Unit Two

  The three works I have selected from Unit Two continue the thread I analyzed in Unit One: a failure to meet expectations, and the repercussions. In “A Jury of Her Peers,” Susan Glaspell tells the story of a woman who, despite having grown up as a lively town girl who sang in the choir, she has since lived such a miserable life that the result is devastating to the community at large. Similarly, the short story “Sweat,” written by Zora Neale Hurston, is about a woman who marries an abusive man who treats her like she’s never measured up to his liking, until he is ultimately met with a fate he unintentionally caused for himself. In “Defender of the Faith,” Philip Roth takes a different approach, instead writing about a Sergeant who must decide between meeting the expectations of the army or of his fellow Jewish people. All three works depict in some way a struggle to meet expectations, deal with feelings of disappointment, and face the resulting consequences.

“A Jury of Her Peers” by Susan Glaspell

In “A Jury of Her Peers,” Susan Glaspell tells the tale of a woman who, with the help of another, unintentionally uncovers the telltale signs that her friend and neighbor has reached such a “lack of life” (Glaspell 41), that she killed her husband. Mrs. Hale, who has known the suspect since she was girl, and Mrs. Peters, the sheriff’s wife, come with the men to the scene of the crime to gather a few items Mrs. Wright has requested to be brought to her while she is detained. While the men flesh out the evidential details of the murder, the women are left to gather these items and to look for evidence of a possible motive. Bit by bit, the motive unfolds—much against the will of the two women who desperately want their peer to be innocent.

Mrs. Wright—forever known to Mrs. Hale as Minnie Foster, although she had since been married for twenty years—was once a lively young lady. She sang in the choir, wore pretty clothes, and was “real sweet and pretty, but kind of timid and—fluttery” (Glaspell 38). It quickly becomes apparent, however, that she has changed over the years. In fact, Mrs. Hale hadn’t visited the Wright home in more than a year because it was a lonesome, cheerless place. She had never really given it much thought before, but as she stood in the kitchen with Mrs. Peters, waiting for the men to do their investigation, Mrs. Hale begins to piece together the unhappy life to which the former Minnie Foster had fallen victim.

As a rule, the life of a farmer’s wife is not easy. There is much to be cared for both within the home and without. Mrs. Wright certainly occupied her time with the chores, but did so in a lonely, run-down house. She seemed to have very little human interaction, either with the outside world or within her own home. Part of her isolation likely stemmed from her unwillingness to appear in public wearing her shabby clothes, which were much unlike the bright dresses she wore when she was a lively young town girl (Glaspell 33). However, the bigger issue lay in her isolation within her own home. The house, which could not be seen from the road, “had always been a lonesome-looking place. It was down in a hollow, and the poplar trees around it were lonesome-looking trees” (Glaspell 26). To add to the silence, Mrs. Wright and her husband John bore no children in their twenty years of her marriage. Mrs. Hale noted that “not having children makes less work…but it makes a quiet house—and Wright out to work all day—and no company when he did come in” (Glaspell 38). Her husband was a hard man who kept to himself and preferred silence. Mrs. Hale described him to Mrs. Peters, saying “Just to pass the time of day with him…like a raw wind that gets to the bone” (Glaspell 38). He had no interest in getting a telephone on their street because he thought people talked too much as is. On top of the deafening silence, Mrs. Wright had to deal with a bad stove, which was not only useful for cooking but also for keeping the house warm during the harsh winters. As Mrs. Hale worked to get a better fire going, she thought “of what it would mean, year after year, to have that stove to wrestle with” (Glaspell 35). Mrs. Peters seems to read her mind and comments: “A person gets discouraged—and loses heart” (Glaspell 35).

The one thing that seemed like it might have brought some cheer and life into the Wright home was a canary she must have purchased sometime since the last time Mrs. Hale came to visit. Mrs. Wright loved to sing, and always had since she was known as Minnie Foster singing in the town choir. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters slowly piece together the existence and fate of this canary as they find it’s broken cage and ultimately its lifeless body wrapped in a piece of silk. It is evident that Mr. Wright, who valued silence, had wrung the cheerful bird’s neck to silence it. This was the breaking point for the already worn-down Mrs. Wright. Mrs. Hale imagines outloud, “If there had been years and years of—nothing, then a bird to sing to you, it would be awful—still—after the bird was still” (Glaspell 41).

Minnie Foster’s life did not turn out how any young girl dreams it will. She married a hard man, lived a hard life on an isolated farm, bore no children, wore shabby clothes, wrestled with a bad stove, and became a shell of who she once had been. Even the one thing that brought her joy was snatched away from her in the selfish rage of her husband. When Mr. Wright snapped the canary’s neck, something snapped in Mrs. Wright. Yet even though her life did not meet the expectations she had probably hoped as a young girl, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters empathized with her pain and loneliness. Mrs. Hale cries “We all go through the same things—it’s all just a different kind of same thing! If it weren’t—why do you and I understand?” (Glaspell 41). When faced with the decision of whether to tell the men of their incriminating discoveries, they resolve to remain silent. Minnie Foster hadn’t met expectations, but she was given grace and empathy by her peers to carry on anyway.

