Noting Depression in Susan Glaspell’s 1917 Story: A Jury of Her Peers

Recently I read the short story, A Jury of Her Peers by Susan Glaspell, with a group of women in my community. The author, with whom I wasn’t previously familiar, first reported on the real 1901 trial of Margaret Hossack, as a journalist writing for the Des Moines Daily News. Later she adapted the story as a one-act drama, Trifles, and then in 1917 as a short narrative published in Everyweek, a long-defunct magazine of the Crowell Publishing Company.

There’s a lot you might take from this swift, rich read. It goes like this: A man and his son came upon a couple’s house in rural area. The man’s been killed, clearly; his wife sits in a chair, oddly, and can’t say what happened to her husband. The local authorities and a few neighbors step in. The home was not well-kempt; the wife is accused of murder. Two other women, whose words spin the tale, poke about the kitchen and make inferences about the jailed woman’s circumstances.

Some points are readily gleaned: on homemaking, and quilting – literally and metaphorically, in early 20^th Century America. There are legal elements, and allusions to domestic violence and abuse. What intrigued me most, though, was the author’s indirect depiction of their neighbor’s isolation and apparent depression:

“A person gets discouraged–and loses heart,” one considers…

“I stayed away because it weren’t cheerful–and that’s why I ought to have come,” says the other.

The two women express sympathy for the accused wife’s plight; they regret that they didn’t visit or otherwise help her earlier on, before the situation took a catastrophic, violent turn. The women understood, without saying it exactly. Mental health wasn’t a topic of common discourse, then, but these characters – and so must have the author, clearly – got the drift.

I won’t tell the whole story here, but I do recommend the tightly-woven, knotted piece.
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