SOURCE: “Reading About Reading: ‘A Jury of Her Peers,’ ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue,’ and ‘The Yellow Wallpaper,’” in Gender and Reading: Essays on Readers, Texts, and Contexts, edited by Elizabeth A. Flynn and Patrocinio P. Schweickart, The John Hopkins University Press, 1986, pp. 147–64.

In this excerpt from a larger treatment of gender-based reading, Fetterley discusses how Glaspell attempted in “A Jury of Her Peers” to teach male readers how to “read” female narratives.

As a student of American literature, I have long been struck by the degree to which American texts are self-reflexive. Our “classics” are filled with scenes of readers and readings. In The Scarlet Letter, for example, a climactic moment occurs when Chillingworth rips open Dimmesdale's shirt and finally reads the text he has for so long been trying to locate. What he sees we never learn, but for him his “reading” is complete and...