"A Jury of Her Peers" by Susan Glaspell

256 storm-door: an additional door placed outside an ordinary outside door for protection against severe weather (Merriam-Webster)

Study Questions

Laughter: Who laughs? at whom? When? When is laughter mentioned? What does laughter mean in each instance?
Communication: In what ways do characters communicate with each other? How do messages get across from one party to another? Do women communicate differently from men? Do the women communicate differently from each other? What meaning does silence communicate in the story?
Irony: What ironies do you find in the play?
Conflict: Explore conflict in the play. Choose a conflict that interests you and consider who is involved and in what way. How is the conflict resolved, or doesn't it?
Discuss the title of the story.
Characterization:
- How is Martha Hale's character different when we are inside her head and when we observe her from the outside? While Mrs. Hale thinks of Mrs. Wright always as Minnie Foster (257) and feels toward her husband like a "mother whose child is about to speak a piece" when he is about to recount his meeting with Mrs. Wright the day before (259), how does she come across in relation to these people externally? What privilege does having this access to her thoughts afford the reader over the other characters who can only read her through manifest actions and words? How might we judge Mrs. Hale differently without information about her interior life?
- Similarly, note the information that the story provides about Mrs. Wright's inner life. Which character(s) have access to and read(s) this information? How does knowing, acknowledging or caring about Mrs. Wright's inner life affect one's judgment of her?
- Examine how the short story characterizes characters who are not there. Pick an absent character and consider the techniques used to present them to us and how that presentation affects our understanding of other characters and of the story.
- How does the ending of the story reveal character through discovery? What information do you discover about the characters? How is that information given?
Setting: How is setting important in this story?

Minnie Foster, Mrs. Wright – married to John Wright for twenty years (257)

Mr. Peters, Sheriff Peters – "a heavy man with a big voice, who was particularly genial with the law-abiding" (257)

Mrs. Gorman – "Mrs. Gorman, sheriff's wife before Gorman went out and Peters came in, had a voice that somehow seemed to be backing up the law with every word" (257)

Dickson County – "it was probably farther from ordinary than anything that had ever happened in Dickson County" (256)

the Wright Place – "It looked very lonesome this cold March morning. It had always been a lonesome-looking place. It was down in a hollow, and the poplar trees around it were lonesome-looking trees." (257)

Student Name

2202234 Introduction to the Study of English Literature

Acharn Puckpan Tipayamontri

August 31, 2012

Reading Response 3

Title

Text.

Works Cited

Book

Article

Rawida Komkai

2202234 Introduction to the Study of English Literature

Acharn Puckpan Tipayamontri

September 6, 2011

Reading Response 3

Title

The Best American Short Stories of the Century. Eds. John Updike and Katrina Kenison. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. Print. (Arts Library)

Hedges, Elaine. "Small Things Reconsidered: 'A Jury of Her Peers.'" Women's Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 12.1(1986): 89–110. Print.

Showalter, Elaine. A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx. New York: Knopf, 2009. Print. [Arts Library]