A Jury of Her Peers - Susan Glaspell

The story starts with a murder investigation in a typical fashion.

The investigators checking things that seem important to “them.”

When the story began, I expected it to end in a court room given the title and thought that maybe the murderer’s peer would be the one to overturn the popular verdict (just a small guessing game I play with the title of the story), but this was quite interesting.

The story was written over a century ago and bore the marks – men working as professionals, women on the side-lines, not being asked for opinions. Men passing scrutinising nasty comments on women’s habit by just seeing the kitchen of the house once.

Mrs Gorman, the sheriff’s wife, although respected, is left on the side-line, to chat up with the other woman, Mrs Hales, both of whom supposedly unconcerned with the investigation.

I like how the writer, a woman made sure  to hide the details in the daily chores that women usually did or do in the households – cooking, sewing, scraping, laundry, etc. This was so detailed and such exquisitely hidden in the daily chores that men are unable to find the clues – they move from one place to other, the kitchen, the upper room where the body was hanged, but fail to notice the trifles.

Mrs Hale proves to be the one with the eye for details, she takes not of the bird and the knot while men wonder – if the wife was the murderer, how could she hang the body with ease. Although, it seems like she was disrupting the justice, more than helping it – she keeps touching and modifying the evidence – the quilt, the bird – which might lead to the conviction of the woman. She did so probably because of her loyalty to her sex, or maybe because she understood that it was the only way out for the wife, a woman trapped in a marriage that suffocated her. I’m not endorsing Mrs Hale’s behaviour, she shouldn’t have touched the evidence, but this bears reference to the difficult divorce laws as well as the apparent inability of women to support themselves financially which forced them to stay in the marriage.

Apart from being an apparent feminist story, the story’s other underlying message seems to be the importance of noticing the trifles, don’t dismiss anything just because you think it is too small or insignificant. It is a lesson to be followed not only for the criminal investigation or life in general.