Susan Glaspell — a murdered farmer, a wife in jail, and two women who read a kitchen better than the law.
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Each new word is hidden in a sentence. Read it aloud and say what you think the bold word means from the rest of the sentence — then reveal it and see how close you were.
Read each part. After it, there's a quick comprehension check (try the questions from memory first), then one thing to discuss.
When Martha Hale opened the storm-door and got a cut of the north wind, she ran back for her big woollen scarf. It was no ordinary thing that called her away — the team from town stood waiting at the gate, with the sheriff and the county attorney in it, and her husband. The Wright place looked lonesome that cold March morning. It had always been a lonesome-looking place, down in a hollow where you couldn't see the road.
In the kitchen of the empty farmhouse, the county attorney turned to Mr Hale. "Tell just what happened when you came here yesterday morning." Hale had stopped by to ask John Wright about taking a telephone, and had found Mrs Wright sitting in her rocker, pleating her apron. "She looked queer," he said, "as if she didn't know what she was going to do next." He had asked to see John. "Can't I see him?" — "No," she said, dull-like. "He's dead." She just pointed upstairs. "What did he die of?" — "He died of a rope around his neck," says she — and went on pleating her apron.
Upstairs they had found him, strangled in his sleep. Mrs Wright said she never woke: she slept sound, and someone had slipped the rope round his neck in the night. Now she was held in town, and the men had come back to search for a motive — something to show anger, or sudden feeling. The county attorney glanced round the kitchen — the sticky, burst jars of fruit, the unwashed towels. "Nothing here but kitchen things," he said, with a little laugh. "Not much of a housekeeper, would you say, ladies?" And the three men went upstairs, leaving the two women by the stove.
1. What did Mr Hale find when he called at the farm the day before?
2. What are the men searching the house for — and what do they think of the kitchen?
1. Mrs Wright sitting strangely calm in her rocker, pleating her apron — and John Wright upstairs, dead, strangled with a rope while he slept.
2. A motive — some sign of anger or sudden feeling that would explain the murder. They dismiss the kitchen entirely: "Nothing here but kitchen things."
The women stood motionless, listening to the feet overhead. "I'd hate to have men coming into my kitchen," said Mrs Hale, "snooping around and criticising." Her eye was caught by the sugar bucket, half filled, the paper bag beside it half emptied — work begun and then abandoned. The table too: one half wiped clean, the other half left messy. What had interrupted Minnie Wright? Why had she left it half done?
Mrs Peters had to gather some clothes to take to Mrs Wright in jail, and the shabby black skirt told its own story. "Wright was close with his money," Mrs Hale said. "She used to wear pretty clothes and be lively — when she was Minnie Foster, one of the town girls, singing in the choir. But that — oh, that was twenty years ago." A lonesome place down in a hollow; no children; and John Wright a hard man — "Like a raw wind that gets to the bone."
Then they came upon the quilt pieces. Block after block was sewn with fine, even little stitches — and then one block where the sewing suddenly went erratic, all over the place, as if the woman had not known what she was doing. The two women looked at each other, held by something in that queer, disturbed stitching. Without quite knowing why, Mrs Hale pulled out a stitch or two and began to sew it right. Feet on the stairs — the men were passing through on their way to the barn. The sheriff threw up his hands, laughing: "They wonder whether she was going to quilt it or just knot it!" To the men, nothing in a kitchen could possibly matter. But would they know a clue if they did come upon it?
1. What half-finished things do the women notice, and what do they suggest?
2. What is strange about one block of the quilt — and what does Mrs Hale quietly do about it?
1. The sugar half poured, the table half wiped — work stopped in the middle. Something must have interrupted Minnie suddenly, at a precise moment.
2. The stitching in that one block goes wild and erratic, as if sewn by someone in great distress. Mrs Hale pulls the crooked stitches out and re-sews them — quietly erasing the first piece of evidence.
"Why, here's a birdcage," said Mrs Peters. "Did she have a bird?" One hinge of the little door had been pulled apart; the cage was broken — someone had been rough with it. "She was kind of like a bird herself," Mrs Hale said slowly. "Real sweet and pretty, but kind of timid and — fluttery. How — she — did — change." Then, in a voice she hardly knew: "I wish I had come over sometimes when she was here. That was a crime, Mrs Peters. Who's going to punish that?"
Looking for sewing things to take her in jail, they found a pretty red box in the basket. Mrs Hale lifted the lid. Inside, wrapped in a piece of silk, lay the bird — the canary. Its neck was broken; somebody had wrung it. The women's eyes met in a look of slow, dawning understanding. Wright would not have liked the bird — a thing that sang. Minnie used to sing; he had killed that too. And then the stillness, after the last singing thing in the house was gone. Steps outside — Mrs Hale slipped the box under the quilt pieces.
"Well, ladies," said the county attorney, breezing in, "have you decided whether she was going to quilt it or knot it?" — "We think she was going to — knot it." The men had found nothing; no sign of anger, nothing to show a motive — nothing, that is, that a man would see. As the party made ready to go, Mrs Peters tried to push the box into her handbag. It was too big. Mrs Hale snatched it and hid it in the pocket of her big coat. "Well, Henry," said the county attorney facetiously, "at least we found out that she was not going to quilt it. She was going to — what is it you call it, ladies?" Mrs Hale's hand lay against her coat pocket. "We call it — knot it, Mr Henderson."
