a fit of rage. This was the final straw for Minnie, who killed her husband in retaliation.

The women are able to empathize with Minnie because they have been farm wives too. They know how hard a woman has to work to keep up her end of a farm household and how lonely and isolating it can be to live on a farm. Mrs. Hale remembers her own rage when a boy hacked her kitten to death and can understand why watching a helpless pet being slaughtered might have made Minnie murderous, especially after suffering years of emotional abuse herself.

Ironically, the women, who the men ridicule as silly, are the ones who have the important evidence in their hands in the form of the dead canary. Ironically, too, rather than share the evidence, as the men would expect, they quietly keep it to themselves, sympathizing with Minnie as having committed a justifiable homicide.

The central irony of Glaspell's short story "A Jury of Her Peers" (as well as of the dramatic version, Trifles) is that the investigators overlook the domestic clues that allow their wives to solve the murder. We would expect that investigators who are trained and experienced in searching crime scenes, collecting clues, and solving cases would be better equipped to pinpoint motive and murderer than a group of women whose lives are mostly limited to their homes and immediate community. As it turns out, the small details of Mrs. Wright's (neé Minnie Foster's) daily life and marriage are the keys to the mystery.

While the male investigators scour certain parts of the crime scene, their wives take notice of details such as the half-done kitchen work and the state of Mrs. Wright's knitting. They infer from these clues that Mrs. Wright was interrupted. They eventually find a bird with its neck broken, a symbol for Minnie. The ladies put together their knowledge of Minnie's past as a singer and figure out that her husband's oppression, namely not allowing her to sing, eventually led her to kill her controlling husband. The women, after making their discoveries, decide to cover up the crime. They are, of course, able to do so because the men do not think their observations or activities have any bearing on the murder investigation. Even though one woman is the wife of the chief investigator, she sympathizes with the oppressed woman, and the female characters bond over their pact to protect what they see as a justified action on Minnie's part.

The biggest irony is that, all through the story, the two men in the story are making all sorts of assupmtions, inferences, criticism, judging, blaming, and labeling while their wives, whom they have specifically told to stay away from making assumptions, inferences, criticism, etc are the ones finding out every single clue that is available to resolve exactly what happened in the household that night.

Moreover, the women are able to put together through what the men deem to be "trifles" a perfect scenario of the crime complete with motif, cause, effects, and results. All this, they did by superficially looking at the scene and making connections. The men? Clueless, and one of them was an investigator! They made it all look like it was the case of a very bad wife being even worse. Little did they know that they had a case of wild spousal abuse in their hands, but they were too fanatic of their contempt against women to actually put the two together.

The husband has been strangled by a rope that was circled around his neck. The method in which he has been killed is important because it shows that Mrs. Wright, the dead man's wife, was the likely perpetrator of the crime and that she was enraged and acted in an impulsive manner. She was likely overcome with anger and this allowed her to overpower her husband and circle a rope around his neck. Even if he had been asleep when she slipped the rope over his neck, he would have woken up and fought back, but she overpowered him, fueled by anger.

Later, the neighboring women find Mrs. Wright's bird dead in its cage; someone killed it by breaking its neck. The crimes are parallel. Mr. Wright likely snapped the bird's neck, and his wife, enraged, probably tried to kill him in the same way her pet had been killed. 

In "A Jury of Her Peers," a fictionalized version of a true ax murder, the method of murder is important because Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, who make the discovery of the dead canary, are able to determine the motive for Mr. Wright's murder as clearly belonging to his wife.

    The method of murder against Mr. Wright in Glaspell's story is strangulation. According to Mr. Hale, a neighbor of the Wrights, Mrs. Wright told him when he came over the day following the murder that her husband "... died of a rope around his neck." Then she looked at Mr. Hale with a frightened look. 
    It is not until Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters discover the hidden box in the kitchen that contains a canary which has had its neck wrung that they know the motive for the murder. The two women stare at each other in comprehension and horror. For, it must have been a very angry Mrs. Wright who slipped a rope around her husband's neck and was able to choke him. After her husband killed the only thing that brought her any joy, Mrs. Wright must have had a great deal of adrenaline flowing through her as she was enraged that her bird, the only thing that she could love and that could bring her joy, would be strangled.

With a gun available to her, it seems ironic that the oppressed and apparently unassertive Mrs. Minnie Foster Wright would choose a brutal and strenuous method like strangling to kill her husband.

