Testily
The adverb testily means angrily, or in an irritated way. When you speak testily, you talk in an impatient, sharp voice.
A Jury of Her Peers By Susan Glaspell
… “I’d hate to have men comin’ into my kitchen,” she said testily — “snoopin’ round and criticizin’.”…
Reused Using definition
….she said angrily…
In “A Story Of An Hour” by Kate Chopin and “A Jury Of Her Peers” by Susan Glaspell both protagonist have different actions taken towards the death of their husbands.
In “A Story Of An Hour”. Mrs. Mallard, who was afflicted with heart trouble found out that her husband died from a railroad disaster. Immediately she started to weep in sorrow because she lost the person she loved the most. She would confine herself in a room feeling depressed that shes going to be all alone from now on. She then burst out saying that she was finally free over and over again “Free! Body and soul free!” (p2). I felt like she was repeating it over and over again because she can’t face the fact that she’s going to start a new life by herself now that she didn’t know what to do because she usually does it with her husband. Her emotions are building up at this point and then she sees her husband walk through the door unharmed, it was too much for her to take in due to the fact that she has heart troubles, she dies.
In “A Jury Of Her Peers” by Susan Glaspell, Mrs. Wright was taken into custody because Mr. Hale found her husband dead in bed with a rope around his neck. When Mr. Hale confronted her and asked her what had happen and who did it, she simply just laughed (p261). She showed no emotion due to the fact that her husband died, implying that it was her who killed him. Throughout the story it showed the events that led her to killing her own husband. For example when Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peter found the quilt they noticed that one of the stitching was poorly done saying that when she was doing it she was nervous. Shows that she was thinking about killing her husband if she should do it or not. Another example would be when they found the dead bird in the box. Shows that she had enough of how her husband didn’t like her to sing so she had to do something.
In, The Cottagette, I believe that Malda and Mr. Mathews marriage would be a harmonious and self-less love. Malda came to the Cottagette as place to relax but she end up falling in love with Ford Matthews. With this love, she took the advise of her friend, Lois, and she started to show herself as a homemaker by cooking all the time. Instead of Malda doing the things that she loved such as, embroidery, drawing, and painting, she wanted to do anything to “please Ford Mathews” (Page 51, p.2). So, this led to the kitchenette being installed at the Cottagette, making Mr. Mathews come frequently over to eat her meals, which she adored, and giving Malda a chance to show herself as a potentially good wife/homemaker in order for Mr. Mathews to marry her (Page 51, p.7). Furthermore, Malda stated that her love for Mr. Mathews would make her do much more than cooking to please him (Page 52, p.2).
As for Ford Mathews, he is a man that I think every woman would like to marry because he cared about the happiness of Malda. When he proposed to her to get married, he asked her to stop cooking because he saw that she was not doing the things that she loved (Page 53-54). Mr. Mathews realized that she gave up her artistic love to cook for him, however, he already loved Malda before she started to cook (Page 53-54). Mr. Matthews did not care if she was a good homemaker; he loved her because she was young, strong, wild, sweet, fragrant, and elusive like the wild flowers she loved (Page 54, p.11). He loved her because she was truly an artist in her special way, seeing beauty and giving it to others (Page 54, p.11). And, he loved her because she was rational, high-minded and capable of friendship, in spite of her cooking (Page 54, p.11). Therefore, this shows that Mr. Mathews fell in love with Malda because of her brains, personality, and qualities, not because she made the best bread. He encouraged Malda to do the things she loved and he cared about her desires as well. I am unsure when this story was written but if it was written during the 18th or 19th century, most men would not have the attributes of Mr. Mathews because all they would care about was their wife cooking, cleaning, and washing dishes. Also, the men in those times treated their wife as chattel or property.
In comparison to A Jury of her Peers, Mrs. Wright (Minnie Foster) had a contentious marriage. When I say contentious, I mean Mrs. Wright was living in fear throughout the duration of the marriage. The once “lively choirgirl that sang in the choir and wore pretty clothes,” was no longer lively (Page 268, p.1). Mrs. Wright’s marriage to her husband made her bound or chained to not doing the things she loved to do, which was singing. Therefore, she lived in silence until the time she killed her husband in order to be set free from his oppression. I also like to point out that Mr. Wright did not have self-less love like Mr. Mathews had. Mr. Wright was a “hard man” (Page 274 p.8) and he refused to make his wife do anything, which ultimately made Mrs. Wright always live in constant “nervousness” because, I believe that, if she did not go by his rules or the way he wanted things to be done, he would get upset with her (Page 272).
