A discussion of Susan Glaspell's 1917 short story, A Jury of Her Peers, or her play version, Trifles, can be organized in two parts; first, the evidence, and, second, the legal analysis. Before a group reads A Jury of Her Peers or views Trifles, they can be asked to accept that Minnie Wright killed her husband, John Wright, and to consider what evidence the women saw that the men did not see. The open ended evidence question allows individuals to use their imaginations and come to Susan Glaspell's story from multiple perspectives. The question lays the ground work for later tying that evidence to legal analysis involving basic jurisprudential issues and specific substantive criminal law doctrines.

The story has been used for diversity training. Most women, both those in the story and those in the audience, see different facts and reach different moral and legal conclusions than men. If readers and viewers can understand the differences in perception and analysis of the women and men in the story, it opens up the possibility of seeing different facts and understanding the different forms of analysis used by various groups in our society and other societies.

Readers and viewers come to the story from multiple perspectives and can start with different important facts. Regardless of where the discussion starts, the following facts are usually mentioned. Some analysis can briefly begin during the first part as soon as a fact is mentioned, but the main analysis should come after all the key facts have been stated.

1. The Canary

   1. The canary was like Minnie Wright; "she was kind of like a bird herself." "Wright wouldn't like the bird....a thing that sang. She used to sing. He killed that too." Just as John Wright strangled the canary and killed it's voice, he silenced Minnie. Wright by slowly strangling her. The women hid evidence by pocketing the dead canary.

   2. Throughout history, women have been analogized to birds in cages, e.g. Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. They were viewed as pretty ornamental objects and their concerns as no great significance, as mere trifles.

   3. In 1917, canaries were taken into mines, because they died first from poisoned gas and so provided a warning of danger to miners, e.g., Lani Guinier and Gerald Torres, The Miner's Canary. Today they have been used for the same purpose during the Iraqi invasion. Abused women learn to read indicators that serious violence is about to occur.

   4. Abusers sometimes harm women's pets - a bird, a cat, a dog - as part of a pattern of abuse.

2. The Cage

   1. The door of the bird cage was violently torn off, indicating tremendous anger and violence of an explosive nature. The theme of the explosive violence Minnie Wright lived with is also symbolized by the bursting of her preserve jars due to extreme cold. One jar remained intact as a small indicator of hope.

   2. The cage imprisoned the bird. Minnie Wright was imprisoned in her abusive marriage and in her isolated home. During the story she is imprisoned in jail, a cage.

3. The Quilt

   1. Quilting is traditional American women's work. From bits and pieces, women sew together blankets, which provided warmth for their beds and their homes. From bits and pieces, the women quilt together the story of what happened to Minnie Wright and what she finally did to John Wright.

   2. The women speculated as to whether Minnie was going to knot or quilt the final blanket. Knotting is a faster, more utilitarian method of sewing than the in - and- out stitching of traditional quilting. In learning to knot her quilt, Minnie also learned how to knot the rope that strangled her abusive husband. The method of killing resembled a legal hanging.

   3. The women found a quilt piece that was created with extremely agitated stitches. Martha Hale "replace[d] bad sewing with good," thereby destroying evidence.

4. Names
   1. The men refer to the women as Mrs. Wright, Mrs. Hale, and Mrs. Peters. To the men, the women have no separate identities but are identified only through the husbands to whom they are married.

   2. Martha Hale's independence is indicated from the first by the use of her first name.

   3. Gradually in the story, the name Mrs. Wright (she married Mr. Right in the hope of becoming Mrs. Right) changed to Minnie Wright (symbolizing her subservient position in the family and society), and finally to Minnie Foster (symbolizing the love and support she had received from her parents).

   4. The sheriff is Henry Peters. Peter means rock in Greek and symbolizes the stability and solidarity of the law. The prosecutor is Mr. Henderson, linking him directly to the sheriff.

5. The Inside
   1. When asked why she didn't wake up while her husband was being strangled, Minnie Wright responded, "I was on the inside."

   2. Women have traditionally been inside the home, the personal, private sphere. The story takes place in the kitchen, the prototypical women's room.

   3. Men occupy the public, political, outside sphere. The men in the story exercise their control and dominion over the entire house, its outlying structures, and its land. The men find the women's perceptions and actions "queer."

   4. The clash between the two spheres is stated by Martha Hale; "the law is the law and a bad stove is a bad stove" (only in A Jury of Her Peers).

6. Half Done Tasks

   1. There are constant references throughout the story to tasks half done: the table is half clean and half dirty; the bread is half made.

   2. These are references by Glaspell to an incomplete society where men's and women's contributions are not equally valued. You need both flour and water to make bread.

7. Speech and Non Speech

   1. The men enter and leave in constant motion and constantly speaking. The women communicate by means of silent glances or by halting and interrupted speech.

   2. Glaspell is referring both to the silencing of women in the political sphere and the fact that women's concerns do not have names. The terms sexual harassment, woman abuse, stalking, and separation attack all came into our vocabularies in the late Twentieth Century. There were no words to describe women's experiences in 1917, and women were politically silenced.

   3. Non verbal approval comes at the end of the play when the audience's applause seems to validate the women's actions in destroying and hiding evidence, thereby making a trial of Minnie Wright unlikely.

8. Isolation

   1. There are constant references throughout the story to isolation. John Wright isolated his wife from other people who could have offered support by cutting off means of communication, e.g., the telephone, and by denying her money needed to escape, "Wright was close."

   2. The isolation is emphasized by the fact that the main character, Minnie Wright, never appears. She's in jail.

   3. Evidence of isolation and abuse comes from the inanimate objects in the house, e.g., the dead bird, the quilt, the broken stove, her shabby clothing.

   4. Only recently have we become aware that "the home is a dangerous place for women." Women are more likely to be abused, raped and murdered within their homes than outside.

9. Emotional and/or Physical Abuse

   1. There is strong evidence of emotional abuse in the story, e.g., the isolation, the shabby clothing.

   2. Physical abuse must be inferred from, e.g., the killing of the canary, the violently torn cage door, the bursting jars of preserves.

1. Jurisprudence

   1. Are those excluded from the law-making political processes, e.g. voting, holding public office, and law-applying processes, e.g. judges, juries, bound by those laws? Can they revolt against them? The women hide and destroy evidence.

   2. There are references to a jurisprudence of care and connection. Martha Hale says of her failure to reach out to Minnie Wright, "That was a crime! That was a crime! Who's going to punish that."

2. Criminal Law

   1. The play raises issues of self-defense, which traditionally only allowed the use of deadly force in response to an immediate threat of death or bodily harm. Glaspell presents the most difficult type of abuse case, a "sleeping man" case with no clear evidence of prior physical abuse. For most abused women, physical abuse is almost always joined with emotional abuse, and harm is always imminent.

   2. The play also raises the issue of provocation. Again, was it severe enough and was the response immediate enough?

   3. Does emotional harm justify self-defense? Four American jurisdictions made a husband's killing of an adulterous wife's lover justifiable homicide. Today, all jurisdictions find a woman's preference for another man, adultery, to be sufficient provocation to reduce a killing to manslaughter.

   4. Was Minnie Wright "queer" (insane) or did she respond as a reasonable person when she killed her abusive husband?

   5. Who is the reasonable person today? I tell my students I am.