Paradox of Gender Roles in "A Jury of Her Peers†(Essay Sample)

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English Literature
09/04/2014
Paradox of Gender Roles in "A Jury of Her Peers”
Susan Glaspell's "A Jury of Her Peers" delves into gender stereotypes that characterized the early 20th century America's society. Her spellbinding short story integrates pursuit for justice with strict gender roles, the product being a master class of the role women can perform in erstwhile male dominated duties. The inspiration for her story emanates from the true story of Hossacks in USA. Back in 1900, police found the dead body of Mr. Hossack in his matrimonial bed (Gruesser 23). Mrs. Hossack was the first suspect and in unclear circumstances, she received the maximum penalty for first-degree murder. She launched a successful appeal a year later. What intrigued Glaspell is the lack of closure on the matter. Police never resolved issues surrounding the murder, his or her motives, and execution.
Glaspell attempts to breathe more flesh into the murder through the fictitious short story, A Jury of Her Peers. The name of her protagonist, Minnie Wright, is symbolic. It represents something small. As Gainor argues, Minnie, informally, is contraction for minimized (23). This is true for Mrs. Wright. She is an abusive relationship with a man whose name, Wright, is an oxymoron. He subjects her wife to a lonely life where misery and loneliness reign supreme. Glaspell borrows feminists' ideas that decry loss of identity for women. The society does not refer to females with their names but only in reference to a man. The patriarchal society prescribes that once a man marries, he should usurp his wife's identity. This is true for all women in A Jury of Her Peers for Mrs. Hale, Mrs. Peters, and all married female characters. Additionally, a woman loses her identity in her husband's career. The sheriff opines, in reference to his wife, that a "sheriff's wife is married to the law" (Glaspell 170). This illustrates the level of chauvinism bedeviling the society to the extent of reducing women to support roles. Rather than exploit her potential in a career of her desire, her husband's career responsibilities become her won.
Glaspell uses her setting to underscore strict gender roles pervading her society. At the introduction, the reader encounters Martha Hale performing household chores. The writer then introduces the reader to the jinx of the matter. Mr. Wright is dead and investigations are underway to unravel the killer and motives. The sheriff, county attorney and a battery of male colleagues are leading the investigations. The men have a high opinion for themselves, often disregarding the opinion of women, in spite of the obvious wisdom that Mrs. Wright could easily unearth crucial leads by dint of familiarity with surrounding and victim. More bizarrely, the men taunt Mrs. Wright for the manner of her house's disorganization. This portrays a deeply entrenched chauvinism that relegates women to the kitchen and judges them insensitively.
Glaspell speaks plainly and avidly in chastising stereotyping in the society. By the time of writing her short story, women occupied the periphery of social, economic, and political substratum. Access to education, especially for rural women, was limited. The notion that women were the "weaker sex" was not only prevalent but also unchallenged. At the scene of investigation, all professionals are men. However, Glaspell promotes women in this setting by giving them a sixth sense (Gainor 12). In an ironic twist of events, women's intuition provides critical links that male's professional training could not summon. Although the sheriff and county attorney do not take Mrs. Wright's intuition seriously, her peers think highly of her. According to Gruesser, this is a direct approval by Glaspell (12). Her title, A Jury of Her Peers, places emphasis exactly where she desired. "HER" peers matter, not the patriarchal and recalcitrance society. While men are wobbling back and forth with investigations concerning one of their own, Mrs. Wright has earned the vindication of her peers.
In more than one occasion, Glaspell chides chauvinism and its mischaracterization of women. The male's investigators first intuition was that Mrs. Wright had killed or had been complicit in the murder of her husband. When they set out to the farmhouse in the course of their investigation, it is clear they are after justifying their conclusion. Glaspell draws a similar plot to the murder of Mr. Hossack. The wives, in this two cases, are the treated as "guilty until proven innocent”. The writer's objective, according to Gruesser, was to show how the stereotype that criminal investigations is a reserve for men had led to injustice for many people (15).
Further, Glaspell debunks the stereotype that women are incapable of conducting credible investigations. A reader notices the way she juxtapose qualified male professional who cannot sense basic clues with untrained women whose only investigative acumen is instinct. When Hale and Peters asked their wives to accompany them to Mrs. Wright's house, they did not have an idea the women would be useful in any way. Rather, they derided their women for being "needlessly preoccupied with trivial things and even too unintelligent to contribute to the investigations" (Glaspell 290). The two men are inexplicable dismissive of their wives, an indicator of the low opinion with which they held women.
In an ironic twist of events, the despised women make greater contributions to the investigations. The early 20th century America society stereotyped women as given to minor and meaningless propensities. Conversely, the society believed males to be keener with big and more impactful things. Admittedly, sociological backings have led credence to the premise that women have s keen eye for details (Gainor 45). Glaspell does not challenge the premise. Rather, she moves with alacrity to show that the society can harness the eye for details to for betterment of several sectors. Going back to A Jury of Her Peers, men are looking for "big clues”, overlooking "small clues" that may provide crucial information to the murder. Women's subtlety surpassed men's ego and ineptitude.
Incidentally, women do not understand their power over men. This deprives them an important tool to challenge the stereotypes inherent in the society. They acknowledge their attention to minor details. They however lack the knowledge to harness it for their own advancement and that of the society. The three women act on similar cues in the course of investigations. Glaspell says of the three, "Why do you and I understand? Why do we know-what we know th