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CHRISTOPHER DEMUTH: Today we are here to discuss a short story by Susan Glaspell, "A Jury of
Her Peers." Susan Glaspell was born in 1876 in Davenport, Iowa. She grew up there, attended
Drake University in Des Moines, and immediately after graduating worked for several years
as a reporter at the Des Moines Daily News and other local newspapers, but she discovered
early on that her interest was in writing fiction. She moved to Chicago did graduate
studies at the University of Chicago and began writing short stories published in magazines
which in those days published a lot of fiction, weekly magazines of one sort or another, and
they were immediate hits. Her first novel, The Glory of the Conquered published in 1909
became a national bestseller and drew a rave review from the New York Times.
Although she was widely regarded during her lifetime, widely followed, Glaspell is little
read or performed today, with one major exception "A Jury of Her Peers,î the story we will
be discussing today. It was published in 1917 based on a play named Trifles that she had
written and produced in Provincetown the year before, both were in turn based upon a true
*** that had taken place at the turn of the century in Des Moines, which she had covered
and become very closely interested in as a young girl. The short story was an immediate
hit. It was highly controversial, many readers regarded it as highly disturbing in its plot
and denouement, and it was anthologized in that year and in many, many years throughout
her lifetime. It was rediscovered in the 1970s by the feminist movement and it has become
a staple of women's studies courses in colleges and universities in recent decades.
So that's a little background about Susan Glaspell and ìA Jury of Her Peersî and Iíd
now like to ask Amy to tell us a little about this story.
AMY KASS: Sure. The plot of the story is deceptively simple. And Iíll basically really just rehearse
the plot. A farmer, John Wright, has been found by a neighbor, Mr. Hale strangled in
his bed by a rope. His wife, Mrs. Wright, born Minnie Foster, has been arrested and
accused of the ***. The story takes place the next day when Sheriff Peters along with
the attorney, the county attorney, Mr. Henderson, the witness Mr. Hale and the wives of the
sheriff as well as Mr. Hale, Mrs. Peters and Martha Hale respectively, visit the Wright
house. The men go to seek evidence that might convict the accused; the women to gather things
to bring to the accused in jail. The two women, formerly unfamiliar to one another, spend
their time downstairs looking at kitchen things which are dismissed by the men as insignificant
or as mere trifles, while the men, the ìrealî investigators, search the bedroom upstairs
and the barn outside. The men come up empty, not so the women. Much more penetrating in
their vision, they piece together the sort of married life that Mrs. Wright must have
lived. And from a series of cluesóthe unfinished work in the kitchen, bad stitching on a quilt
she had been sewing, the unhinged door on the canary cage and finally the corpse of
a strangled canaryóthey reconstruct Mrs. Wrightís motive. In silent collusion, Mrs.
Hale and Mrs. Peters choose not to disclose the clues that would reveal this motive. Thus
they tacitly constitute themselves as a jury of her peers and they judge and acquit Mrs.
Wright of any wrongdoing.
CHRISTOPHER DEMUTH: As I said in my introduction this has become a canon of the feminist literature
in recent decades. What is it that qualifies this as a particularly feminist statement?
DIANA SCHAUB: I guess you could see the story as a response to women's exclusion from public
life, not voters, not participating on juries
CHRISTOPHER DEMUTH: Women could not be on juries at this time.
DIANA SCHAUB: At this time right. The date is 1917, it's before the suffrage amendment
and before the change in jury service, so you can see it's a kind of brief for womenís
inclusion, broader inclusion in public life. One thing that interests me about it is that
it proceeds not by making the argument for women's equality but really making an argument
for women's superiority. So it's not just possible to read it as a feminist text but
really as a female chauvinism, that the women really put the men to shame. The men believe
that they are superior; they practice really irritating condescension towards the women.
CHRISTOPHER DEMUTH: They're very condescending, they're in charge.
DIANA SCHAUB: It's the women who in their quiet modest way figure all this out.
