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The Mammy and the Gentleman:
Representations of Race, Class and Gender in Harper Lee’s To Kill a
Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman
Leoni Robbe
S1995332
Master’s Dissertation Literary Studies. Programme: Writing, Editing and
Mediating, University of Groningen.
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Table of contents
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Abstract
Harper Lee’s first novel To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) has received praise for its depiction of life in a small Southern town and for its message of empathy and equality, but has also faced criticism for the way it portrayed racial issues. The publication of an earlier manuscript for the novel in 2015, titled Go Set a Watchman, added new dimensions to its main characters. This paper examines the representation of race, class and gender in Lee’s novels, focusing on two characters, the black housekeeper Calpurnia and the narrator’s father, Atticus Finch. Calpurnia and Atticus can be considered to be manifestations of two prevalent Southern stereotypes: the Mammy and the Southern Gentleman.
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Introduction
Issues of race, gender and class have long played a central role in American literature. From nineteenth century classics such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Uncle Tom’s Cabin to the anti-Tom novels that were written in response to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “attack on slavery”, to the works that were written in the wake of the civil rights movement in the 1960s and 1970s; Southern race related novels are widely read and discussed
(MacKethan par. 14). Alongside race, gender has been an important factor in southern literature. Romantic ideas about young white southern women as fragile, almost fairylike creatures contrasted with the image of older de-sexualized large black women who take care of their white charges have become most prominent due to the novel Gone With the Wind, but novels that contradict this narrative, as well as novels that re-affirm it have been published since.
Writing about race in the South is complicated and while there is a large body of work about race and the South, it is often controversial. The journalist and writer Howell Raines said that “there is no trickier subject for a writer from the South than that of affection between a black person and a white one in the unequal world of segregation”, thus expressing the complexities many southern writers encounter when describing any race relations in the segregated south (par 21). For a white author writing during and in the segregated South it is hard to comprehend and access the inner lives of black characters, as the behaviour of African Americans and their interactions with white people were nearly always limited to what was permissible under Jim Crow law.
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draws heavily on Lee’s own experiences growing up in rural Alabama. Released to favourable reviews in 1960, Mockingbird became an immediate success which won Harper Lee the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961. The story of racial and moral (in)justice contrasted with an innocent child as the narrator earned the novel and its author millions of readers.
The first half of the novel is concerned with the childhood adventures of Scout, her brother Jem, and their neighbour Dill in the sleepy town of Maycomb, Alabama during the Great Depression. Most of their adventures involve the children’s mysterious neighbour Boo Radley who is never seen to leave his home. The second half of the novel focuses on the criminal rape trial of the wrongly accused Tim Robinson, whom is defended by the children’s father Atticus Finch and the social repercussions the children experience because their father defends a black man. Tim Robinson is accused of raping Mayella Ewell, a young white woman. While the Ewells are considered to be white trash by the town’s community and neither Mayella’s nor her father’s testimony holds up in court, her status as a white woman ensures Tim Robinson’s conviction despite Atticus’ best efforts. The two storylines converge when Boo Radley saves Scout and Jem from the murderous Bob Ewell, who is furious at Atticus for humiliating him in court.
Since it was first published in 1960, To Kill a Mockingbird has never been out of print, and the film adaption in 1962 featuring Gregory Peck won three Academy Awards. It is widely taught in schools throughout the USA as well as in other countries, and was named “the one book that every adult should read” by librarians in the United Kingdom (Pauli, par. 1). Additionally, in a survey held by the Book-Of-The-Month-Club and the Library of
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the Bible. One of the reasons it remains popular is its authenticity, but many readers love it for the “moral archetype” (Lubet 1340) that Atticus Finch provides.
The creation of Mockingbird had taken Harper Lee several years, during two of which she worked closely with her editor Tay Hohoff. Harper Lee was unprepared for the storm of publicity and interest in her book and herself after the publication, having hoped for a “little public encouragement” (Lee qtd. in Shields 150) rather than the enormous amount of attention both she and the book received. She withdrew from public life and instead divided her time between New York and her hometown in Alabama, where she herself grew up during segregation. She was born in Monroeville in 1926, the youngest of four children. Like Atticus, Lee’s father A.C. Lee was a lawyer who served in the state legislature. It is suggested in Charles Shields’s biography of Harper Lee that her mother Frances Cunningham-Finch suffered from mental illness and was not very involved with the family’s home life, leaving the eldest daughter, Alice to take care of her siblings. Harper Lee left Alabama for New York in 1949 to work on her book, but still visited Monroeville regularly. As Mockingbird’s
popularity endured, Lee increasingly refused to be interviewed. She never published another novel again, even though over the years several rumours arose that she was working on another book. She did appear in public a number of times to accept various awards: she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007, and the National Medal of Arts in 2010, both for her contribution to the American arts.
