Assignment
After reading "A Jury of Her Peers," review your carefully chosen meal by completing the following questions of analysis and interpretation.
1. Describe the character of Minnie Wright as a young woman before her marriage. Provide examples from the text to support your answer.
2. Describe the character of Minnie Wright as a wife married for several years. Provide examples from the text to support your answer.
3. Explain the character of John Wright. Be sure to provide examples from the text to support your answer.
4. List the important pieces of evidence that only the women notice and explain why these pieces of evidence are significant. What is it the evidence provides that the men are unable to find in their search?
5. Explain why the women do not reveal their knowledge to the sheriff.
6. What do the men assume about the women in the story? How do they try to show they do not think the women inferior to them?
7. What irony is revealed through the assumptions made by the men about the women?
8. There are no suspects other than Minnie Wright, and no one doubts her guilt, so how does the story create suspense? Provide examples from the text.
9. Given the circumstances of the time period in which this story is set (women were unable to vote or sit on juries), how is the title "A Jury of Her Peers" ironic?
10. What is the purpose of this story, and how do setting, characterization, and irony in the story achieve this purpose?