AMY KASS: I would add to that. The reader is urged to rethink the meaning of victim
in this story. Mr. Wright is the one who's been killed, but the real trial seems to be
of John Wright in particular, and of men in general, while Mrs. Wright comes to be seen
as the victim. And that has something to do with the condescending ways in which the men
speak about what the women do, not only what they do, but also their stupidity. ëThey
wouldnít even recognize evidence if they saw it.í But it also has to doóand this
is a classic feminist move, I suspectóthere's a transformation of the women in this story.
Mrs. Hale whose remorse for never having visited her old friend Minnie Foster all the years
of her married life, she turns from remorse into activism. She starts repairing the quilt,
the quilting that she had done. While Mrs. Peters, who is to begin with seems very, very
timid and subservient to her husband suddenly is transformed by recalling events that occurred
earlier in her life-the death of her cat, who was axed, and the kind of terrible rage
that she had as a result of that, as well as the death of her first child, when she
was on the plains. AMY KASS: And of course, the activism is shown
in the collusion at the end. They become the judges; they become the ones who acquit.
DIANA SCHAUB: And it's in a way the entire male sex that is put on trial because the
behavior of the men in the story is somewhat tamped down version of what John Wright has
done to his wife.
LEON KASS: well, (laughter) . . .equal time. . .No, I understand. I think the gender differences
are obviously very important to the story and even if you didn't know the author's feminist
history, you could tell that the gender differences are very important to the author, at least
as displayed in the story. This is life in the rural great plains of a hundred years
ago. Itís an arduous life, it's a farming life, and there is a division of labor of
different spheres, the women tend the inside, they tend the kitchen and the hearth, they
provide for the daily-ness of daily life. And the job of the men is arduously to make
a living and at least through the law to protect and keep the peace.
It is connected with different views of the world the women have a much more interior
view of things whereas the men look at the surface. The men look for the evidence, the
women see through the evidence to its meaning. I mean, the men are coldly rational, the women
attend life through feeling. And maybe those are products of culture of the time, maybe
they have something to do with differences in men and women. The stories show the inadequacy,
never mind the condescension of the men, the story shows the inadequacy of a merely male
oriented, external, rational understanding of the events of life. The men are supposed
to be making it possible for domestic life to flourish. But they can't read the truth
of domestic life in the kind of way that makes them understand this particular assault on
domestic life. Itís only the women who understand what it is that's to be defended that enables
them really to see the truth of what's happened.
AMY KASS: But it's not simply on the basis of their feeling. They see evidence that the
men would never even look at. And our attention is drawn over and over again to their discernment
and their seeing.
DIANA SCHAUB: But isn't that connected with their empathy? It seems to me at every point
itís the women's empathy that enables them to see the things that men donít see. Their
superior cognition is really linked to some kind of emotional intelligence. And that this
accords with kind of traditional reading of the differences between the sexes. The difference
is that the men don't seem to have any respect for what the women do. You might have a separate
spheres arrangement where both sides would be occasionally, ëwell that's how women areí
or ëthat's how men areí--sort of tolerant of one another's foibles but still very respectful
and that seems to me itís missing here . . . these guys really are irritating.
LEON KASS: I grant that they are irritating; partly the question is in what tone of voice
some of that banter takes place. Mr. Hale is responsible for some of the worst things.
In fact his wife is explicitly known to be his superior, because she's afraid when he
speaks he's going to wander off like he's illogical, like he's a little boy pronouncing
at school
DIANA SCHAUB: But not just that. She says I was worried that he would say something
that would make things harder for Minnie Foster. So in other words, that's almost her first
statement and she's already biased, her sympathies are already with. . .
