Gender Roles in Susan Glaspell's A Jury of Her Peers Essay Example

Women’s roles as wives, mothers, and homemakers do not make them passive, unintelligent, or lower than men. The story A Jury of Her Peers written by Susan Glaspell is a work of literature that deals with socially gendered roles during the early nineteenth century. This story is based around March of the early 1900s in a small town in Dickson County. This town is full of rural farms that the people travel to and from on buggies. During this time women are thought of as less important than men. The women are supposed to work in the house and deal with the children. This is because having enormous families during this time was extremely normal and the women should take care of them while the man goes off to work. Certain individuals say that this is the correct way that families ought to live. They believe that men are over ladies and that they should be treated as more shrewd and more significant. Although that is what some may believe, this story shows us that this is not how it should be; men and women should have equal standards and opportunities in life because they are intelligent, strong, and kind. 

The story is based on the murder of John Wright. At the beginning of the story, it gives background about the neighbor, Lewis Hale, finding Mrs. Wright sitting in her rocking chair and her revealing her husband’s death. Without questioning, Sheriff Peter put Minnie Wright in jail for murder. The life of the Wright’s is very different from what the average family of this time. The Wright’s didn’t have kids and Mrs. Wright kept to herself which was very strange for this era. Minnie Foster, which was Mrs. Wright’s maiden name, was sweet and pretty, but timid and fluttery (Glaspell 198). Now that Mrs. Wright has been thrown in jail for murdering her husband the Sheriff, neighbor, and County Attorney decide to go to the Wright house to look for any kind of motive. The men want to find something that will easily convince an all-male jury, because at the time women were not allowed to be on the jury. The men bring along their wives because Mrs. Wright has requested some items from her house and the women were to bring them back to her.

The men enter the house and the women follow. This symbolizes how the women were considered secondary citizens and were told what to do, such as following the men to the kitchen or to stand by the fireplace (Glaspell 189). If a woman disobeys her duties or husband she would be thought of as defiant. In the kitchen, the men and women begin to look around and notice how many of the tasks were left undone. The men see this as carelessness while the women see this as a sign of something being off for Mrs. Wright. Sheriff Peters, Mr. Hale, and the County Attorney see only surface things. They believe that the evidence they need to prove Minnie Wright is responsible for John's murder is in the bedroom or the barn. The men lurch around the house leaving the women in the kitchen. This shows how at this time it was taught that only men were smart enough for challenging tasks. 

While the men go off to check the upstairs and barn the women continue to look into Mrs. Wright’s unfinished tasks. The women move around the kitchen noticing each detail about the tasks and how unusual it is. The women reveal a birdcage with a broken henge and a quilt that is not far from perfect but had one set of stitching that was far from perfect and the women believed that Mrs. Wright didn’t know what she was about at the time (Glaspell 192). The wives wonder if Mrs. Wright was going to knot or quilt the blanket. The men hear the wives talking about the sewing of the blanket, this makes the men angry. 

“The Sheriff threw up his hands. ‘They wonder whether she was going to quilt it or knot it!’” (Glaspell 196). 

As the wives gather the quilt to bring back to Mrs. Wright, a mysterious box is found. The box contains the bird that once lived in the broken cage. The bird is wrapped in cloth and has a snapped neck, this is ironic because John Wright was strangled by a rope around the neck.

The wives, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters discover all these small hidden details about the life of Mrs. Wright and the murder of Mr. Wright. The wives decide to keep it between themselves. They do this because they realize that Mrs. Wright lived with an awful man that killed not only Minnie Foster, but the only thing that kept her spirited, her beloved bird. If the women had told them about how they found the dead canary, they would probably laugh and say that the women needed to go back to their quilting. The uneven sewing and the unfinished kitchen tasks suggest a lost perspective of Minnie Wright would also have been laughed at. To men, dead canaries are dead canaries, they would never analyze it like Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters did. This short story is a large symbolism of how the men in this era thought of women as only good for slave kitchen work. Women are important and are needed in all aspects of life not just for kitchen work, quilting, or taking care of the kids.