On Whether Sethe was Right or Not (Venkatesh)

This is a follow-up to our class discussion today. I think Ms. Landres' misgivings have to be taken very seriously. As I'm thinking now, either Sethe was right to do it, or wrong, or beyond right and wrong -- that is, beyond judgment or self-judgment. If right, she might be right in principle and in the practical decision (that there are some things worse than death and she has a responsibility to protect her kids from that), or right in principle but wrong in practical decision (there are some things worse than death but no mother has the right to kill her kids). If wrong, she is wrong in both principle and application, or, again, only one of them. If she is beyond judgment, would you be willing to grant the same exemption from judgment to other parents who abuse or even kill their kids from what seems to them to be good moral principles? These parents are, sadly, not that rare. If you're not willing to grant this to other parents, who all might have different relations to severe trauma, can you nake a case that  Sethe is special? 
   Your thoughts are welcome, as always. 

Comments

  1. Elena TalamanteMay 26, 2021 at 5:07 PM

    This is definitely a huge jump, but as we discussed this in class I felt like I had a new insight into Baby Suggs response to Sethe’s attempts to kill her children. Baby Suggs turned off her ability to love her children because of her loss. When she was freed, she taught her followers that everything could be taken from them except their hearts. Their hearts would always be in their power. But then she witnessed Sethe’s love for her children and the way that she would rather they die than be returned to slavery, and somehow this form of love would stay more pure after their deaths than Baby Suggs’s version of not loving so wholly. This perhaps revealed a flaw in Baby Suggs’s teachings and a hypocrisy that she had to face when Sethe revealed the love she had for her children. Everything that Baby Suggs had relied on in her freedom was undermined in a single gruesome moment. I have no real foundation for this claim, but it seemed viable to me during our discussion and would love to hear what others think.

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