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de-segregation. Scout, who is called Jean Louise in Watchman, starts to question how well she really knows her father and her town, and by extension starts questioning herself. While the novel engages more directly with race relationships and attitudes towards segregation in the South than Mockingbird, many critics felt it lacked the aesthetic quality that its
predecessor possessed (cf. Randall; Churchwell).
Go Set a Watchman was initially promoted by her agent and publisher as the third instalment of a trilogy that would have included Mockingbird as its first part and an unwritten novel as the second instalment (Flood par. 3). However, it is almost certain that the book is an earlier draft of To Kill a Mockingbird, probably from the early stages of her collaboration with editor Tay Hohoff. Coverage in, amongst others, the New York Times and the Guardian indicates that Lee’s attorney had been aware that the manuscript existed for several years before its purported discovery in 2014, and was told during a meeting in 2011 that it contained an early draft of Mockingbird, which at that time still bore the title Go Set a Watchman (Cf. Nocera). Currently, the official HarperCollins website does describe
Watchman as an earlier version of Mockingbird, apparently having abandoned the sequel theory. From the novels themselves it becomes clear that Lee had not written a new novel after all: both versions were completed in the late 1950s, and some passages in Go Set a Watchman are word for word repeated in To Kill a Mockingbird. Controversy has surrounded the publication of this second book, most notably about whether Harper Lee actually wanted to publish this manuscript or if representatives may have taken advantage of her then
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However, many of the readers were mostly shocked by the apparent transformation of Atticus Finch, “the noble gentleman,” (Gopnik par. 10) into Atticus Finch, white
supremacist. The publication prompted a large amount of reviews and opinion pieces
weighing the merits and flaws of Watchman on its own and in conjunction with Mockingbird. However, most critics concede that Watchman is structurally and aesthetically not as
successful as its predecessor, with one critic even asserting that it “is a failure as a novel” (Gopnik par 2).
Considering the novel’s popularity it is perhaps surprising to find that To Kill a Mockingbird is only sparingly discussed in academic literature, although scholars have “recently begun to show increased interest in Lee’s novel” (Haggerty 51). While there seems to be no exact reason for this, one possible explanation is that the novel’s educational appeal has outweighed its literary qualities, it is often taught in schools and is used to address issues such as injustice and intolerance. Moreover, the novel is regularly described as a children’s book, amongst others by Flannery ‘O Connor, instead of serious literature, which might account for the lack of academic criticism (cf. Barra, Gopnik, Churchwell). Nevertheless a body of work on Mockingbird exists which is mostly concerned with its central themes “racism, sexism and the novel’s categorization as a coming of age novel” (Murray 75).
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Lubet criticize the prevailing image of Atticus Finch as the gentleman lawyer. Both refute the idea that Atticus as a lawyer should be taken as a role model, as had been suggested by several other lawyers and law professors (cf. Freedman 189; Lubet 1340). Freedman in particular received vehement reactions to his piece, of which he said that readers had responded “as if he were attacking Mother Teresa, Ghandi, God and Bambi all at once” (qtd. in Durst Johnson, 194). The backlash Freedman received shows not only readers’ attachment to their favourite characters in To Kill a Mockingbird, but also their unwillingness to engage with them critically and the lack of critical voices in general.
The desire to erase all flaws from To Kill a Mockingbird’s main characters, most notably Scout and Atticus, occurs on multiple occasions. In “More Than One Way to
(Mis)Read a Mockingbird” Jennifer Murray discusses a process she calls “over-writing” and identifies two critical articles where either assumptions are made that cannot be reasonably inferred from the novel itself, or quotes are wrongly attributed to another character in order to “acknowledge the racism in the text, but to preserve Scout from being associated with it” (80). In this context it becomes clear that some of Lee’s critics either willingly or mistakenly have misrepresented her work in order for it to conform to their own argument in order to clear its characters of any accusations of racism.
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racist. In a similar manner, both novels address southern womanhood and the differences between black and white femininity. Mockingbird displays Calpurnia’s influence on the two children and their upbringing, as well as the sometimes conflicting attitudes that Atticus’s sister Aunt Alexandra brings to the household who is more concerned with displaying good manners than actual kindness. Watchman portrays the complexities of relationships between white children and their black nurses beyond childhood, and portrays Calpurnia and Aunt Alexandra as inhabiting opposite ends of the spectrum concerning de-segregation.
