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A Jury of Her Peers | Introduction

Susan Glaspell's "A Jury of Her Peers," first published in 1917, is a short story adaptation of her one-act play Trifles. Since their first publication, both the story and the play have appeared in many anthologies of women writers and playwrights. Although Trifles was written first and performed in 1916 by Glaspell's theater troupe, the Provmcetown Players, the play was not published until three years after the short story appeared in the March 5, 1917 edition of Everyweek magazine. Inspired by events witnessed during her years as a court reporter in Iowa, Glaspell crafted a story in which a group of rural women deduce the details of a murder in which a woman has killed her husband. Understanding the clues left amidst the "trifles" of the woman's kitchen, the women are able to outsmart their husbands, who are at the farmhouse to collect evidence, and thus prevent the wife from being convicted of the crime. The play was received warmly, and Glaspell made only minor changes in adapting the play into a short story.

Glaspell claimed that "A Jury of Her Peers" was based on an actual court case she covered as a reporter for the Des Moines Daily. On December 2, 1900, sixty-year-old farmer John Hossack was murdered in Indianola, Iowa. His skull was crushed by an ax while he and his wife were asleep in bed. His wife, Margaret, was tried for the crime and eventually released due to inconclusive evidence. Like Minnie Wright, the main character of Glaspell's story, Mrs. Hossack claimed not to have seen the murderer. The trial was attended many of the town's women. Among them was the sheriffs wife, who showed much sympathy to Mrs. Hossack throughout the tnal despite having initially testified against her. Critics believe that Glaspell based the character of Mrs. Peters on this woman. Because women were not allowed to be jurors at the trial, Glaspell created a jury of those female peers in her short story.

A Jury of Her Peers Summary

The story begins with Mrs. Martha Hale being hurried along by her husband, Lewis Hale. She leaves her kitchen in the middle of making bread, hating the fact that she is leaving things half done She accompanies George Henderson, the county attorney, Sheriff Henry Peters, and his wife, Mrs. Peters, to the scene of a crime at the home of the "Wrights, a couple they all knew. Mrs. Hale has been asked along to keep Mrs. Peters company, even though the two women have met only once before. The crime they are investigating is the murder of Mr. John Wright. His wife, Mrs. Minnie Wnght, whom the women refer to by her maiden name, Minnie Foster, is being held at the jail as a suspect. The Hales, the Peters, and Attorney Henderson all meet at the scene to determine what might have happened the day before.

Mr. Hale and his son, who are the Wrights' closest neighbors, were the first to see Minnie and her dead husband. Mr. Hale tells how they arrived at the Wright home to find Minnie in her rocking chair looking ''queer'' and pleating her apron. When Mr. Hale asked to see John, she calmly told him he was upstairs and had been strangled to death; she claimed that someone had slipped a rope under her husband's neck and killed him while they were sleeping. Mr. Hale explained that he was there to inquire if John wanted a telephone installed; a request that caused Minnie to laugh. Shortly afterward, the coroner arrived with the sheriff to begin investigating the scene and Minnie was taken away to jail as a suspect.

The men are slightly appalled at Minnie's... » Complete A Jury of Her Peers Summary