Susan Glaspell’s Trifles was based on actual events that occurred in Iowa at the turn of the century. Glaspell worked as a reporter for the Des Moines News. While working here, she covered the murder trial of a farmer’s wife, Margaret Hossack, in Indianola, Iowa. Hossack was accused of killing...
Susan Glaspell’s Trifles was based on actual events that occurred in Iowa at the turn of the century. Glaspell worked as a reporter for the Des Moines News. While working here, she covered the murder trial of a farmer’s wife, Margaret Hossack, in Indianola, Iowa. Hossack was accused of killing her husband, John, by striking him twice in the head with an ax while he slept. ‘A Jury of Peers’, shares the same story as the character Minnie Wright killed her husband and was covered by Mrs. Hale.
The phrase ‘a jury of peers’ was said to date back to the signing of the Magna Carta in England. The provision ensured that members of the nobility were tried by a jury comprised of fellow nobles, rather than being judged by the king. Nowadays, this phrase is referred as ‘a jury of fellow citizens.’
Starting in 1898 women were able to serve on juries. Moreover women were able to seek exemption from jury duty and they did not regularly serve on juries until the 1930s. When the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 granted women’s suffrage, the push for jury rights in the remaining states increased.
In the play, jury of her peers means a biased judgement of a certain case by her fellow women. Moreover. the play shows how a woman, Mrs. Minnie was covered up by her fellow woman, Mrs. Hale empathizing with her because the latter feels the loneliness which has driven Mrs. Minnie to kill her husband.
Mrs. Hale can still remember Minnie for her youthful innocence and happiness before she was married to John Wright, a cruel and controlling husband. She is unhappy about her marriage and feels that her husband always belittle her. Minnie killed her husband by strangling him in retribution for his final cruelness of killing her pet bird. Since this bird is the only source of her happiness and this bird company for her in the loneliness of her home and the patriarchal society that isolated her, he felt really sad about what had happened. Mrs. Hale covered this up and the men remain blind about the case. If she happens to be send to trial like Mrs. Hossack, who also killed her husband, for sure she will be judged by the court. But Mrs. Hale found her not guilty about this that is why she covered her up making her as the true jury of peers.
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