Not a Typical Sheriff's Wife

In most pieces of short fiction, characters can be insightful to struggles of individuality in only a few pages. Susan Glaspell’s characters do well to show difficulties that people face internally with conformity and individuality. Her book, Her America, integrates the stories of many characters and their struggles. One story, “A Jury of Her Peers,” relates the story of the visiting of a crime scene after a murder. The sheriff is accompanied by his wife, two other men, and Martha Hale. Mrs. Peters, the sheriff’s wife, is a small lady who initially appears to be uncertain and uncomfortable with her role as the wife of a man in the position of power.

Mrs. Peters is a small woman, and she is very soft-spoken. She rethinks things that she says. She is also compared to her husband by the author. Glaspell notes, “if Mrs. Peters didn’t look like a sheriff’s wife, Peters made it up in looking like a sheriff” (81). Perhaps it is Mrs. Peters, out off all the characters, demonstrates the most development. She goes from struggling with her identity as a sheriff’s wife, to entering the woman’s sphere and aiding her fellow oppressed women by covering up the murderer, who happens to be wife of the murdered man. She believes that her voice ought to be as important as the voices of the men, and this shows that she is a multi-faceted character .