A Jury of Her Peers

Susan Glaspell's A Jury of Her Peers is full of irony, dramatic, situational, and verbal. One of the biggest ironies lies in the title of the short story. In this setting, women are seen as slight inferior beings. In fact, there are unable to vote, or serve in a jury. However, when Mrs. Wright is accused of murdering her husband, she is indeed judged by her peers, the the form of Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters. Mrs. Hale and Peters are Mrs. Wright's peers, both are housewives, and both understand the inner workings of Mrs. Wright's mind. It is by sharing Mrs. Wright's mindset and worries that the two women stumble upon evidence to the motive of the case. This is when the judgement begins, and Mrs. Wright is found not guilty. While going through Mrs. Wright house and things, the women begin to piece together her life, and in doing so reach some empathy for the woman. When the opportunity arises for them to present their findings, Mrs. Peters "threw back the quilt pieces, got the box, tried to put it in her handbag." This act of hiding the evidence shows that the two women understood Mrs. Wright's motive, and in fact agreed with it, perhaps because they too understood oppression.