Hannah Hecht's Blog

1. Last week, we talked about The Collected Stories of Maria Cristina Mena, and I thought that we had a really riveting discussion. One of our main focuses was on the stories as literary tourism. We came to the conclusion that Mena was a lot more successful at producing a realistic and in-depth analysis of Mexican culture than some our previous authors of literary tourism. We especially found it more culturally accurate than Madame Butterfly and The Japanese Nightingale, which we hated with a passion.

One point that I thought was pretty interesting was the idea that in the age of the Harlem Renaissance, art took on a political agenda that it may have previously lacked. I guess that I had always thought of the Harlem Renaissance as something that solely involved black artists in New York, but it actually was more of a state of mind in which minority and women artists across the United States began to create art that could actually make a difference in society. Through art (whether music, writing, painting, or whatever) women and minorities had a safe outlet to push the envelope and to advertise their struggle.

2. Our primary reading for today was “A Jury of Her Peers” by Susan Glaspell. This was my second time reading this story, having read it in Women and Literature, but the first time I must have been in a bad mood or something because I absolutely hated it, and it went completely over my head. My opinion of the story has done a complete 360 since my second (and third) reading. The story kind of has a Hemingway “iceberg” quality, in that it doesn’t completely explain everything that is happening, and it leaves a lot of gaps for the reader to fill in.

I especially enjoyed perusing both versions of the story (the original published in Every Week magazine and the one that is most heavily anthologized). Honestly, I think that I liked the original better. The original ends with Mrs. Hale’s low reply of “Knot it” and that he wasn’t able to see her eyes. The anthologized version ends with “We call it—knot it, Mr. Henderson.” To me, his not being able to see her eyes implies that there was something there. Tears of sympathy for Minnie? Malice? The second ending is more resigned to Minnie’s fate; it seems to imply more that Mrs. Hale understands that men run the world. It does not seem in either one as if Mrs. Hale or Mrs. Peters are going to give them the bird as evidence, which is good, since it be the solid piece of evidence that would have given Minnie a motive to kill her husband.

This story was probably the most overtly feminist out of all the stories that we have read by female authors this semester. Even the title, “A Jury of Her Peers,” drips with sarcasm which continues throughout the publication. The male characters treat the female ones as if they are good for nothing but keeping house, but the female characters ultimately find the source of motive that the detectives are searching for. The story also speaks to the relationships that women have with each other in a subtle way. Both Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters understand that Minnie lived in an abusive household, and they hide the biggest piece of evidence in the murder case (in Mrs. Peters’s case from her own husband).

3. The secondary texts for this week concerned the publication in which this week’s story was originally published, Every Week magazine. It was really interesting to read about the publication during the high point of the magazine and of serialized fiction. It sounds as if the magazine would have been an incredible place to work at the time. In addition, I think that I probably would have been much more of a magazine reader had I lived in the early 20th century because short stories appeared right alongside feature stories, human interest stories, and serialized novels.