LEON KASS: She might be biased but she also takes his measure and he sort of good-naturedly
makes these kind of disparaging remarks--partly I think to deal with his discomfort, partly
to ingratiate himself with the party of the men. The county attorney makes this sort of
nasty remark, and then sort of remembering his manners and thinking like a politician,
thinking what his future, says ëWell, we can't do without the ladies,í but that's
not an appeal for the women's vote because the women don't vote, which means that itís
a world in which you have to be careful how you speak about the ladies because the women
will somehow influence how the men behave.
DIANA SCHAUB: But the effect of these speeches on the women is actually to make them resentful.
And the effect of these speeches from the men reaches kind of a culmination on page
288óìthere was a laugh at the ways of women. Then the county attorney said, ëLet's ride
out to the barn to clear this up.í ëI don't see how there's anything so strange,í Mrs.
Hale said resentfully.î It seems to me itís right after that moment it reaches this kind
of crescendo for her; that she takes this first step to actually alter the evidence
and hide the evidence, her first step towards the obstruction of justice. Sheís lost all
respect for the world of man's justice.
AMY KASS: Thatís why I would say it's not just sympathy but also cognition.
LEON KASS: The last comments and the overall picture I agree with but let me just say that
if you're a lawman and you're coming in to investigate a *** and you've got people
standing in the kitchen talking about the broken jars of preserved fruit or worrying
about the quilts, it's going to strike you that you're dealing with the small things
when the large thing is finding out who did it and enforcing the law. To use the word
ìtriflesî is insulting but there is a certain way, it's really strange here she's on trial
for *** and she's worrying about her preserves. Thatís odd, at least thatís odd to me.
AMY KASS: But if she's on trial for ***, you as a law enforcer or as someone who's
investigating the crime should be interested in learning as much as you can about what
she's been doing.
LEON KASS: Absolutely right. The men are obtuse, they don't see very well, but there is at
least . . . if you simply set it up in this sort of stark way, and you sort of dismiss
the perspective of the men, you lose in a way the opportunity to really think as a puzzle.
Which sort of orientation is closest to doing the work of justice and judging and enforcing
the law?
CHRISTOPHER DEMUTH: Let me say a word about the other man, the man who's not there because
he was murdered the night before, John Wright. John Wright is not simply a man who has the
hard life of a farmer and providing for a home. Heís clearly a terrible husband. He's
cold, he has no sympathy for his wife, I think we're not supposed to think it is simply the
perspective of Martha Hale, Mrs. Hale, but the truth of the matter that he did in a sense
kill Minnie. She used to be a singer, she used to be a happy person, and she was clearly
on the brink of a nervous breakdown at the time her canary was strangled. She had this
one little piece of happiness in her life and something happened and he came in and
he wrung the canary's neck. He killed the canary. And we have Martha saying out loud
and to herself toward the end of the story that Minnie--the Minnie that she knew, the
old Minnie Foster had been killed. She had been killed. So in a sense Minnie was killed,
the canary was killed, before Mr. Wright was killed. Iím not saying it justified what
transpired, but it's an element of the acquisition of sympathy for Minnie.
There's another point that really does not fit the feminist story here, which is one
that I found one of the most powerful ones, which is that Mrs. Hale as the evidence becomes
clearer and clearer comes to blame herself. She actually says I am the one who was guilty.
The crime was mine. She uses those terms. For 20 years she'd been living just down the
road. She knew Minnie--they'd been friends when they were girls. She knew that she had
a hard life, Minnie did, they had no children, her husband was hardworking but a fairly rough
and cold man, and she never came over once. The first time she set foot in the house was
the day after Minnie had been arrested for *** and she blames herself more and more
and more for not having been a good neighbor. And at the end it's not just in my view sympathy
for Minnie but guilt about her own nonfeasance, her own lack of friendship toward her neighbor
that accounts for her decision. Mrs. Peters is a different matter.
AMY KASS: I agree with you but I think that is not incompatible with the feminist reading
of the story. DIANA SCHAUB: I would add to that I think the solidarity element is strong
there, in other words part of what she's guilty of is failing in this solidarity with other
women and she is now going to rectify that. And she does it partly through the alliance
she strikes up with Mrs. Peters, an alliance that really transforms Mrs. Peters.
