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Transcript

A Jury of Her Peers

Susan Glaspell

DQ: Compare Mrs. Wrights motive for killing to Uncle Ceasers. Compare Major Caswell to Mr. Wright. Compare the decision made at the end by the narrator of "A Municipal Report" to that of Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters. How do these comparisons make the purposes of these two stories clearer?

An American Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, actress, director, novelist, biographer and poet. She was a founding member of the Provincetown Players, one of the most important collaboratives in the development of modern drama in the United States. She also served in the Works Progress Administration as Midwest Bureau Director of the Federal Theater Project.

Her novels and plays are committed to developing deep, sympathetic characters, to understanding 'life' in its complexity. Though realism was the medium of her fiction, she was also greatly interested in philosophy and religion. Many of her characters make principled stands.

The Murder of John Hossack

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 by many of the town's women. Among them was the sheriffs wife, who showed much sympathy to Mrs. Hossack throughout the trial 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.

Group Response: Male vs. Female

Irony & The Woman Intuition

  • Contrast between male and female intuition, they bring Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters along to tend to the practical matters, considering them preoccupied with trivial things(cleaning the house) and even unintelligent to make a contribution to the investigation

"Would the women know a clue if they did come upon it?”

Guilt & Forgiveness

Authors Bio & Historical Context

Irony, Guilt & Forgiveness, Group Response

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