Wright it is easy to tell that she is not at all upset about her husband’s death. When being asked about the situation she “laughed and pleated her skirt” (4). Mrs. Wright is compared to a bird that is found later in the story. The bird was found in a pretty box with marks around its neck. Hale and Peters say that the death of her bird would have been her motive if she actually was her husband’s murderer, but the author utilizes the bird and its broken cage to be a comparison to Mrs. Wright’s life.
The men in the story are looking in all the wrong places, where the women looked in the one spot to find the one clue that would close the entire case. The number one clue, the bird. One example of what the bird symbolizes would be Minnie’s, the wife of the murdered man’s, freedom. Birds have a choice to soar up into the sky and still have the freedom to return to earth again when they please. Minnie used to have freedom when she was able to make her own decisions about life before Mr. Wright was introduced.
In addition, her choice of killing was to the neck with a rope as is similar to the way Mr. Wright killed her pet bird by wrecking its neck. Figuratively in this story, the bird is Mrs. Wright therefore, her killing the bird meant that she was close or already had killed Mrs. Wright’s true personality. The thought of this is what made Mrs. Wright rage vigorous from her cage as the thought of the constant oppression and the murder of her pet that influence her to reach for the rope. This scene is what drove Mrs. Wright to insanity as the constant nagging of abusive behavior and isolation is what made her leave her cage and remove the problem that was impeding her escape to
To begin, When reverend hale went to salem he was very confident. Reverend Hale, knew a lot about witches and spirits. Hale took witchcraft very seriously, he believed there was actually something going on in salem. Next, Hale is determined to get to the bottom of what is going on. When hale gets to salem, he is very tired and has very little motivation.
but I thought maybe if I went to the house and talked about it before his wife, though said to Harry I didn’t know as what his wife wanted to make much difference to John” (Glaspell 980). He felt to realize that Mrs. Wright needs to talk more with the husband and treated like a lady than talking to the outsiders. On the other hand, Mrs. Hale knew Minie Wright and had nostalgia about her beautiful personality “she was kind of like a bird herself-real sweet and pretty, but kind of timid and –fluttery” (Glaspell 987). She
The death of the canary shows a significant motive for why Mrs. Wright committed the killing of her husband because she can see herself in the bird and when Mr. Wright took the bird's life, a part of Mrs. Wright life was also taken away. The canary was the only thing that helped through her
According to the excerpt from the essay "Small Things Reconsidered: Susan Glaspell's 'A Jury of Her Peers' " by Elaine Hedges, the Wright’s farm was isolated, Minnie was confined to her work as a farmer’s wife, and they did not have a telephone because Mr. Wright refused one (Hedges par. 5). This led to Minnie living a solitary life, lonely and cut off from others. Mrs. Hale frequently refers to Minnie by her maiden name because she was a different person before this isolation in her home and marriage. The Minnie she knew many years ago
Minnie’s quilt, the dead bird and its cage, and the kitchen show that living in a man’s world is not easy. In the end, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale recognize that they too have experienced the same loneliness and mistreatment that led Mrs. Wright to murder her husband. The men don't value the women in this story and they don't see them as being very intelligent either. It is for this reason “A jury of her peers” is created. Peers being the women themselves as they stand up, united against the subjugation they have all experienced.
The story opens with Mrs. Wright imprisoned for strangling her husband. A group, the mostly composed of men, travel to the Wright house in the hopes that they find incriminating evidence against Mrs. Wright. Instead, the two women of the group discover evidence of Mr. Wright’s abuse of his wife. Through the women’s unique perspective, the reader glimpses the reality of the situation and realizes that, though it seemed unreasonable at the time, Mrs. Wright had carefully calculated her actions. When asked about the Wrights, one of the women, Mrs. Hale, replies “I don’t think a place would be a cheerful for John Wright’s being in it” (“A Jury of Her Peers” 7).
For example, “She used to wear pretty clothes and be lively--when she was Minnie Foster, one of the town girls, singing in the choir. But that--oh, that was twenty years ago." Here, we can tell that the married life for Mrs. Foster has changed, she isn't the same the girl she was twenty years ago. Throughout those 20 years, she has become the bird in the cage that cannot escape otherwise. The canary holds an immense amount of symbolism to the oppression that Mrs. Foster has withheld from John Wright.