In Susan Glaspell’s short story “A Jury of Her Peers,” the murder is “solved” by Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters. The men spend the majority of the short story actively looking for clues, leaving the women behind in the kitchen. But as Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters spend more and more time in Mrs. Wright’s space—first tidying up her kitchen and then reworking some of her sewing—they are able to discover signs of Mrs. Wright’s life—and guilt—in her domestic space.
When the men first leave the women behind in the kitchen, they condescendingly suggest that the women should stay alert for clues, although they wonder “if the women [would] know a clue if they did come upon it.” The men, however, are unable to read the evidence that is present in the domestic space—evidence that manifests to the women clearly. When they discover that Mrs. Wright’s bird was killed when her husband broke its neck, Mrs. Hale discusses the shared conditions faced by women:
We all go through the same things—it’s all just a different kind of the same thing! If it weren’t—why do you and I understand? Why do we know what we know this minute?
Ultimately, the two women solve the case not through the form of masculine detective work that is symbolized by the sheriff but instead through a form of knowledge shared by the women in the story.
Friday, February 9, 2018
In the short story "A Jury of Her Peers," how is the murder solved?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Why is the fact that the Americans are helping the Russians important?
In the late author Tom Clancy’s first novel, The Hunt for Red October, the assistance rendered to the Russians by the United States is impor...
-
There are a plethora of rules that Jonas and the other citizens must follow. Again, page numbers will vary given the edition of the book tha...
-
The poem contrasts the nighttime, imaginative world of a child with his daytime, prosaic world. In the first stanza, the child, on going to ...
-
The given two points of the exponential function are (2,24) and (3,144). To determine the exponential function y=ab^x plug-in the given x an...
-
The only example of simile in "The Lottery"—and a particularly weak one at that—is when Mrs. Hutchinson taps Mrs. Delacroix on the...
-
Hello! This expression is already a sum of two numbers, sin(32) and sin(54). Probably you want or express it as a product, or as an expressi...
-
Macbeth is reflecting on the Weird Sisters' prophecy and its astonishing accuracy. The witches were totally correct in predicting that M...
-
The play Duchess of Malfi is named after the character and real life historical tragic figure of Duchess of Malfi who was the regent of the ...
No comments:
Post a Comment