1. What do the women find in the red box, and what does it tell them?
2. What do the two women do as the men prepare to leave — and what do they say about it?
1. The dead canary, wrapped in silk, its neck wrung. It tells them the whole story: Wright killed the one singing thing left in Minnie's silent life — and that was the moment something broke.
2. They hide it. The box won't fit in Mrs Peters's handbag, so Mrs Hale conceals it in her coat pocket. They never discuss it aloud — not then, not ever. The last words of the story are Mrs Hale's quiet answer: "We call it — knot it, Mr Henderson."
This whole story is one long act of deduction: two women looking at evidence and working out what happened in the past. English does exactly that with modal perfects — a modal verb + have + past participle. Master them here, where every clue in the kitchen demands one.
Use must have, can't have or might have + a past participle. Keep the verb from the first sentence.
1. I'm certain the killer knew the house well. → The killer the house well.
2. It's impossible that a burglar did it — nothing was taken. → A burglar it — nothing was taken.
3. Perhaps Minnie heard the men laughing at her kitchen. → Minnie the men laughing at her kitchen.
1. The killer must have known the house well.
2. A burglar can't have done it — nothing was taken.
3. Minnie might have heard the men laughing at her kitchen. (may have heard / could have heard also work)
Complete each deduction with must have, can't have, might have or would have. The past participle is already there.
1. Nothing was stolen, so it been a burglar.
2. The stitching suddenly goes wild — something terrible happened while she was sewing.
3. At first the women wonder if the cat got the bird — but there was no cat in the house.
4. There was a gun in the house. A furious stranger used it — a rope, in the night, is a different kind of anger.
1. can't have (near-certain it didn't happen)
2. must have (near-certain it did)
3. might have (only a possibility — soon ruled out)
4. would have (what you'd confidently expect in that imagined case)
Fill each gap with must have, can't have, might have or would have — then read the finished paragraph aloud.
Life at the bottom of that hollow been silent and bitterly cold. The canary been the only voice left in the house — a little song where there was no other. It been the cat that broke the cage: there was no cat. No — Wright torn the door from its hinge and wrung the bird's neck. And when Minnie found it, something in her finally snapped — we can never know the exact moment. The men searched the bedroom and the barn; they never guessed that the whole story had been lying in a sewing basket all along.
must have been silent · the canary would have been the only voice (must have also works) · it can't have been the cat · Wright must have torn the door · something might have finally snapped
Every clue in this story is a modal perfect waiting to be said aloud: evidence in, deduction out.
Hold on to these — you'll want them in the Speak tab, where you'll deduce the whole story out loud, just as the women did.
You have the story and the words. Now push the ideas outward — argue, disagree, change your mind. Do all of this out loud. There are no right answers here, only good reasons.
The title cuts deep: in 1917, Minnie's courtroom jury would have been made up entirely of men — women could not serve. The only jurors who truly understand her life are the two women in her kitchen, and they deliver their verdict in silence. What makes someone a genuine "peer"? Should juries be made of peers — and is that even possible? Who would be your peers, in that sense?
The men hunt for "something important" and find nothing; the women read a half-wiped table, erratic stitches and a broken hinge — and find everything. Two ways of seeing, one truth. Where else does this happen — fields where the official experts overlook what insiders see at once? Think of medicine, workplaces, technology, history.
Mrs Peters is "married to the law" — the sheriff's wife — yet she helps conceal the one piece of evidence that would supply a motive. Build the strongest possible case that the women committed a serious crime. Then build the strongest possible case that they delivered the only real justice available in 1917. Which case do you actually believe?
In the story, the kitchen is the women's world and the law is the men's — and neither can read the other. A century on, how much has changed? Where do separate "worlds" still exist — between generations, professions, town and countryside, online and offline — and what gets lost in the space between them?
This is the heart of the lesson — do all of it out loud. The timer is there to keep you going: fill the time with detail rather than escaping it.
Tell the story of A Jury of Her Peers in your own words, as if to someone who has never heard it. Move through the arc: the bleak farmhouse in the hollow → Hale's account ("a rope around his neck") → "nothing here but kitchen things" → the half-finished work → the erratic stitching → the broken birdcage → the canary in the silk → the look between the two women → "We call it — knot it."
Use at least three modal perfects at the moments of deduction, and work in five of today's key words.
Pick one position and argue it as persuasively as you can: "What Mrs Hale and Mrs Peters did was the only true justice available" or "No one may privately decide what evidence a court is allowed to see." Then switch: for one minute, make the best possible case for the side you disagree with.
It is twenty years later. County attorney Henderson, now grey-haired, reopens the old Wright file and finally works it out. Speak as him: reconstruct, with modal perfects, everything he now realises — what must have happened in that house over the years, what the stitching and the birdcage must have meant, what can't have been true, and what the two quiet women in the kitchen might have been carrying out under his nose the whole time.