The Characters Of A Jury Of Her

Peers Essay, Research Paper

The Characters of A Jury of Her Peers

The Characters of A Jury of Her Peers

Based on a true story, Jury of Her Peers tells of a small town abuse and murder scene. The characters involved show that things are sometimes just as they appear to be, but sometimes we need to make some people not see in order to keep the bonds of sex from the begining of time.

The protagonist of this drama is Martha Hale. She is a typical rural housewife that has lived in a little town in Dickson County all of her life. She grew up with the alleged murderer and had been to the house several times, but not find evidence to convict here friend of murder. This hometown girl is now felling a new sense of loyalty to her friend, as she remembers the way she was twenty years and as little as one year ago. This new loyalty shows her deep ties to the community and her sex. This loyalty to women follows her throughout the story and shows her ability to look past a situation and tell what is really happening in the lives of others. The men in this story obviously think the women inferior and that allows Mrs. Hale to show not contempt for men, but rather their naivet toward the true nature and feelings of women. She does this to protect them from things that really do not want to find out about because if they did they would be forced into things that are really not wanted by any, sending a woman whose husband she killed in self defense to her death. This dynamic character goes from an uncomfortable situation in which she really just wants to go home to a desire to help a friend in need so much that she commits obstruction of justice.

The next major character is Mrs. Peters, the sheriff s wife. This woman also feels a deep loyalty to womanhood and that is why she does not tell her

husband about Mrs. Hale s crime. This quiet and relatively new comer to the county has really no ties to anyone except her husband. That makes the entire situation more complex for her. She has loyalty to her husband and is considered, married to the law, at several times. The fact that she breaks that loyalty to save an acquaintance s distant friend that she only knows what she sees in her house about allows you to see the depths of the bonds of the sisterhood of women in need. This makes her probably the most dynamic of the characters in the stoy. She technically broke the bonds of marrige just to save a woman in distress, this shows not fickelness, but rather a loyalty that runs deeper than just living with another person for the sake of love, a bond that was formed at the begining of time, before marrige, just after Eve was made. The bind of womanhood.

Men cannot understand this bond and that is why the male characters in the short story are basically pawns that enable us to see a contrast in the bond of men and the relationship of women. Men have this same strength and ability to love, we push it down to our inner psyche and hope that it never bubbles up. That would be immasculating. I concide that the men, excluding the county attorney, knew what was going on when they saw the birdcage that was destroyed. I think they had the reasoning to see the look in their wives eyes and see the the fear and concern and to just let it be. This would explain why only the attorney had ldialog at the end. The other men were catching on.

The three characters or groups of characters in this drama show the bonds of sex taken to an extreme, and the neccessity of minor conspiricies to help the true victums. This true story takes the reader on not a murder mystery, but rather a story in human compassion and help for those in need.