Paper Topic:

compare/contrast the play Trifles with the short story `A Jury of Her Peers`.

What makes the short story more effective and powerful in its emotional impact is the re situating of Mrs . Hale to a prominence she does not carry in the play . As with the play , she is the eyes through which we know and sympathize with Minnie Wright it is she who paints the picture of a youthful Minnie , she was kind of like a bird herself - real sweet and pretty ( Trifles ll .107 . Without Mrs . Hale 's observations of Minnie Wright , and her unflattering attitude toward John Wright , the reader of the short

story and the audience of the play would have little context from which to view the story . However , in the story the perspective becomes Mrs Hale 's with the play , the perspective and interpretation of information is solely the property of the audience . With the short story , the effects and implications of Minnie Wright 's crime become located in one woman , Mrs . Hale

By individualizing the perspective in the short story , Glaspell injects a personal tone into that makes it all the more heartbreaking . In the emotional effects Minnie 's crime has on Mrs . Hale , it 's easier to discern the feelings of domestic imprisonment in the Wright household and the theme of just retaliation , She thought of the flour in her kitchen at home--half sifted , half not sifted . She had been interrupted and had left things half done . What had interrupted Minnie Foster ? Why had that work been left half done ( A Jury of Her Peers . Mrs . Hale becomes more connected to the character of Minnie Wright in the short story than she is able to in the play and through this process the reader too is able to have a greater sympathy for the guilty woman . They are not merely neighbors but two sides of...

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