This dissertation aims to show how both novels engage with issues of race, gender and class in the Deep South during segregation, particularly in the characters Atticus and Calpurnia, both of whom play a significant role in the upbringing of the books’ narrator Scout. Against the background of two prevalent southern stereotypes, the Mammy and the Southern Gentleman, I analyse these two characters, whose race, gender, and
socioeconomic position stand in stark contrast to one another, to question the inherent racism that can be found in both books and how these two characters are affected by it. The two novels show different sides of the American South at different points in time. While several elements in Mockingbird are a realistic representation of the social and racial situation in the South of the 1930s, Watchman depicts the hardened race relations of the 1950s and the variation in responses to an increasing demand for change. Lee positioned the same characters in two different settings, with radically different outcomes.
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Chapter I. Race, Class and Gender in the South
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and “everyone had a maid or two” (Norton qtd. in Durst Johnson 146). The Finch family falls into this category: Atticus can afford to accept goods in lieu of actual payment, and they employ an African American cook, Calpurnia. Farmers and other working class whites could not afford these luxuries, and some, such as the Cunningham family in Mockingbird, were dependent on families like the Finch family for charity.
These distinctions in class were held in check by the strong family ties that characterized small towns. In the countryside and small town society “lives revolved around and drew sustenance from these contacts” (Goldfield 72) that were maintained through churches and clubs. Being able to trace back your lineage to the civil war or, preferably, even earlier was a source of pride for many southerners, as it is for Aunt Alexandra in To Kill a Mockingbird. Scout senses this as well saying that to Aunt Alexandra “the longer a family had squatted on one patch of land the finer it was” (133). Families who stayed on ‘one patch of land’ over generations, often had an intricate web of family relations, which could be a source of embarrassment as well as pride. Because family relationships were so important, individual members were pressured into behaving according to their social standing, lest it reflected bad on the family as a whole, and part of behaving well for wealthier families was to prescribe to the normative gender roles.
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gentleman. The southern gentleman stereotype however, was not always as gratifying. A southern gentleman had “honor and integrity, indifference to money and business, a decorous concern for the amenities, and a high sense of civic social responsibility”, yet he was also “naïve, thriftless and had an affinity for cards or horses or whiskey, or, quite often, all three” (Cobb 24-5). All these aspects apply to a wealthy upper class, who could afford to be gentle to less fortunate people and not care about money. In the 1930s of Lee’s youth not all of these characteristics were still relevant, many of the “negative” aspects had in fact been replaced with characteristics such as integrity. In a 1993 interview, a contemporary of Lee explains that for her father “integrity was the byword. They looked down very much on those who cheated and stole, especially from the poor” (qtd. in Durst Johnson 146). While the plantation class had all but faded away in the 1930s, the idea of a southern gentleman stayed intact, as evidenced when Jem exclaims in Mockingbird that “’Atticus is a gentleman, like me!’,” (104) after Atticus refuses to take pride in his shooting skills. Claudia Durst
Johnson describes an updated version of the southern gentleman stereotype which emerged in the 1950s in which he is a “man who resists change and progress with all his might, who holds fiercely to ideals that are dead and gone,” (140) a version that is prevalent in
Watchman.
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described as “the loveliest and the purest of God’s creatures, the nearest thing to an angelic being that treads this terrestrial ball” (Goldfield 76). While these notions mostly applied to young women, in Lee’s work Aunt Alexandra embodies the ideal of a cultured southern woman who upholds the standards of decency. Notions of a white female as being pure and helpless were used to uphold segregation in the South, as black men were considered dangerous to white women, and in Mockingbird these ideals for white girls created the circumstances of Tim Robinson’s trial, even though Mayella Ewell herself does not embody the ideals of a southern lady.
