GinaBurgese

Understanding Stories: Up Close and Personal

The reason that education has become so important in "The United States of America" is because people want their children, as well as themselves, to be as eductaed as they possibly can. A major component of becoming educated and well rounded is by looking in the past. Their are people that are still doing research trying to figure out "Why men treated women so poorly?, Why there was such a diversity between Caucasians and African Americans?

Before reading Marina Angel's "Susan Glaspell's Trifles and A Jury of Her Peers: Women Abuse in a Literary and Legal Context" , I knew that those questions, stated above, all have answers to them. The reason is simple. Society became accustomed to men controlling people, especially women. Women did not stand up for themselves and if there was one brazen women, who would dare question her "master”, she would be hanged so she could be used as an example towards other women who thought about "disrespecting" their husbands. It was just "the way it was". But the reason becomes much more clear after reading the article written by Marina Angel.

Angel's article let her audience get into the "setting" of "A Jury of Her Peers", even if they had never read the story previously. "A Jury of Her Peers" was written by Susan Glaspell. Angel's article made me come up with some answers to questions that arose after reading "A Jury of Her Peers and Trifles".

The reason why I believe that Glaspell did not simply republish her news-paper articles was because I feel as a "women" and "journalist" at that time people would have thought that she was "queer". It was not the time nor place for someone to help women understand the reasons why men behanved the way that they did, especially because she, herself, was a woman. I have thought about why Glaspell would write a one act play and the again make the same story into a short story. The only reaon that makes some sense to me was because she wanted to attract as many people to her story as she possibly could. Her job as a journalist, writer, etc. was to make people read her story and that was exactly what she did. She did not end the story nor play with a solid conclusion, the ending is simply left up to your imagination, choose it as you please. That would, of course, justify how men would chose their ending as well as women would choose theirs and she would have satisified every sex who read the story. I do not believe that she wanted to recreate an account of factual events.

Since Glaspell chose to write about this story many years after she had researched and wrote about, it obviously had an impact on her own life. I feel that she chose to write "Trifles" and "A Jury of Her Peers" because during the time she investigated the events that those stories were based on she had conflicting thoughts. She went from calling the suspect, Mrs. Hoccack, "cold, calm, and menancing" to "worn and emanciated." This makes me feel that she got swept up into this story and felt like she wanted to create this imaginary relationship between women and men to make people realize the power of people when they stick together.

As like other stories, there is no solid reason why authors wrote the stories that they did. There are only people's opinions. Some will strongly agree with the reasons I gave to help me understand the actions of Glaspell and others will strongly disagree. Because as Angel said, "If diversity does not exist important stories will not be told and heard." The only way to come up with explanations is to become familiar with the subject and study the behaviors of the people performing the actions.