Classic English Literature
Glaspell, “A Jury of her Peers”; Woolf, “A Society” (online or in Dover text)
Susan Glaspell had a strong interest in drama. Susan Glaspell (1876-1948) was born and raised in Davenport, Iowa. This was very close to my
birthplace so I have special interest in her.
She graduated from Drake University in 1899 at a time when few women achieved this education. As a result, she was able to start out in
journalism and switched to full time writing as soon as she sold stories. Our story, “Jury” was included in THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1917. She
also wrote a Pulitizer Prize-winning drama, ALISON’S HOUSE in 1930.
She married twice-a theater director (he died) and then she married a novelist and playwright. As you can see, for most of her life she was
involved with theater through marriage and her writing —in both Provinceton and in Greenwich Village.
She wrote the story you are reading as both a one act play and as a story. Both forms appear in many texts of American literature. Her lifetime
themes related to the limitations of both environment and gender on an individual. This story clearly shows that
1. The title, “Jury of her Peers” has an equally popular and appropriate subtitle, “Trifles.” Explain why each title “fits” the subject matter.
2. What did Minnie Wright face that apparently caused her to “snap” and kill Mr. Wright? (note the play on the name)
3. The two women, Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale, both do something of a very serious nature and very out of character for them. What motivates them?
What do you think will happen to Mrs. Wright?
4. How is the significance of gender and environment seen?
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) came from a well to do family of brilliant writers who had such famous people as Alfred Lord Tennyson to their home.
Her parents were widow and widower, each with children from those marriages. When they met as neighbors and married they had their own children.
In all, eleven people between 8 and 60 lived and were attended to by 7 servants! That would make large families easy to manage I imagine.
They were brought up via Victorian notions, the boys went to boarding schools, the girls were tutored at first by the mother and then by tutors.
Virginia deeply resented the holes that resulted in her education.
As we know, women often had short life spans then. Virginia had two traumatic experiences-the death of her mother when she was 13 and the
continuing sexual abuse of two of her stepbrothers. Her older half sister married two years later and died from her pregnancy. Her aging father
became a mournful, broken man.
It should not be surprising that Virginia had her first mental breakdown during this time. Today she would be labeled manic depressive. Yet, we
consider her a truly great English writer. In fact, she stated, “As an experience, madness is terrific I can assure you.” She felt it aided her
creative processes.
With the father’s death and acquaintance of a group of brilliant young Cambridge educated, iconoclastic young men, she learned sexual and
intellectual freedom. Here, she met Leonard Woolf, her husband. But the sudden death of a beloved brother from typhoid fever caused a physical
and mental decline. She did not marry Leonard for 6 more years at age 29. He was devoted to her, cared for her in her breakdowns and encouraged
her in her writing. It is believed their union was sexless but it seems to have suited them. By the 1920’s she was one of the best known
literary writers in England.
She always felt marginal in society, that women had been suppressed and suffocated. She began a long, lesbian relationship with Vita Sackville-
West, a younger married writer with two children. This has been viewed as the “great passion” of her life. Much of her feminist writing
developed during this time, such as the famous book, A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN (1929).
When German planes started to bomb England, her fears for herself and her country were unbearable. Unable to take it any longer, in 1941,
certain she was once again going mad, she put rocks in her pockets, walked into a river, and drowned herself. She was 59 years old.
1. “A Society” is a satire on what? The ladies begin a search to find out if men produced good people and good books-the object of life. What is
their conclusion? What is the conclusion of the ladies and the meaning —for themselves? for their daughters?
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