Another important element in To Kill a Mockingbird is its depiction of the racial injustice that occurred in the South at a time when the struggle for civil rights was at its height. Even before the civil war, both the northern and southern states espoused a view that their side of the Mason-Dixon “was the true embodiment of the American spirit” and the South would continue to define itself in opposition to the North (Cobb 4). The conditions that the North imposed on the South during Reconstruction symbolized the relationship that southerners felt existed between the North and South for decades afterwards. While northerners saw the South as an exotic ‘other’, the South would look back at the past with nostalgia, “far more comfortable exalting a glorious, imagined past than celebrating a disturbing and undeniably real present” (Cobb 46). This opposition to the North would once again set the South apart when it came to race relations and integration in the middle of the twentieth century, when southerners resented the interference of the federal government during the Civil Rights movement. After the civil war, the thirteenth amendment
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equal was constitutional” (Hale 163). This entailed that African Americans could be denied entry to public services and facilities, such as film theaters, public swimming pools and parks, but also public schools. Although the ruling stipulated that alternative facilities of equal quality should be available to black communities, often there were none or only of
considerable lesser quality, especially in rural communities. In cities segregation was even more absolute than in the countryside. African Americans generally lived in neighbourhoods that exclusively housed black residents with their own shops and other facilities. The author Maya Angelou wrote that wrote “segregation was so complete that most Black children didn’t really, absolutely know what whites looked like” (25). Such an exhaustive form of segregation did not exist in rural areas where there was often only one store that was patronized by both black and white customers.
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Racial etiquette was a social construct that governed race relations between black and white southerners. For African Americans in contact with whites, the etiquette required “averted eyes, preferably a smile and always exhibiting a demeanor that would make a white comfortable in believing that this deferential mien was not only right but the way things were supposed to be” (Goldfield 2). Its sole purpose was to reinforce white
supremacy by casting African Americans continuously in a subservient position. While white children had to be addressed as ‘Miss’ or ‘Mister’ by African Americans from around the age of twelve, as Calpurnia starts doing when Jem turns twelve, whites would address black people only by their first name or with generic terms such as “’boy’, ‘uncle’ or ‘auntie’, regardless of age” (Goldfield 3). Among middle and upper class whites the prevailing custom was to be polite to African Americans and usage of the word ‘negro’, or even worse ‘nigger’ was discouraged and considered to be coarse. In an interview in 1993, three women who grew up in the 1930s and came from families with a similar social standing as the Finch family in Lee’s novels, discussed how they interacted with African Americans with one woman, Mary Ann, stating “we were taught to be respectful to black people” to which another, Camille, replies “Heavens yes. I would have had my mouth washed out with soap so fast if I had ever referred to a black person with any word other than colored!” (qtd. in Durst Johnson 149). Jean Louise has a similar reaction in Watchman when she hears her father use the word ‘nigger’, indicating that although it was sometimes used in a derogatory manner, it was not considered good form.
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southerners honestly believed that the segregated system, in which racial etiquette played an important part, was not only beneficial for whites but also for African Americans. However, the system produced wat David Goldfield has called a “stage negro”, through which assumptions about African Americans being “childlike, prone to steal, violent,
oversexed, stupid, lethargic, dependent on whites, [and] happy” were reinforced (Goldfield 3). Contradictory to popular white conception, segregation did not benefit African Americans at all, and a study conducted as early as 1887 noted that: “separate schools are a public proclamation to all of African or mixed blood that they are an inferior caste, fundamentally inferior and totally unfit to mingle on terms of equality with the superior caste” and it would be education where African Americans would make the first move to access equal rights (Harvie Blair qtd. in Goldfield 57).
On the basis that there did not exist a segregated equal alternative for African Americans in higher education, several African Americans started court cases demanding to be allowed into white educational facilities. The earliest admission of a black person into an all white law school occurred as early as 1938, but it would take until 1954 for the Supreme Court to rule that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal” (Dierenfield 22). In theory this ended segregation in education, but southern whites resisted the development by every means available to them. Strengthened by the recent court rulings, black
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Integration meant dignity and equal opportunity for African Americans, but it “signified a threat to identity for whites” and in response to black protests, there was a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan as well as the establishment of a new string of organizations called the White Citizens Council (Goldfield 87). While the Ku Klux Klan met in secret and endorsed violence, the White Citizens Councils’s meetings were out in the open. Charles Payne describes the Councils as “pursuing the agenda of the Klan with the demeanor of the Rotary Club” (34). While the Councils did not openly espouse violence, they sought to resist integration through legal measures, but also through the economic intimidation of their detractors. However, the actions of the White Citizens Councils encouraged violence either from their own members or by third parties, to help “carry council objectives to their logical conclusion” (Goldfield 83). Violence against African Americans rose during the Civil Rights movement, but it had always been a part of southern culture.
