What happened to Mrs. Wright's bird in "A Jury of Her Peers"?
In “A Jury of Her Peers,” Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters discover a broken birdcage as they look around the Wright home for clues about why Minnie Wright might have killed her husband.
The birdcage's door is hanging loose, like someone had pulled it open violently, and there is no sign of the bird. Mrs. Hale recalls that Minnie Wright once loved to sing, so she is not surprised that Minnie would enjoy the company of a singing canary. She wonders if the cat got the bird, but Mrs. Peters says that Minnie didn't have a cat and that she was afraid of them. The women look closely at the cage, and when they see the state of it, their eyes meet in questioning and apprehension.
As the two women continue to look around and gather up some of Minnie's sewing to take to her in jail, they...
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find the dead canary. The bird's neck has been wrung, and Minnie has wrapped its little body in a piece of silk. The women know now what happened and why. Mr. Wright's violent killing of the bird was the last straw for Minnie. The little canary was her companion, and her husband had taken even that from her. She meant to bury it but had not yet done so, so the incident must have happened recently, perhaps even a day or two before Mr. Wright's death. Mrs. Hale can understand Minnie's grief, for she recalls what she felt when a boy brutally killed her kitten. If people hadn't held her back, she says, she would have hurt him.
Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters do not tell the men about their discovery. They would laugh anyway, and they would not understand. Mrs. Hale puts the bird in her pocket. The men can find a motive for themselves.
How was the bird killed in "A Jury of Her Peers"?
The death of Mrs. Wright's canary is key to understanding why she murdered her husband. The men investigating the case are under pressure to find a motive that would allow them to construct a case against Minnie Wright, but they miss the evidence of the bird, along with other clues.
The women, however, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, take the time to carefully explore the kitchen rather than ignore this "woman's space." From the minor detail of finding that Minnie carefully preserved her dead canary, the two women are able to piece together the murder.
In addition to finding the canary, they find evidence that the door to its cage has been broken. They realize that Mr. Wright must have killed the bird in a fit of rage. They also know what it is like to be an isolated, overworked farm woman and thus have the empathy to understand how miserable Minne's life must have been. They recognize that Minnie must have snapped and killed her husband in retaliation for his own killing. This is borne out by the fact that Mr. Wright is found hanged: she must have broken his neck because he broke her beloved canary's neck.
The story shows that men in the criminal justice system have little understanding of the realities of a woman's life. The "jury" of Minnie's peers, however, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, find her innocent of wrongdoing and keep the evidence of the dead bird to themselves.