We Live Close Together, and We Live Far Apart
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"A Jury of Her Peers" is a short story written by Susan Glaspell first published in 1917. It’s an adaptation of her lightly changed play “Trifles” written one year earlier.
This story tells about the investigation of the murder in which the woman has killed her husband. Two men and two women come to the house where Mr. Wright was found strangled and try to collect evidence of Mrs. Wright’s guilt.
“A Jury of Her Peers” is a short story written by Susan Glaspell first published in 1917. It’s an adaptation of her lightly changed play “Trifles” written one year earlier.
This story tells about the investigation of the murder in which the woman has killed her husband. Two men and two women come to the house where Mr. Wright was found strangled and try to collect evidence of Mrs. Wright’s guilt.
Sheriff Mr.Peters and Mr.Hale want to check over the crime scene and to find out the possible cause of the murder. The women are to pick up some clothes for Mrs. Wright. Observing the house they step by step penetrate to the life of the Wrights. The house unfriendly and cold at the beginning discovers its secrets to the visitors. But men and women see things differently and make different conclusions. Two women who have nothing to do with the investigation make better success in finding the evidence and true motives of the murder than their husbands. They notice the things which are left without attention by their husbands. The broken stove, the threadbare clothes, the dirty pots gain women’s sympathy and are left without attention by their husbands. The men mock the women’s devotion to trifles. “Oh, well,” said Mrs. Hale’s husband, with good-natured superiority, “women are used to worrying over trifles.” But these are the same trifles which are left out by the men and which helped their wives to understand the motive of the murder.
They see how such trifles as a dead canary and a piece of quilt even not noticed by their husbands can explain the tragedy of Mrs. Wright’s life and the cause the murder. And the play “Trifles” got its symbolic name under these minor things of big importance. Trifles are usually the things of little importance. And they are like this for men. But the women feel differently about them and the author shows us how much can they mean in our life. They put the trifles together as a mosaic and create a picture of the Wrights’ life. The title underlines this significance of the trifles. And it also was the way to show the abyss the separates men and women. “Of course they’ve got awful important things on their minds,” said the sheriff’s wife apologetically. But fortunately or unfortunately very often these are the trifles, which matter in our life, and sometimes even more than the things of the greatest importance. And that is another message of Susan Glaspell.
Changed into a short story, “Trifles” got another name - “A Jury of Her Peers”. The new name emphasizes the role two women played in the passing sentence.
Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale found out trifle details left out by their husbands and managed to see the whole picture of abuse and mistreating lead Mrs.Wright to desperation and a murder. They saw the motive and evidence of the crime in a killed bird and an inconsistently stitched piece of quilt. Without saying a word to each other they create a picture of the murder in their minds and acquit poor woman and decide to hide the evidence of her guilt without saying a word again. The women were not allowed to be presented in the jury at the trial of that time. But these two were to pronounce the sentence in this case. They become the jury for their “peer”, they hardly knew but felt sympathetic to. I think that by another title the author not only emphasized the importance of trifles as in the first case, but also gave us the hope that women do influence the history and can break the seal of silence put on them by the men.
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Aaron Schwartz's Last Articles :
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We Live Close Together, and We Live Far Apart
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