During the time Lee wrote her first novel the civil rights movement became
increasingly active and one of the cases that contributed to increasing international support for its cause was the lynching of fourteen year old Emmett Till in 1955. Till who lived with his mother in Chicago was visiting relatives in the small town of Money, Mississippi, and, either on a dare or to show how different things were in Chicago, greeted a white female shop attendant without concern for racial etiquette. Till said “’Bye Baby’ or words to that effect” (Goldfield 89) upon leaving the store, and the woman reported his perceived insolence to her husband. Several nights later, the woman’s husband and his brother abducted Till, mutilated and killed him. The two men were acquitted, and later gave an interview boasting of the killing for which they could not be prosecuted twice. Tills’s mother insisted on an open casket funeral, attended by tens of thousands, and pictures of the boy’s maimed face
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pictures, paired with the shameless interview of his killers made the case an important moment for the civil rights movement. Shields argues that “the injustice of Tim Robinson’s case was greatly amplified in reader’s minds in 1960 because it seemed much nearer in time,” (154) rather than an event from the distant past.
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of them were paroled in the 1940s, after several “prominent Alabamians” (Durst Johnson 74) began working for their release.
Multiple noteworthy analogies exist between the two cases, not least the low social standing of the accusers. The two women in the Scottsboro case were initially detained under the Mann Act, which prohibited “taking a minor across state lines for immoral purposes” (Durst Johnson 16). One of the accusers, Victoria Price, had been convicted for prostitution and the girl she was travelling with, Ruby Bates, was still a minor. Bates would later recant her testimony. Similarly to Mayella Ewell, these women used a rape allegation in order to draw attention away from their own social and sexual digressions. The idea that Lee took inspiration from this trial is compelling, even more so because the one detail which would have cemented Tim Robinson’s acquittal in a fair trial, also played a part in the Scottsboro case: two of the defendants were physically incapable of assaulting two women, one being blind and the other so sick he could not walk without assistance. The striking parallels that exist between the Scottsboro case and the fictional trial in To Kill a
Mockingbird suggest that Lee sought her inspiration here, yet Lee claimed this was not the case and in his 2005 book biographer Charles Shields sheds light on the trial that is most likely the inspiration for Tim Robinson’s case.
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commuted to life imprisonment, but by this time Lett had lost his sanity on death row and instead lived out the last years of his life at Searcy Hospital for the Insane. The Walter Lett case’s setting has more in common with Lee’s fictional trial than that of the Scottsboro boys. The trial was held in the small local town, without interference from famous New York lawyers and interest groups like in the Scottsboro trials, allowing Lee to “cast light on a racist judicial system in a small, manageable setting” (Shields 120). Lett’s tragic demise also
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II. The Mammy: Calpurnia as a Black Woman in the South
While In both To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman race relations play a major role, both novels lack a strong African American perspective. The only black character who has a voice of her own is Calpurnia, the housekeeper and cook for the Finch family. While readers learn comparatively little about Calpurnia herself, her character is important not only because she embodies the only black perspective in the novels, but also because she provides insight into the experiences of a woman of colour working in a white household and helping raise white children. In Mockingbird, Calpurnia and Aunt Alexandra personify two different notions of womanhood in the South during the Great Depression: Calpurnia is an example of a black working class woman, while Aunt Alexandra personifies an upper class white woman. Unlike the ideals for white women, the prevailing image of African American women did not involve notions of vulnerability or purity. Black women were either
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housekeepers and childminders were expected to address children they cared for as Miss or Mister, as early as when they turned twelve. In Mockingbird, Scout notices when Calpurnia switches from calling her brother simply Jem to Mister Jem and questions her about it. Calpurnia replies that “he’s just about Mister Jem now” (119). A similar occurrence takes place in Watchman, although here it is Jean Louise who remembers the first time that Calpurnia addressed her as “Miss” and “Ma’am” and came to the conclusion that she “must be getting old” (139). In both novels Lee indicates that for white children this change in address signalled a rite of passage; they are no longer children, but becoming adults.
However, neither child in either Mockingbird or Watchman ever addresses Calpurnia as Miss or gives any indication that she has any of the qualities that would make her a ‘lady’ in their eyes.
Calpurnia’s role in the Finch household in Mockingbird alters when Aunt Alexandra comes to stay with the family. Before her arrival, Calpurnia is the only female adult present, and Atticus leaves her in charge of decisions regarding the household and gives her
considerable freedom in raising the children. He does not object to her taking the children to the black church in town and refuses to entertain any complaints Scout has about
Calpurnia’s behaviour. However, Aunt Alexandra decides to take over the household because, she tells Scout, “it would be best for you to have some feminine influence” (131). Aunt Alexandra implicitly raises the case that apparently Calpurnia is unable to provide this guidance and by extension that Calpurnia is not a real woman. Scout realizes this
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by Aunt Alexandra. The relationship between Calpurnia and Aunt Alexandra represents how many southern household were run.
