A Jury Of Her Peers, By Edith Warton

Along with Glaspell’s work Trifles, other works during the time were also keying in on the issue of injustice to women within the legal system. “Kerfol” written by Edith Warton and another work by Susan Glaspell, the short story “A Jury of Her Peers”, were also attacking the inequality of fairness under the law for women. “Trifles depicts an unequal trial of strength between the male prosecution story and the female defence story, in which the female protagonists hide the emerging defence story to avoid incriminating the accused” (Wright 260). The lack of justice guaranteeing protection for these women under the law is what ultimately results in the decision they make to not incriminate Mrs. Wright. “No, Peters, it's all perfectly clear …show more content…
But you know juries when it comes to women. If there was some definite thing” (Glaspell). Through this quote, Glaspell hints at the unequal treatment women receive in front of a jury, which she focuses more on in her other work during the time “A Jury of Her Peers”. The wives take up the defense of Mrs. Wright as the play comes to a close, for they are able to recognize the horrible home situation she was in and sympathize her lack of access to any safety from her abusive home setting. Glaspell purposefully chooses two wives of very different backgrounds—one married to a lawman and the other married to a farmer out in the country—to show the connection that every woman of this age had with one another. No matter where a woman came from, she felt the same social inequality and inequality under the law upon her. This is portrayed through these different women who, by the end of the story, have not only related to one another, but also to a convicted woman. “One of the most interesting aspects of Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters’s interpretation of the subtle messages of Minnie’s isolated and distressed existence in her home is the evolving and changing relationship among all three women” …show more content…
“A Jury of Her Peers” focuses in on the denial of a fair trial by an all-male jury, which has many parallels to Trifles. The lack of protection granted to women under the law was a large issue during the time period in which those who have analyzed the play and short story agree is what Glaspell focused on in her writing. However, something that was not mentioned as much within the analyses by scholars that I believe was another aspect that Glaspell included specifically within Trifles was the unification of women against the common enemy of oppression and discrimination that all women across the United States experienced during their daily lives. The two wives within Trifles over the course of the play develop a unique relationship with one another. When the women begin to imagine the context surrounding the homicide, they soon begin to empathize with Mrs. Wright through experiences that they have had that closely resemble hers. Oppression and discrimination were applicable to all three women’s lives, causing them to form a relationship that unified them against the unfair legal system and even against the men within the play who were trying to convict Mrs. Wright. This unification, while on a small scale, modeled the larger scale unification that was occurring across the nation during this