LEON KASS: I like that but Iím not sure you need to elevate this into a large sort of
social commentary on the state of women generally. The reason that she didnít visit the house
was that it was a cheerless place. She says she let Minnie Foster die for lack of life.
In other words, there was no life in the house in fact, and so she let the spirit of Minnie
Foster die and she comes I think to see, and both of the women comes to see as Chris I
think has indicated that in a certain way the killing of Mr. Wright is the taking of
revenge for the strangling of the canary which is symbolically the killing of Minnie Foster.
Mrs. Hale always calls her Minnie Foster, she never calls her Mrs. Wright, so that they
somehow see this. They identify with her but they don't somehow say the plight of all women
is the plight of Minnie Foster. They see that they have somehow failed as neighbors. They
understand that a crime has been committed here and they become, as it were, they defend
the avenging angel of Minnie Foster and become in a way her defenders.
CHRISTOPHER DEMUTH: Let me get right to the heart of things by asking each of you whether
you believe that their decision to withhold evidence, that is the canary with the wrung
neck, which itself was a crime that makes one an accessory after the fact of ***--do
we approve of their decision or do we disapprove of it? Were they right to do it? Leon?
LEON KASS: Mainly no. I don't approve of it. I think as a citizen I deplore it. I mean
I think whatever your feelings of sympathy might be for the accused, the law requires
that at least with respect to the investigation we disclose what happened, and if one wants
to plead for mercy on the basis of sympathy one could do it at the trial or one can do
it at sentencing or at various other times. But there's a curious thing--I said mainly
no and as a citizen I continue to say no, but it's very curious. The story's about a
jury of her peers, namely Mrs. Wright's peers. But the reader is put also in a position of
constituting him- or herself part of a jury of the peers of these two women who withheld
evidence. And I find myself sympathetic to these women. In other words, you read the
story, you're able to see the whole crime through their eyes, and you can say ìthe
law is the lawî but there's such a thing as either equity or justice. And itís not
just female solidarity. Theyíve understood something. Theyíve found a notion of justice
in which Minnie Foster Wright is not guilty. And we're as a jury of their peers, we are
so sympathetic to them that our initial presumption that they've done wrong is at least qualified.
So Iím bothered, I mostly think they did wrong, but why is it that Iím so sympathetic
to what they've done?
AMY KASS: Because you are both a human being and a citizen.
LEON KASS: It's not that Iím a sappy human being who's been softened up by decades of
feminism.
AMY KASS: I'm not saying sympathy is sap. LEON KASS: It's that they have enabled me
to understand the entire crime, because they understand the inner meaning of the house,
they understand that this is in some ways just--in a certain way, Mr. Wright got what
he deserved. Thatís what you mean by justice, and there is a sense of justice which is not
simply law-abidingness.
AMY KASS: I would agree with that. I would say that as a citizen they should not have
withheld the evidence. But you can't help but feel some kind of sympathy for what they're
doing as you read along with this. There's one thing that's said about Mr. Wright in
addition to the fact he's reputed to be a good man in town and he doesn't drink and
pays his debts and he doesn't beat her, but Mrs. Hale says, thereís a quote, "He's like
a raw wind that gets to the bone." Now anyone with a soul in her body. . .
LEON KASS: Look, there are bad marriages, there are bad marriages, theyíre very sad,
they don't generally justify killing your husband. This has got to be more than sympathy.
I didnít say I simply sympathized with these women. Theyíre moved by female solidarity
in part. Iím not. Iím moved by justice.
AMY KASS: I think they are too.
