“A Jury of Her Peers” is set in the rural United States in the 1910s. The narrator states on the first page that Mr. Wright’s murder “was probably farther from ordinary than anything that had ever happened in Dickson County,” and, though Glaspell includes a specific county name here, she never mentions the state in which the story takes place. This was likely her way of communicating that Dickson County is a fictional community representative of small-town American life more broadly.
It is notable that almost the entire story takes place in a single farmhouse. One of the ways that Glaspell centers the women’s perspective in “A Jury of Her Peers” is by setting the story indoors—primarily in the kitchen—which, at the time, was widely regarded as the women’s domain. While the male characters move to other places inside and outside of the house, the narrator stays with the women in the kitchen, centering the story on them in their domain instead of on the men.
While Glaspell intentionally puts her women characters (specifically Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters) at the center of this story, she also shines a light on the sexism that was normalized at this time in American history. The reality was that women were subjugated to men in all areas of society—they didn’t yet have voting rights, were expected to strictly stay at home and perform domestic labor, and were seen as less intelligent or capable than their male counterparts. Glaspell captures this aspect of early 20th century American society by having her male characters consistently belittle and mock the female characters.
