The North American writer Susan Glaspell, in her short story "A Jury of Her Peers", tells about the female characters' situation involved in the resolution of John Wright's death, John is the husband of one of the female characters in the story. Even though the female characters are able to solve the mystery of John's death, they live under the patriarchal society rules. The story by Glaspell can be seemed as one feminist piece of literature. The story content exposes the inferior role of woman in society in comparison to men´s role. In her short story "A Jury of Her Peers", Susan Glaspell exposes how women are treated in a patriarchal society through men´s actions.
The first men´s action to expose the patriarchalism in society is the diminution of women's image and personality through sarcastic expressions. For example, a female character is judged and criticized because of her look according to her husband's position of sheriff. Apparently, a woman must comply with a certain image to be the sheriff's wife.
Glaspell in her story: "she didn't seem like a sheriff's wife. She was small and thin and didn't have a strong voice"[CITATION Sus p 39 l 5130 ]. In this extract from "A Jury of Her Peers", it can be seen how women are being evaluated or judged according to her husband's position. For a patriarchal society, women are unimportant and the man is who always excels. Women are like the amulet that man always carries by his side. From another text's extract it can be noticed, that in a patriarchal culture men´s personality and qualities are always admired. This is totally the contrary to women´s case, which are always overshadowed by man's presence.
But if Mrs. Peters didn't look like a sheriff's wife, Peters made it up in looking like a sheriff. 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.
