Susan Glaspell

Question #1

The play Triffles by Susan Glaspell seems to be a bit more difficult to read as intonations from Glaspell are left to interpretation by the actors or the reader’s imagination. In contrast, the short story, A Jury of Her Peers gives full and complete detail regarding the characters’ feelings, facial expressions, tone, and emotions. In the short story, Glaspell states, “A frightened look blurred the other thing in Mrs. Peters' eyes” which is part of the character development for Mrs. Peters. In addition the paragraph not included in the play that shows a glimpse into the soul of Mrs Hale states, “‘the law is the law--and a bad stove is a bad stove. How'd you like to cook on this?’--pointing with the poker to the broken lining. She opened the oven door and started to express her opinion of the oven; but she was swept into her own thoughts, thinking of what it would mean, year after year, to have that stove to wrestle with. The thought of Minnie Foster trying to bake in that oven--and the thought of her never going over to see Minnie Foster--.”

The play leaves any characterization out of its descriptions, and only inference from the actors would clue the audience into these small details. The short story allows the reader insight into the authors mind, and develops intention behind the actions of her story’s personalities. Vividly developing Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters’ emotional constitutions also highlights the author’s views on feminism, male chauvinist behavior, and spousal abuse.

Question #2

Aside from the obvious homicide inflicted by Mrs. Wright, crime, defined by the law, would be any of the acts that are performed by the two women, Mrs. Hales and Mrs. Peters, during the course of their occupation in the Wright’s home that inhibited the finding of additional evidence. They were both fully aware of their wrong as they struggled to hide their behavior seen when they discover the lifeless canary and the harried stitching on the quilt. Both cases would give reason to believe that they were obstructing justice and the discovery of evidence. These seem to be minor crimes, and crimes motivated by the obvious defense of the horrible injustices they see within the Wright home.

The state of Mrs. Wright’s oven, her tattered clothing, and the obvious isolation she must have felt, and the canary’s obvious rage induced killing is only signs of a much larger crime against her. Most likely the culmination over many years of emotional damage to her psyche by this man, Mrs. Wright crumbled at this final act of deadly hate and killed her husband. Crime cannot be measured, and any feeble attempt to do so is consistently met with gross injustices. What crime has more evil? If considered that one crime sparked the other in the Wright’s case, then it is easy to see that damage inflicted over the years was the motivating force behind the secondary crime, and was completely preventable. Had Mrs. Wright not been subjected to years of emotional damage, would she have killed Mr. Wright?