Secret Harboring of Fugitives --

¶ … Secret Harboring of Fugitives -- and Knowledge -- Susan Glaspell's "A Jury of Her Peers," and Joseph Conrad's "The Secret Sharer"

Both Joseph Conrad's "The Secret Sharer" and Susan Glaspell's "A Jury of Her Peers," depict law-abiding individuals who gradually come to identify with people who have violated the law. As a result of their identification with these individuals who have allegedly transgressed, the married women of Glaspell's tale and Conrad's nameless sea captain gain a new sense of identity. The women resolve to never allow another woman to be abused by her husband, and band together against the law who would condemn Mrs. Wright for striking back. The captain's ship is saved, but more importantly he gains a sense of psychological peace because of his feeling of unity or 'doubleness' with the condemned fugitive swimmer Leggatt.

In Susan Glaspell's "A Jury of Her Peers," the women of Dickson County gradually grow united in the realization that Mrs. Wright murdered her husband and was justified in doing so. Before, the women of the town like Mrs. Foster, Mrs. Hale, and Mrs. Peters were merely friends. But as they see the cruelty that has been perpetuated upon Mrs. Wright, first by her husband, then by the law, they are outraged. The sheriff and the men examining the scene make light of the women's small, detailed observations. The attitude of the men is summed up when Mr. Hale comments: "Oh, well' [he said]...with good-natured superiority, 'women are used to worrying over trifles,'" like preserves and canaries. But it is in these details that the entire life of the Wrights is spun out before the women's eyes, like a skein of cloth. The empty birdcage, the evidence of the bird's demise at the hands of Mr. Wright that motivated Mrs. Wright to turn against her husband in resistance, tells all. The women understand that the tiny creature was the only thing that made Mrs. Wright happy.

Together, the women resolve that this will not occur again, and they will not live in silence, side-by-side, while another woman dwells in a state of utter misery. They realize that behind the normal facade of the Wrights, potentially deadly violence was occurring. As summed up by Mrs. Hale: "I might 'a' known she needed help! I tell you, it's queer, Mrs. Peters. We live close together, and we live far apart. We all go through the same things -- it's all just a different kind of the same thing! If it weren't -- why do you and I understand? Why do we know -- what we know this minute?" The true crime, the women feel, is that she did not seek out help and "come over" to one of their homes, but rather dwelled in shame and silence over her plight, until it was too late, for both her favorite canary and herself.

Like "A Jury of Her Peers," Joseph Conrad's short story "The Secret Sharer" is also told in retrospect. The narrator is a sea captain who finds a man named Leggatt, drowning in the water, who seems to be his 'double,' much like the women of Glaspell's story perceive Mrs. Wright to be their double, or a physical mirror of their personal pain. Leggatt is also condemned as a murderer like Mrs. Wright, but rather than reject the fugitive, Conrad's narrator gives him a place to stay. The image of the law arises, but like the woman, the captain has already experienced a kind of internal, moral shift. Like the woman the captain cannot bear to morally condemn the murderer, or reveal the fact that Leggatt is on his ship when the authorities arrive. Captain Archbold wants to act according to the law, like the men of the Glaspell tale, but Leggatt's protective captain pretends the ship is empty and points out that Leggatt's actions helped save the ship during a storm.

The captain, from a law-abiding man, has suddenly become a man who will evade the law, because he mysteriously perceives himself to be the same as another man. Unlike the feminist identification or mirroring that occurs in the Glaspell tale, the Conrad tale's sense of a "mirror image" of two psychologically united selves is far more mysterious. Eventually, the captain agrees to allow Leggatt to swim to shore. He watches the white hat that he has given Leggatt as a kind of identifying mark, a trifle, the women of Dickson County might say, and rather than regretting his actions on the first ship he has commanded, he feels a sense of strange peace that he has allowed his double to escape.

The sea captain realizes that he will never be the same man, as the women realize that they will always have a shared kinship, now that they collectively understand what happened to Mrs. Wright. "I watched the hat -- the expression of my sudden pity for his mere flesh. It had been meant to save his homeless head from the dangers of the sun. And now -- behold -- it was saving the ship, by serving me for a mark to help out the ignorance of my strangeness. Ha! It was drifting forward, warning me just in time that the ship had gathered sternaway." The nameless captain has been saved, he feels, by this sense of connection with another -- his ship has been physically saved by the presence of Leggatt in the water, and somehow he has been saved internally like the fleeing man. Likewise, if anything ever happens to any of the women of the Glaspell tale, they will be saved because of their unity with one another.