Jury of Her Peers
...ver call each other by their first names. But at the men's first disparaging remarks about Minnie's housekeeping and women 'worrying over trifles,' the women move closer together" (Smith 177). This is what set up the women to try and find the evidence that they need to protect Minnie Wright from being charged with her husband's murder. This murder is one that the two women can identify with. The reason is that both of the women were farmers' wives and had very similar lifestyles. Mrs. Hale describes John Wright as a hard man, and never let Mrs. Wright do anything. I feel that this is just how she is describing her own life perhaps. The two women also find a quilt that is not stitched very well. This adds to the fact Minnie Wright was under some stress when sewing this quilt. At this moment Mrs. Hale begins sewing the quilt, the way it should have been sewn in the first place. I feel that Glaspell is giving the women a lot of symbols to justify the women's findings, and making it easy for them to foil the investigation. There are some other clues symbols that relate to Minnie Wright's feeling, emotional like the jar of cherries on the shelf. One critic named Linda Ben-Zvi says, "Minnie herself stayed on the shelf, alone and unbefriended on the farm, until the coldness of her marriage, her life in general, broke her apart" (Ben-Zvi 154). Ben-Zvi also says, "Her secrets kept under pressure burst from their fragile containers . . . .The single intact jar symbolizes the one remaining secret, the motive to complete the prosecutor's case" (Smith 175). So this helps Minnie Wright when the women take the jar of cherries as well. Another critic Ben-Zvi comments on Smith's statement with," 'Preserves' explode from lack of heat, a punning reminder of casual relationship between isolation and violence" (Ben-Zvi 154). This justifies even more that the women are helping Minnie Wright get away with murder. Glaspell has the two women contemplating what to do next. One of the women is with Mrs. Wright all the way and she is Mrs. Hale. Mrs. Peters is a little undecided at this point. Now Mrs. Hale must justify the murder to Mrs. Peters to get her to go along with the murder. The next symbol that Glaspell uses is a canary. The canary is found dead, hidden in the sewing basket. At the beginning the two women find a cage but no bird. Now the bird has been found and this is even mo...