Literary Analaysis of A Jury of Her Peers 1

On Susan Glaspell’s Trifles and “A Jury of Her Peers”: Centennial Essays, Interviews and Adaptations. Eds. Martha Carpentier and Emeline Jouve. Jefferson: McFarland, 2015. 62-78

Circles: Buff. Women's JL & Soc. Pol'y, 1997

The plot of Sense and Sensibility is a conventional one for its time. It raises a conflict in love that is typical of the comedy of manners, and it resolves the anxieties of its heroines in a pleasing, if unremarkable, way. It is clear from the outset that the novel will focus on the education of Marianne's sensibility. She must learn through suffering that the decorum of polite society, which she despises, has been designed to channel and discipline human feeling. To Marianne, this decorum seems cold. She rejects it in the figure of Colonel Brandon, although she eventually learns that his own sobriety is largely the result of his earlier disappointment in love. Elinor is the key to Marianne's reformation, for she shows that to behave with decorum is not tantamount to behaving in a cold and unimaginative manner. She feels things as strongly as Marianne does, but Elinor realizes that simply giving vent to feeling destroys sense. In other words, the emotions and the intellect must be kept in exquisite balance. Thus, Sense and Sensibility is a comedy of manners not merely because it contains many amusing scenes but also because it is centered on a plot that resolves itself through an understanding of societal manners and how they have been developed to ensure a happy ending for human lives.

Gilbert and Sullivan's second collaboration, has received less critical attention than it merits due to its short running time of approximately forty-five minutes and the fact that it was not performed as part of the historic Savoy operas 1881-1896. 1 Through analysis of the libretto and musical examples, this essay will demonstrate how Gilbert and Sullivan manipulate the performance of femininity to satirise the breach of promise of marriage doctrine. Firstly, it will consider the social context of the breach of promise of marriage in the 1870s, and demonstrate that though progressive in its attitude of implementing protection for women from poverty, the practice of this area of law reinforced the 'restrictive definition of femininity [that] had achieved dominance by this time'. 2 The essay will explore how Angelina's femininity is portrayed in 'Trial by Jury'. It will consider the idea that the male reaction towards Angelina's femininity seeks to undermine the procedures of law. It will ultimately conclude that by exposing the absurdity of the behaviour of the judge and jury, Gilbert and Sullivan challenge the discriminatory basis of the breach of promise of marriage case. Set in a courtroom, the plot follows Angelina (soprano) who is suing Edwin (tenor) for breach of promise of marriage. During the process of reaching a verdict, the judge (baritone) and jury (male chorus) attempt to be impartial towards the plaintiff, who is introduced by the female chorus of bridesmaids. However, they cannot help but be influenced by Angelina's beauty, youth and 'theatrical performance of feminine virtue' 3. Edwin suggests that he will marry both Angelina and his new lover, which is considered by the judge as 'a reasonable proposition'. After it is concluded that 1 STEINBACH, S. From Redress to Farce: Breach of Promise Theatre in

RBL, 2023

As a friend to the book of Judges in my own studies, I begin my review with an overall positive note in that I enjoyed this read and the insights therein. Birdsong, de Vos, and Kim introduce the volume of sixteen (!) full chapters with short snippets on their intention, focusing from feminism to gender studies, and the bewildering label of intertextuality that really makes formal what those of us in biblical studies have never stopped doing, and what it may mean to connect the two. However, much like the elusive attempt to create a box by which we can truly define intertextuality, many of the essay that follow only betray that, within the book of Judges, the possibilities are immense and seemingly endless.

2010

hen i first began my research in the archives of southern France, I soon came upon several medieval registers that contained criminal trial transcripts. At first glance, these are very masculine works. Male judges and lawyers presided over the affairs; a notary recorded the depositions and testimonies; and the majority of the cases involved men bashing in the brains of other men, brawling about drunk in taverns or in the city streets, or committing acts of theft in dark alleys. Beyond these central male figures, however, I discovered that these criminal records also tell us quite a bit about the lives of women in the urban realm. Many historians who use these sorts of documents as the basis of their research invariably mention women, but overwhelmingly they depict them as either the victims of violent crime or as monolithic perpetrators such as prostitutes and adulteresses. In this respect, scholars set up two seemingly simplistic categories of women (the weak prey or sexual offender) and fail to pursue what else. Although men shaped and constructed the narrative of these registers, what else can the records tell us about women's social networks in the city? What else can we learn about the ways in which women worked through municipal courts systems to achieve particular goals? This, then, is the purpose of my paper: to follow Dr. Joan Cadden's insistence that we must use sources beyond those written by women to try and piece together the medieval woman's perspective on the world around her. To tease out these issues, I would like to offer an analysis of a specific set of criminal records from the city of Toulouse in the later Middle Ages. 2 In recent years, many scholars have attempted to gain access to the lives of women in medieval Languedoc. Some studies draw on evidence relating to the Cathar heresy, such as thirteenth-century inquisition W

Novels, in contemporary literature, have given us a new perspective. This is, especially, due to the presence of female writers using new story writing and narrative techniques in creating the settings. Among these is the novel under study, written by an Iranian novelist, which tends to introduce and present Iranian women’s problems and challenges. This study is, in effect, carried out on a Persian contemporary novel entitled Adat Mikonim (We’ll Get Used to It), written by Zoya Pirzad. The main character of the story is a middle-aged woman from a middle class family who is living with her daughter as well as her mother. The novel depicts the obstacles the woman faces communicating with as well as being understood by her daughter and mother.Following Hodge and Kress' (1993), the present study is carried out within the Critical Discourse framework to analyze the text. The book contains 31 chapters, out of which the first16 chapters were selected. The texts were analyzed with regard to the following properties: grammar (regarding two properties: syntagmatic models and transformations), and vocabulary (i.e., adjectives, adverbs, and verbs, with their ideological significance) The study is an attempt to depict linguistically the identity, wishes and outlooks of three women belonging to three generations, their similarities as well as differences.

Both men and women constitute the species of human beings but men have dominated over women since time immemorial and have neglected and seem to have denied their rights altogether in many situations. Women very often have been deprived of human rights and society seems to have played with them as if they were cards or puppets to serve the purpose their superior 'others' have liked. This reductionist position of women has been reflected in literature, firstly, by male writers and then by female writers. Unfortunately the portrayal of women in the hands of many male writers appears to have been either more reductionist than what it is/was in reality or more exaggerated while most of the female writers appear emotional and over sentimental in their portrayal of women characters. This paper attempts to briefly study the condition of women as reflected in literature in relation to the actual condition of women of different times. Women did not have much scope for institutional education and very few had the opportunity of reading at home because of conservative society in the past. The male dominated conservative society did not think that women were human beings and they needed education. Society understood by human beings only men who would earn and dominate the others serving them. As women were kept confined to homes and hearths and did not earn, they had the status like that of servants. To make and keep women subordinate and subservient to men, men had concocted different texts and associated them with religion. The uneducated women, brought up under the shade of religion, believed those texts without questioning their authenticity and the more they believed the more they became subservient. Any deviation on the part of a woman was treated with physical cruelty, and women tolerated in silence even being bitten by their