DIANA SCHAUB: There is a larger justice that they achieved here, is that right? I guess
I 'm not prepared to agree with that. Thereís a *** that goes unpunished, theyíve committed
obstruction of justice. Thereís also been really kind of a loss of marital trust, particularly
bringing Mrs. Peters into this. Sheís married to the law, and now she's going to be engaged
in this cover-up for the next few months. I don't see that theyíve really done Minnie
Foster any favor and it seems to me the women have proved their own unsuitability for ever
serving on a jury or ever being granted the vote and inclusion on juries. I mean, juries
are really at the heart of our justice system. This is an issue central for a self-governing
people.
LEON KASS: With the exception of your hesitation to put women on juries, I agree that they've
done something wrong and justice in the formal sense certainly has not been served, but the
question is why is it that people reading this story who are not responding to a feminist
argument and who are not responding to female solidarity nevertheless say you know what,
theyíve seen something insofar as they've constituted themselves a jury. They may have
done justice here. In other words, they may have achieved the right results.
DIANA SCHAUB: Because of the authorís brilliance and because of extenuating circumstances but
as you said they really should be brought in at a later point in the procedures. So
they have short-circuited the procedure. Theyíve really taken it upon themselves to be the
detective, the judge, the jury, to really be God himself and to mete out this sort of
divine justice. AMY KASS: Let me just walk for a second between
the two of you. I agree with both of you. There is a subversion of justice, legal justice.
But the justice that you're talking about is different from legal justice, I suspect.
I think there's a certain sense in which Mr. Wright gets exactly what he deserves.
DIANA SCHAUB: Yeah, but that can't be the full story. These women only see the woman's
side. I take it he has a story too.
CHRISTOPHER DEMUTH: Yeah, what if there were a bunch of men putting together his side of
the story?
DIANA SCHAUB: Yeah, his hard soul was deformed at some earlier point in his own life. And
that's a kind of omniscience that human beings don't have. The women here are partisan from
the beginning. They make no attempt to understand John Wright.
AMY KASS: Diana, if you look at it from the point of view of Mrs. Wright, Mrs. WrightÖ
Minnie Foster, if we agree with what Chris and Leon were suggesting, namely that Minnie
Foster has been killed, she's one of the three deaths, it's a kind of metaphorical death
but nevertheless a death, she's afterwards when sheís Mrs. Wright she becomes frenzied,
the only time you see her quiet, still, is when they come upon her when Mr. Hale comes
upon her pleating her apron, sitting quite still. She seems to be at rest. She seems
to be quite satisfied. She has avenged the death that he committed, or the crime that
he committed.
CHRISTOPHER DEMUTH: Are our views at all affected by the portrayal of the criminal justice system
itself in the story? This will be a jury of men. And this man who's to be the prosecutor
is used to making use of sarcasm. And so it may be that one of the things that's certainly
on their mind is that there will be, to some degree, a lack of justice in the proceedings.
If they just turn this bird over to the sheriff as we know him and the prosecutor as we know
him, they're kind of imagining some kind of a circus, a court where the conviction is
preordained, and a lot of the elements that went into the *** will not be presented
to the jury, will not receive a sympathetic hearing.
DIANA SCHAUB: No, I don't know about that, because we're told that juries, male juries,
tend to be very sympathetic to women. And the county prosecutor says even though there's
all this sort of circumstantial evidence, without a motive...I mean, he really is in
quest of a motive in the same way that the women are, he just doesn't arrive at it. He
says that without a motive, and he's looking for something dramatic, some heat of passion
kind of moment...so I think the understanding is that in what the women have done that this
will lead to Minnie's acquittal.
CHRISTOPHER DEMUTH: I think that we're intended to have a view of the criminal justice system
as less than a perfect embodiment of disinterested law, and that this is an additional element
that influences them to make the very grave decision that they make.
CHRISTOPHER DEMUTH: Where do you think all of this ought to come into play in a jury
trial?
AMY KASS: Where, what is all of this? The sympathy?
CHRISTOPHER DEMUTH: Where would Minnie's motives, the circumstances of her life, the circumstances
surrounding the *** of her husband, where would...does this have no role? Is it just,
she did it, and that's the end of it? Do we take no account of this in deciding what is
to become of Minnie?
