr.Wright. The scene Glaspell sets enables the reader to uncover the motive for the murder when the women discover the birdcage and the dead bird. These small details are interpreted by the woman, noticing frustration in Mrs. Wright's most recent stitches and her dead pet bird. As the women start realizing what may have actually happened they decide to hide it from the men. This process adds an aspect of entertainment and the reader can interpret the information on their own through the symbolism of the bird and stitches. Scott Bonn states true crime “allows us to experience fear and horror in a controlled environment where the threat is exciting but not real” (2). Similarly in this short story, little by little the women put the pieces together, engaging the audience as they also start to formulate their own opinion on the motive for the murder. Because this story has no definite end, the reader is free to have their own ideas and not be stuck onto the facts of the actual case but think beyond just the truth. Maybe the truth isn’t always the right thing

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He described the audience, how unlike other days, only men were present. According to the author, women were encouraged to stay home due to the graphic testimony that occurred. Women were incapable of stomaching the gory details of the murder due to their fragility.

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In one of her stories, a woman named Minnie Wright is accused of killing her husband. The story was written by the neighbors point of view which at that point they went to check on how she was doing. She seems decent, but was not but, the neighborhood men do not question her as a suspect. Her husband may have been abusing her, which leads the neighbors to thinking of reasons why she wanted her husband dead. This story shows how people can be sexist in quite a few ways.

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At first glance, “A Jury of Her Peers” by Susan Glaspell may seem like an ordinary murder mystery story. However, the theme of the short story goes well beyond mere entertainment. The story focuses on two women, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, as they wait for their husbands during a police investigation of the murder of Mrs. Wright’s husband. As the men recount the details of that day and search the house for evidence, the two women stumble upon the solution to the murder using simple everyday clues they find lying around the kitchen and living room. In this story, Glaspell develops an underlying theme surrounding gender roles, specifically the subjugation of women and male obliviousness to women.

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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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At the end of the story, even though Mrs. Wright is guilty of the crime, the women are able to justify the death of Mr Wright because they understand the abuse she was being subjected to. Women face many inequalities compared to men and are placed in specific social roles to keep them from speaking out. “A Jury of Her Peers” examines the way these experiences draw women together to form an empathetic

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Minnie’s quilt, the dead bird and its cage, and the kitchen show that living in a man’s world is not easy. In the end, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale recognize that they too have experienced the same loneliness and mistreatment that led Mrs. Wright to murder her husband. The men don't value the women in this story and they don't see them as being very intelligent either. It is for this reason “A jury of her peers” is created. Peers being the women themselves as they stand up, united against the subjugation they have all experienced.

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In “The Jury of Her Peers”, the author Susan Glaspell aims to defy traditional gender dynamics to expose the societal norms that were prevalent in the early 20th century. In the story, she skillfully employs literary elements such as setting, narrative perspective, characterization, and theme to subvert inequitable notions and shed light on the profound injustices women faced at that time, allowing readers to fully comprehend the impact of such constraints on the women’s lives. The setting of “The Jury of Her Peers” plays a crucial role in enhancing the story’s themes and serves as a reflection of broader societal constraints and established traditions that were prevalent during the early 20th century. Glaspell sets the stage right from the

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“At the beginning of the twentieth century, women were outsiders to the formal structures of political life—voting, serving on juries, holding elective office—and they were subject to wide-ranging discrimination that marked them as secondary citizens” (Evans). The lack of rights for women during the early 1900s was a severe problem that motivated Susan Glaspell to publish a short story “A Jury of Her Peers.” During the early nineteenth century, women endured cruel and unjust treatment from men and had limited options in their careers, as well as political and social lives. Glaspell conveys the serious oppression of women in the beginning of the twentieth century through the presence of gender inequality, symbolism of a songbird, and hidden evidence. Written in the early 1900s, “A Jury of Her Peers” was originally a play, Trifles, which Glaspell decided to turn into a short story in 1917, only a year later.

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Susan Glaspell’s short story A Jury of Her Peers was written in 1917 based loosely on the murder of John Hossack in 1900, which she covered as a journalist while working in Des Moines Daily News. In her short story,she uses stylistic elements such as, using an omniscient tone to talk in third-person,giving a third-person point of view and a knowing all perspective of the story. Glaspell also uses the manipulation of setting to describe the roles of women and their oppression. She clearly uses her narrative voice to show that the men felt different about the women. She also does this by having the men refer solely to their married names instead of their actual names to portray that the women are only property and nothing else.when they speak

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She then suggests to Mrs. Peters that she should take the unfinished quilt home to “’take up her mind.’” This leads them to search for Mrs. Wright’s patches and sewing accessories. They discover a “pretty box” and assume it is where she keeps her scissors (Glaspell 1417). This is when they discover a dead canary wrapped up in a piece of silk; it was the missing bird. Right away they notice the bird's neck

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Wright was going to bury it since it was wrapped in silk in the sewing box. Therefore, Mrs. Wright must have cared an awful lot about the bird. After both of the women realized that the bird was violently strangled, they start to compare their own experiences with a dead animal and their feelings. Mrs. Peters whispers to Mrs. Hale, “When I was a girl-my kitten-there was a boy [who] took a hatchet, and right before my eyes-and before I could get there-(covers her face an instant.) If they hadn’t held me back I would have (catches herself, looks upstairs where steps are heard, falters weakly)-hurt him (Glaspell, 2013, p.1060).

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If Mrs. Wright loved her bird so much she would not have been able to kill the bird, therefore Mr. Wright would have been the only one to break the birdcage and kill the bird. The women converse and conclude that Mr. Wright was probably an aggressive and abusive person, “‘But he was a hard man, Mrs. Peters. Just to pass the time of day

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The reason for the murder is what the men are trying to find, she speculates that Mr. Wright killed the bird they had found as soon as they started to investigate. Then Mrs. Peters becomes defensive repeating “we don’t know” in different lines. This is a major confusion to the audience as these two characters hare having very different moral struggles throughout the show and it should have been clear the character Glaspell

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