Angel,+M

SOURCE: ANGEL, M. //Teaching the short story A Jury of Her Peers and the play Trifles //. Disponível em: < [] > Acesso em: 20 de out. 2011

a) List important ideas. The text analyses the short story in two ways: the evidence and the legal analysis. In the first part, it shows the evidences that the women saw that the men didn't. In the second, we have the application of basic jurisprudential issues and specific substantive criminal law doctrines in the evidences that appear throughout the story. It also works with the different points of view of men and women about the facts found in the story.

b) Identify the key terms and the relationship between them. The key terms are facts and law, with the facts being presented first with some minor law's point of view analysis about each one and some law's main points making connections with the short story as a whole.

c) Summarize important quotes taking the key term into account.

"Just as John Wright strangled the canary and killed its voice, he silenced Minnie. Wright by slowly strangling her. The women hid evidence by pocketing the dead canary. Throughout history, women have been analogized to birds in cages. They were viewed as pretty ornamental objects and their concerns as no great significance, as mere trifles.

"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. 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."

"Quilting is traditional American women's work. From bits and pieces, the women quilt together the story of what happened to Minnie Wright and what she finally did to John Wright. The women speculated as to whether Minnie was going to knot or quilt the final blanket. 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.

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

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

"There are constant references throughout the story to tasks half done: the table is half clean and half dirty; the bread is half made. These are references by Glaspell to an incomplete society where men's and women's contributions are not equally valued."

"The women communicate by means of silent glances or by halting and interrupted speech. Glaspell is referring both to the silencing of women in the political sphere and the fact that women's concerns do not have names. There were no words to describe women's experiences in 1917, and women were politically silenced."

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

<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">"There is strong evidence of emotional abuse in the story, e.g., the isolation, the shabby clothing. Physical abuse must be inferred from, e.g., the killing of the canary, the violently torn cage door, the bursting jars of preserves."

<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">"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."

<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">"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. The play also raises the issue of provocation.

<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">d) What are their positions in relation to the topic? <span style="color: black; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">We can notice a strong connection between the facts of the story and informations about how women were treated in society, with the analysis of each fact being made by this scope. Also, we have some law elements being inserted throughout the discussion to illustrate some plot events.