Question

Select the correct answer.

What is the central idea of this excerpt from “A Jury of Her Peers” by Susan Glaspell?

The county attorney did not heed her. "No sign at all of any one having come in from the outside," he said to Peters, in the manner of continuing an interrupted conversation. "Their own rope. Now let's go upstairs again and go over it, piece by piece. It would have to have been someone who knew just the—"

The stair door closed behind them and their voices were lost.

The two women sat motionless, not looking at each other, but as if peering into something and at the same time holding back. When they spoke now it was as if they were afraid of what they were saying, but as if they could not help saying it.

"She liked the bird," said Martha Hale, low and slowly. "She was going to bury it in that pretty box."

"When I was a girl," said Mrs. Peters, under her breath, "my kitten—there was a boy took a hatchet, and before my eyes—before I could get there—" She covered her face an instant. "If they hadn't held me back I would have"—she caught herself, looked upstairs where footsteps were heard, and finished weakly—"hurt him."

Then they sat without speaking or moving.

"I wonder how it would seem," Mrs. Hale at last began, as if feeling her way over strange ground—"never to have had any children around?" Her eyes made a slow sweep of the kitchen, as if seeing what that kitchen had meant through all the years. "No, Wright wouldn't like the bird," she said after that—"a thing that sang. She used to sing. He killed that too." Her voice tightened.

A.
the different ways things are perceived by men and women
B.
the difference in intelligence between men and women
C.
the unbiased nature of men and the loyal nature of women
D.
the gender neutrality between men and women

Answer 1

A

Step-by-step explanation:

I think this is called the Trifles, first produced about mid WWI (1916). The dominant theme is that men and women see things quite differently. Whereas the men look for a smoking gun and a logical explanation of what happened, the women see exactly what occurred. They use little things to piece it together, like the dead bird. They knew what the men did not: Mrs. Wright was mistreated and bullied by her husband. Suddenly, she snapped and killed him.

The women were very sympathetic and after they outlined what happened, they covered up the clues.

Definitely, without any doubt at all, the answer is A.