Detecting Sympathy in “A Jury of Her Peers”

Not all fictional detectives are the distant, objective Sherlock Holmes; not all detective stories end with clear, clean solutions like Holmes' does; and not every mystery is rooted in the overtly threatening scandal and conspiracy, bringing to light the evil machinations of villainous figures. Some detectives are sympathetic, amateurs, and their adventures offer more criticism than resolution.

For this, turn to Susan Glaspell's “A Jury of Her Peers,” a 1917 short story that uses a crime and elements of detective fiction in an early feminist critique of the expectation that a woman stays in the home and supports her husband. If that seems like a tall order, it's a major plot point in "A Scandal in Bohemia" and "The Speckled Band". However, instead of the conservative British Doyle and his Holmes who preserve the social order, we're looking at the fiction of an early American feminist critiquing the social order.

Ostensibly, the story is a murder investigation: Mr. John Wright has been killed and his wife, Minnie Foster, claims to have been asleep while he was strangled. She has since been taken away, held for the murder, while Sheriff Peters and County Attorney George Henderson investigate. To help, they bring along Mr. Hale, who discovered the murder, and his wife, Martha Hale, was brought to help the Sheriff's wife gather a few items for Mrs. Wright while the men check out the bedroom – the scene of the murder – and the barn. Martha Hale and Mrs. Peters therefore spend the story in the kitchen, analyzing and commenting on the state of Minnie Foster’s life once she was married.

A traditional detective story would follow those investigating the murder and look for clues about the murder weapon and motive, to prove whether or not Mrs. Wright did or did not kill her husband. Most detective stories make this easy by bringing in outside detectives, like Holmes, or following the police force, like Sheriff Peters, to investigate. Doing so allows for an objective, almost scientific perspective. “A Jury of Her Peers,” however, chooses to go the sympathetic route. Martha Hale was once Minnie Foster's friend, and laments never visiting her old friend, and it's Martha's role as a friend and fellow country housewife that allows her and Mrs. Peters to read the clues that amount to a life and not just to an event.

It becomes clear to the women that Minnie Foster killed her husband, but that she isn't the villain. The story juxtaposes Martha Hale's memory of Minnie Foster, a happy, friendly person who loved to sing, with the dark, hollow, unkempt house filled with half-completed housekeeping tasks, she has occupied for 20 years as Mrs. Wright. The name “Wright” becomes ironic: Mr. Wright is hardly “Mr. Right,” and even suggesting that Minnie Foster, Mrs. Wright, was right to do what she did. This becomes clearest with the death of the canary, a songbird, whose body Minnie kept in a box. Martha reflects on how Minnie used to sing, a comment that symbolically brings the two together: both sang, and singing is a public act. One can certainly sing in private, but singing is often done for the enjoyment of others. Just as Mr. Wright broke the bird's neck, Minnie Foster, literally, crushed his neck and windpipe. A retaliation for twenty years of marriage wherein she was silenced and kept at the house in the hollow.

It can be easy to look at this story and simply say it's interesting because of its use of detective fiction and how it uses personal relationships and connections in ways more traditional detective fiction doesn't. There is still, however, the social perspective: how the characters and events become critiques of larger, real world social issues and concerns.

More on that in the next post.