AMY KASS: No, I think that the investigation, like all criminal investigations, should really
be fact driven. And the evidence should be turned in. But all the other aspects of the
jury at the trial, the prosecution, the jury's hearing, the judgment...I think those other
things could be taken into consideration.
LEON KASS: I too am inclined to say that the place for these considerations really is in
the domain of sentencing and so on. And I think one should probably be more rigorous
in the prosecution of murders than, let's say, certain petty crimes. Look, wouldn't
you think that if you had a man on trial for robbing food from a grocery store that, as
part of the consideration of guilt or innocence it would matter and would be appropriate to
ask whether or not he did this to feed a house full of children who had no food, like Jean
Valjean?
DIANA SCHAUB: Well, no. I would stick with this only comes in at the sentencing...or
it comes in at the phase of the prosecution; in other words, when the prosecution decides
what charges he's going to bring, is he even going to pursue this? But that at the phase
of the jury trial, that jury is charged with a determination of the facts, and it seems
to me all of this talk of empathy is really disintegrative of our system. I mean, it's
very hard in an age of compassion to speak about empathy, to speak against empathy, because
it makes you seem antipathetic, but I'd like to make the case against empathy. A special
quality of judges and jurors is impartiality: Lady Justice is always pictured as blind-folded.
Why is she blind-folded? Because she doesn't see persons. If she sees persons, she might
empathize with some rather than others, and that leads to a skewing of...So God's justice
is omniscient, he takes the blindfold off, but none of these human beings are capable
of that.
AMY KASS: But look, Diana, in the best of all possible worlds, justice is blind and
we can be impartial. But, isn't the reason that jury selection has become such an art,
is because we do acknowledge and expect people to bring their own opinions, their own common
sense...not specific things, this crime was done to someone in my house and therefore
I'm going to get that person, not specifically, but in general.
DIANA SCHAUB: Yeah, I would say that some of that development has been not so desirable
either. But it seems to me, yes, impartiality is an aspiration, we're not going to attain
it, but it's an aspiration worth upholding. And, omniscience is not a more easily attained
standard, so we better stick with impartiality.
LEON KASS: But when a jury reaches a verdict, on the facts, is it enough to say: yes, Mrs.
Wright was the one who put the rope around her husband's neck. Is that all that the jury
is supposed to say?
DIANA SCHAUB: It would depend on the charge the prosecutor brought. If he brought a charge
of first-degree ***, then they would have to also determine whether it was pre-meditated
and willful, whether it met the standards of first-degree ***.
LEON KASS: Ok, so these are judgments not just on the overt, external facts, but also
on the really, whatever it is that would meet the standard...
CHRISTOPHER DEMUTH: There are degrees of ***.
DIANA SCHAUB: It does seem to me that in this story it really is a denial of that aspiration
of impartiality and it substitutes another standard, a jury of one's peers. And even
though people use this phrase a lot, that phrase is not in the Constitution. And it
seems to me that a jury of one's peers is proper to a regime characterized by inequality,
or a class-based regime, like England, where it originated. But that in America, where
the premise is equality, that we shouldn't think so much about a jury of one's peers
constituted as folks just like you--your gender, your race, your little neighborhood--but instead
in terms of impartiality that every citizen ought to aspire to.
CHRISTOPHER DEMUTH: Are these two women actually jurors? Is that a good metaphor? Is the title
appropriate? I think not, for the reasons thatÖI mean it's a term of art, it fits with
the story, but in fact, even if women could've been jurors, then neither of them would have
made it on to the jury: one was her neighbor, one was the sheriff's wife. And what the Constitution
guarantees is a speedy trial by an impartial jury.