“Sweat” by Zora Neale Hurston

Much like “A Jury of Her Peers,” the short story “Sweat” by Zora Neale Hurston recounts the story of a woman who was once pretty and lively, but has been crushed by domestic hardship. The people in the community describe how Delia used to be, saying “She wuz a pritty li’l trick when he got huh… He useter be so skeered uh losin’ huh, she could make him do some parts of a husband’s duty” (Hurston 77). Throughout the text, Delia is described as young, soft, meek, and loving—that is, before fifteen years of marriage to Sykes Jones. In contrast, Sykes is described by the people in the community as a man who treats a wife like he would a sugar cane—they suck all the pleasure they can from it, well aware that it will eventually run dry, then throw it out as if it had served its purpose and still left the consumer unsatisfied. One man, Joe Clarke, observed “Taint no law on earth dat kin make a man be decent if it aint in ‘im” (Hurston 77).

Sykes physically and verbally abuses Delia, telling her during a fight, “I don’t want yuh. Look at yuh stringey ole neck! Yo’ rawbony laigs an’ arms is enough tuh cut uh man tuh death… Ah hates you. I been hatin’ you fuh years” (Hurston 82). Not only that, but he openly cheats on her, and tortures her by bringing a snake home even though he knows she is deathly afraid of even earth worms. He doesn’t seem to care one bit about how she feels, and in fact seems to enjoy making her life a living hell. Yet even though Delia cannot seem to measure up to her husband’s liking, she finds refuge and strength in going to church and holding onto her faith. In doing so, Delia “was able to build a spiritual earthworks against her husband. His shells could no longer reach her” (Huston 76).

In the end, Delia is delivered from her domestic distress—not by taking action of her own, as Mrs. Wright did in the short story “A Jury of Her Peers,” but by the very snake that Sykes brought home to torture her with. The snake escapes its enclosure, corners Sykes the next morning in the bedroom, and seals his fate. Even as Delia watched her abusive husband die, “a surge of pity too strong to support bore her away” (Hurston 85). She could do nothing to save him, even if her good nature outweighed her relief to be freed from him. Sykes had failed to see Delia’s worth right up to his last moments when he called out to her, but it was already too late. 

“Defender of the Faith” by Philip Roth

In “Defender of the Faith,” Philip Roth writes about a Sergeant who has met every expectation in the army, but is accused of having failed his own people, the Jews. It is apparent throughout the text that Sergeant Nathan Marx is a respected soldier with many honors and is even considered a hero by his Captain. His experiences at war in Germany have made him hard. In the beginning paragraph, Marx says he “had been fortunate enough to develop an infantryman’s heart” (Roth 412), which he explains as having become calloused to the trembling and horror of war, just as feet become calloused after a good deal of time walking on difficult terrain.

Even so, Marx begins to reconnect with his past memories, emotions, interests, and even faith, thanks to nineteen-year-old Private Sheldon Grossbart. Grossbart manages to obtain help from Marx in making it more formally permissible for the Jewish trainees to attend the Friday evening services rather than clean the barracks. As Grossbart and his two companions Fishbein and Halpern head to the service, Marx is left to reminisce about the tender memories of his own Jewish childhood. He feels as though a hand is reaching into his heart to reconnect him to who he was as a young man, observing that it “had to reach past those days in the forests of Belgium, and past the dying I’d refused to weep over; past the nights in German farmhouses whose books we’d burned to warm us, past endless stretches when I had shut off all softness I might feel for my fellows” (Roth 417). His unconventional friendship with Grossbart grows, and he eventually gives him and his two buddies a pass to spend the weekend eating a late Passover meal with Grossbart’s aunt in St. Louis. In permitting this, Marx wrestles more and more with the hardness of his own heart. He thinks to himself, “Who was Nathan Marx to be such a penny pincher with kindness? Surely…the Messiah himself—if he should ever come—won’t niggle over nickels and dimes. God willing, he’ll hug and kiss” (Roth 431). Grossbart tells Marx, “You’re a good Jew, Sergeant. You like to think you have a hard heart, but underneath you’re a fine, decent man. I mean that” (Roth 429).

Yet, Sergeant Nathan Marx is left between a rock and a hard place—between doing what is right and respectable for the army, the war, and the nation, or remaining soft and loyal to his people, relieving Grossbart of his duty to go to the Pacific with the rest of his platoon. Marx recognizes that Grossbart has been using him for his own self-interests and has reached a point of practically jumping ship, leaving Fishbein and Halpern behind. Marx’s instinct as Sergeant kicks in, as well as his indignation for the stunt Grossbart was attempting to pull, and he makes certain that Grossbart is given orders to go to the Pacific with the rest of his group. As the young Private accepts his fate, Marx resists an impulse to turn around and seek forgiveness for his vindictiveness, then accepts his own (Roth 436). Marx had made up his mind to move forward, meeting the expectations of his nation and fellow army men, even though it meant further hardening his heart toward the expectations and needs of his own people and heritage.