A Jury of Her Peers by Susan Glaspell Essay -- A Jury of Her Peers Ess

"A Jury of her Peers" was written by Susan Glaspell in 1917. This short story is entertaining but also tells the story of women in the early twentieth century. Ms Glaspell give you an idea about the hardships that women had to deal with, such as loneliness, lack of beauty, physical labor, and living in a male dominated society. The characters consist of two couples and a lawyer. The men are trying to convict Minnie Foster of murdering her husband while he was sleeping. The story takes place in Minnie's house. Throughout most of the play the men ridicule the women. This is ironic because the women are the ones that end up finding the missing link to the killing. Throughout the play the men are looking for evidence that would give Minnie a motive for the killing her husband. The men look everywhere for evidence; as they do this they poke fun of the women. The men just do not understand the hardships of being a woman at the turn of the century. Loneliness was a major factor for farmwomen in the early part of the century. Elaine Hedges quotes Faragher's statement saying "the single most important distinction between the social and cultural worlds of men and women was the isolation and immobility of wives compared to husbands" (Elaine Hedges 99). The isolation of the houses contributed to the loneliness women felt. The farmhouses were miles apart and could take up to half a day just to visit a friend. Women did not have time in their busy schedule to take such trips. Women were preoccupied with household chores and running the family. The men could combat loneliness because they had the advantage of going into town with the crops. At these visits they could catch up on the news as they sat in the saloons with the gu... ...ause none of them were small. To can fruit there is a lot of effort involved. The fruit must be grown, picked, and still canned. Ms Hedges informs her readers of the physical labor involved by quoting old diaries, "Friday May 27 This is the dreaded washing day" (Hedges 96). One must not forget that there was no running water back then. One load of wash took tremendous amounts of labor: "One wash, one boiling and one rinse used about fifty gallons of water -- or four hundred pounds -- which had to be moved from pump or well to faucet to stove and tub, in buckets and wash boilers that might weigh as much as forty or fifty pounds" (Hedges 96). This reason alone explains why Minnie is worried about her jars while she is in jail. As one can see "A Jury of Her Peers" was not only written for entertainment, but also to demonstrate how rough life for farmwomen was.