Early in the narrative, a neighbor to the Wrights, Mr. Hale, tells the county attorney what happened when he came to the Wrights' house the day before Mr. Wright's death. Mr. Hale mentions that he stopped to ask Mr. Wright if he would like to "take a telephone." At the time of this story, telephones were expensive for people who were far from town because of the added costs to the company in providing the lines and other necessary equipment. So, Mr. Hale hoped that he could get other neighbors to go in with him on a party line. Further, he tells the attorney that he planned on mentioning how much the womenfolk would enjoy having a telephone, although he says he "didn't know what his wife wanted made much difference to John--"

There are other suggestions that Mrs. Wright has surrendered to a life unlike her former one. One is recounted by Mrs. Hale as she talks with Mrs. Peters, the sheriff's wife. When Mrs. Peters gathers the articles of clothing that Mrs. Wright requested, Mrs. Hale notices the worn quality of this clothing, and she tells Mrs. Peters that Mr. Wright was "close." Mrs. Hale says,

"I think maybe that's why she [Mrs. Wright] kept so much to herself. I s'pose she felt she couldn't do her part; and then, you don't enjoy things when you feel shabby. She used to wear pretty clothes and be lively....one of the town girls, singing in the choir."

The little songbird that Mrs. Wright owned may have been quite meaningful to her as it sang when, in her depressed state, she herself no longer could. Perhaps, too, the death of this songbird carries a significance known only to Mrs. Wright. So rather than use her husband's gun or another weapon, she may have repaid the death of the sweet bird in kind—a form of poetic justice. Such brutality is ironic, or unexpected, given her submissive nature and Mr. Wright's oppresive acts. Nevertheless, frightened and angered women can exhibit a strength that they normally do not possess. Minnie Wright just might have had enough strength to "wring his neck" and strangle him unexpectedly, just as he strangled her precious bird.

Mr. Wright was found dead in his bed with a rope around his neck. As the story unfolds, the irony of the way he died becomes clearer. Three types of irony related to the cause of death are apparent. Situational irony refers to events that are the opposite of what one might expect. Dramatic irony occurs when the reader knows something that a character doesn't know. Verbal irony refers to the use of words to mean the opposite of their literal meaning. 

First, that Mr. Wright would be strangled in his bed with a rope is ironic--unexpected--for several reasons. There was a gun in the home, and anyone who wanted to murder the man could have done so more quickly and easily with the gun. Second, that he didn't wake up while the rope was being put around his neck is unusual. Third, the method of death was like a hanging, a way to administer justice to a wrong-doer, yet the man was murdered, so the one who was administering the "justice" would be the wrong-doer--making for an ironic role reversal of the victim and perpetrator. 

Dramatic irony comes in when the women discover clues that the men--the sheriff and county attorney--don't know about. Readers learn that Minnie Wright was knotting a quilt--drawing a connection with the knot she tied around her husband's neck. The women discover the canary with a broken neck and conclude that Mr. Wright broke the innocent bird's neck, revealing that the method of Wright's execution was poetic--or ironic--justice for his brutality. The act of violence toward the bird represents the larger pattern of abuse that Wright perpetrated on his wife. The murderer killed him by "slipping a thing round his neck that choked the life out of him," but he was guilty in a different way of choking the life out of his wife over a period of twenty years. 

Finally, verbal irony surrounds the method of death. The men mock the women for debating whether Minnie was going to quilt or knot the squares of her quilt together. The innocent knot associated with quilting is ironic when juxtaposed with the deadly hangman's knot around Mr. Wright's neck. 

It is ironic that the story revolves around the women's decisions because throughout the narrative, the male characters mitigate the importance of the women and the kitchen.

As it turns out, the evidence is all in the kitchen. While Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, who has

[T]hat look of seeing into things, of seing through a thing to something else....

When they look around the kitchen, they understand the difficult life Mrs. Wright has been leading. That Mrs. Wright has been gravely disturbed is evinced in the pieces for a quilt that Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters discover. For, they notice that some of the stitching is neat, then it becomes erratic.

Their eyes met--something flashed to life, passed between them, then,...they seemed to pull away from each other. 

As Mrs. Peters searches in the cupboard for paper with which to wrap Mrs. Wright's shawl, apron and other clothes she wanted, Mrs. Hale compares the erratically sewn piece to the neat others, noticing that the difference is "startling." In the meantime, Mrs. Peters discovers a birdcage. The women notice that the door to the cage is broken. Then, when they search for quilting pieces so that Mrs. Peters can bring them for Mrs. Wright to work on, they discover a pretty little box containing a canary, whose neck has been wrung.

..again the eyes of the two women met--this time clung together in a look of dawning comprehension, of growing horror.

At last the women speak. Mrs. Hale rues not coming to visit more. She wonders what it would be like not to have any children around. 

"No, Wright wouldn't like the bird....a thing that sang. She used to sing. He killed that, too.
...."If there had been years and years of--nothing, then a bird to sing to you, it would be awful--still--after the bird was still."

Certainly, the women control the outcome of the search of the house for evidence. They have found the motive; they have discovered the evidence. Yet, when Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale hear the men coming, they pull back the quilting and Mrs. Hale hides the box with the dead bird in her big coat pocket, acting as the jury of Mrs. Wright's peers.