SOURCE: “Jury Of Her Peers: The Importance of Trifles,” in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 21, No. 1, Winter, 1984, pp. 1–9.

In the following excerpt, Alkalay-Gut analyzes details of “A Jury of Her Peers.”

The continuing popularity of Susan Glaspell's story, “Jury of Her Peers,” and the play Trifles from which it emerged, can not really be explained by an examination of the plot. Two housewives, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, accompanying their husbands who are investigating the murder of a man by his wife, discover in the kitchen the clues which indicate the motive of the murderess, and silently agree to withhold this evidence from their husbands. Despite the increasing contemporary interest in women in literature, it is difficult to perceive from the simple progress of events a complexity of thought warranting the current fascination with this work.

Critics tend to agree on the basic theme indicated by the sequence...