In “The Story of An Hour,” the protagonist, Mrs. Mallard, is informed about the railroad disaster where her husband was killed. She is immediately devastated. “She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister’s arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone.” After Mrs. Mallard enters her room, she sat into the arm chair facing the open window. As she observes the landscape, she felt something possessing her. She began to whisper, “free, free, free!” She came into realization that she was free, free from her husband, who probably prevented her from living her life the way she pleased. In the end, Mr. Mallard walks through the door. At the sight of her husband, Mrs. Mallard dies.
In “A Jury of Her Peers,” the protagonist Mrs. Wright, or Minnie Foster before her marriage, has murdered her husband. The cause of this I assume was because just as Mr. Mallard, Mr. Wright prevented his wife from living how she wanted to. Mrs. Hale finds Mrs. Wright’s bird with a broken neck, wrapped in silk. The bird used to sing along with Mrs. Wright, which was something she loved to do as Minnie Foster. As her husband probably despised this, he wrung the neck of the bird to prevent it from ever singing again. This was the same exact way Mr. Wright died, from his neck. Mrs. Wright probably wanted her husband to feel the pain of that what her bird felt.
I judge the two protagonists differently. Mrs. Mallard’s husband was killed in an accident, while Mrs. Wright’s husband was murdered. The settings of both stories seem to be around the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Today women have more rights than they did at the time of these stories. Reading them today gives a clearer understanding of why they reacted the way they did towards their husbands.
Gallantry noun \ˈga-lən-trē\
a : an act of marked courtesy
b : courteous attention to a lady
“And yet,” said he, with the gallantry of a young politician. “for all their worries, what would we do without the ladies?”
A Jury of Her Peers page 265
Initially I was thinking of gallant where it it means brave. This made no sense to me “…a gallantry of a young politician…” Young politicians are rather foolish as opposed to brave. The other definition of gallantry made much more sense in this case.
Genial adj –
1. of or relating to marriage
2. inborn, native
3. favorable to growth
Source: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/genial
Paragraph 5 in A Jury of Her Peers.
“He was to a dot the kind of man who could get himself elected sheriff – a heavy man with a big voice, who was particularly genial with the law-abiding, as if to make it plain that he knew the difference between criminals and non-criminals.”
The law was sort of native to the sheriff. It can emphasized on hos he was a heavy man with a big voice and that he could get himself elected sheriff. It also says that he makes up for Mrs. Peter lack of resemblance as the sheriff’s wife by being extremely like a sheriff himself.
Kate Chopin’s, “The Story of an Hour” (1894) is about the reaction of a wife who is informed of a train accident that her husband supposedly died from. Mrs. Mallard, the protagonist of the story is informed of the news and like any typical wife would do, she burst into tears. The question is, is she crying in sorrow or crying in joy. It was revealed on the second page that she “loved him sometimes. Often she had not” which implies that she really didn’t love him at all. Mrs. Mallard appears to be in a different world at this point, staring blankly into the blue sky thinking about how things would be without him. Blood was warming her up as she recited “free, free, free!” In other words, she was really relieved the incident happened and knowing that her husband is gone, she is able to break free from the constraints her husband placed on her. However in the end, that vision of freedom was short lived. Upon the arrival of Mr.Mallard who was clueless of the accident, Mrs. Mallard’s joy fired back at her causing her to die from a heart attack which was “the joy that kills”.
Susan Glaspell’s, “A Jury of Her Peers” (1882), in a short summary is about an incident relating to the death of Mr. Wright and how Mrs. Wright can possibly be connected to it. Pretty much, Mrs. Wright wasn’t all that fond of her marriage. There was lots of evidence of a problem in their relationship. The investigators of the case, the Hales and the Peters were the ones who noticed signs of abuse and distress against Mrs. Wright. Based on the evidence found, it was concluded that Mrs. Wright did in fact killed her husband.
Both stories were made in the same timeline and can be related to how things are handled in this timeline. To be honest, in both stories, I think anyone can understand why each wife would think of their husbands that way. If the relationship goes to the point where one spouse resents the other, I think anyone would feel that way. This is why both stories can be related to how things are handled now. Setting in both stories play an important role because it pretty much brings us, the reader into the story. From “The Story of an Hour”, we are brought into the scenery and we can imagine how things look like. From “A Jury of Her Peers”, we are brought into the crime scene and we can picture how things appeared. In the end, I guess these examples are the other end results of an unhealthy relationship.
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