LEON KASS: Diana's raised some doubts about the wisdom of going this route, I mean we
do have, according to the Constitution, the passage that you read, it's not just an impartial
jury, it's an impartial jury of the state and district where the crime shall have been
committed. And, I guess the question is: what is the Constitution getting at when it's saying
of the state and district? Is that a sort of short-hand of for people sort of like you,
people who know the circumstances of your life, and isn't that...if so, isn't that sort
of halfway to saying 'people who might be at least sufficiently sympathetic to the life
in which the crimes have been committed, so that they could judge most richly and not
simply abstractly according to the letter of some law?
I take it that the requirement of a common district, community, is not so much to produce
a sympathetic jury, as to produce a jury that would be free of negative prejudices. In other
words, it's trying to weed out people who couldn't possibly understand the world in
which this takes place--not that you would thereby gain neighbors who would be more inclined
to be friendly, because presumably both the victim and the accused are from the same community
and therefore of equal standing before the law.
CHRISTOPHER DEMUTH: For this crime, Chicago would be too far away. Both geographically
and in terms of culture and understanding of what...
LEON KASS: OutlookÖYeah, yeah.
CHRISTOPHER DEMUTH: I wondered as three editors of this book who selected this story to be
included in a section about justice, law abidingness, and public order in America...if you regard
this story as saying..we've talked about its feminist themes, and we've talked about universal
themes, the nature of justice and the practicalities of a criminal justice system...Is there anything
about this story that is quintessentially American? Does it tell us something about
America or the American character, or is it just a story on these other things that happened
to be plopped in the middle of the author's hometown?
AMY KASS: It really is a kind of window into America. What I had in mind, what came to
mind immediately was that very haunting picture at the end of Tocqueville's Democracy in America
of the pioneer woman...whose life is very difficult and very harsh. She tries to bring
to the frontier all of the little things of civilization. But she's basically drained
of her life. And one of the things you see very vividly if you really try to get inside
these characters here is...you get a picture of what it must have been like to be a woman
on the frontier, or in the plains when the weather was terrible and canning took all
summer and laundry was a big deal, there are no washing machines you have to get the water,
you have to boil the water, it's a whole day, whole week's affair, so it gave me a kind
of better understanding and I would say sympathy with that.
LEON KASS: Could I piggy back on this slightly? I thought you were going to say of the pioneer
woman in Tocqueville that she endured all of this because of her children. And what
you see in this story is the crucial difference of the house with children and the house without
children, that sacrifice in the house of Minnie Foster is not for the sake of the future..
AMY KASS: So it's really stark...
LEON KASS: It's very stark, it's the frontier without that for which the frontier has been
settled.
LEON KASS: But there's also something else, we've set this out on the frontier of the
Great Plains, it also partakes of a certain American sense of doing justice outside the
law. The sheriff is not always in town, the procedures are not always available...[AMY
KASS: The Westerns...] The westerns, and there's a lot of vigilante justice during this particular
time, not necessarily salutary. But there's something both good and bad about the American
impulse to make things right. And not to rely upon old and established traditions and institutions,
they step forward, they try to fix things, they try to make things right, and the law
is in a way suppose to do this for us, but we don't surrender altogether our sense of
our own rectitude, or what we think is needed--both for better and for worse.
CHRISTOPHER DEMUTH: Diana?
LEON KASS: You don't like that.
DIANA SCHAUB: Well, this, reading is paired with two other readings, one from Lincoln,
and Lincoln makes the case for absolute law abidingness, and this will be crucial especially
in the future to the preservation of self government, so you're right that this other
element is there [LEON KASS: very American], yes, very American, but Lincoln at least regards
it as something that needs to be corrected. But of course, the other reading, sandwiched
between the Lincoln and the Glaspell, is Martin Luther King's Letter from Birmingham Jail,
which says there are laws that are not laws because they're unjust, so I really do think
that with the array of these three pieces that students can really see all of the arguments
and reach their own conclusions.
CHRISTOPHER DEMUTH: Diana, Leon, Amy, thank you for a fascinating discussion.