Ortiz has a master's degree in English Literature and teaches at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. In the following essay, she addresses the significance of women's subjective experience in Glaspell's portrayal of legal justice in "A Jury of Her Peers. "

When Mrs. Hale says to Mrs. Peters, "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?" she was talking about a shared female subjectivity.

A good way to understand subjectivity is to imagine that all people are subjects. As subjects of their particular environments, their identities are constructed by the times, geography, gender, age, and any number of things that make them who they are. People's actions, thoughts. and feelings are informed by all these circumstances. This individual perspective is the person's subjectivity...