Relationships between black and white women were founded on the services black women performed for white women. African American women worked as housekeepers, nannies or cooks in white households, where they often received instructions from the female head of house. This is summarized by Elsa Barkley Brown as “white women and women of color live different lives but white women live the lives they do in large part because women of color live the ones they do”, meaning that the southern ideal of being a lady was only possible because of the labour that black women performed in their houses (qtd. in Ritterhouse 18). In Mockingbird, Aunt Alexandra invites neighbours and women from various societies to the Finch house, but she relies on Calpurnia to provide food and drinks for these gatherings, and to watch the children while she has visitors.
While the relationship between Aunt Alexandra and Calpurnia in Mockingbird is a fairly typical representation of the relationships between African American employees and their white employers, their approach to raising the two Finch children is very different. Aunt Alexandra’s childrearing strategies are focused on behaving appropriately for the sake of the family, behaving like a “Finch”, as opposed to a poorer white person, and in Scout’s case, behaving like a lady. Her objective is to prepare them for what she considers their rightful place in Southern society. On the other hand, Calpurnia’s upbringing of the children focuses more on being kind and fair to others, especially when they are in a less privileged position than the children are. A case in the point is the different treatments both women give
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Walter is her company, she should never remark on his behaviour. When Scout replies with “he’s just a Cunningham,” (30) Calpurnia explains to her that even though Walter might be from a poorer family than she, Scout should never consider herself above him. However, when Aunt Alexandra comes to live with the Finch family, she takes a different stance on socializing with Walter Cunningham. While Scout is now resolved to invite Walter over for dinner after school, Aunt Alexandra will not allow Scout to associate with a Cunningham, saying: “Finch women aren’t interested in that sort of people”, implying that Scout should learn with whom she chooses to associate, even though Scout is only eight at the time (228). This time it is Scout, having learned Calpurnia’s lesson, who speaks on Walter’s behalf. She explains to her aunt that Walter is “good folks” (228) and asks why she cannot be nice to him. Aunt Alexandra’s reply invokes the same type of detached friendliness that rich whites would use when communicating with African Americans: “I didn’t say not to be nice to him. You should be friendly and polite to him, you should be gracious to everybody, dear. But you don’t have to invite him home” (228). While Calpurnia instructs Scout to be fair and kind to everybody, regardless of where they come from, Aunt Alexandra instructs Scout to be ladylike, but to be true to “her kind of folks” (228). These two different approaches are emblematic for the different positions the two women occupy in the South. Calpurnia comes from a disadvantaged part of the community and realizes that although Walter Cunningham’s family does not belong to the same social class as the Finch family, this does not impact his worth as a person. Aunt Alexandra’s stance is aimed to retain the family’s privileged position within the town, and associating with someone from a lower social standing is unacceptable to her.
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Deep South and the United States at large. Created during the antebellum period, it “continues to have a provocative and tenacious hold on the American psyche” (Wallace Sanders 2) during the twenty-first century. The mammy stereotype characterizes African American women who took care of white children, combined with housekeeping duties in that same white household. In her book Mammy: a Century of Race, Gender and Southern Memory, Kimberly Wallace Sanders lays out the standard physical characteristics of a
mammy: “she is usually extremely overweight, very tall, broad-shouldered; her skin is nearly black,” (5) as well as the defining character trait of the mammy: “her unprecedented
devotion to her white family reflects her racial inferiority” (6). This included the notion that a black mammy would prefer the white children she was taking care of over her own
children, which was linked again to the notion that white children needed constant care while black children did not suffer from neglect. Unlike other stereotypes about African American women, a mammy was a devoted maternal figure.
Calpurnia acts as a mammy and surrogate mother to the Finch children in
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balance, as well as a barrier between her own life and the time she spends with the Finch family. In Mockingbird, Scout compares it to “her having command of two languages,” (129) which is true in a sense as the black and white community did not interact outside of a workplace environment. Calpurnia is aware that her speaking plain English would be equally out of place in a black church as talking in ungrammatical English would be in the Finch household. She performs two versions of herself: a version exclusively for the white people she interacts with and a version for the black community she lives in. in this sense, Calpurnia is different from a stereotypical mammy, she has a separate identity from the white family she cares for.
Calpurnia’s “modest double life” (129) as Scout calls it sets her apart from perhaps the best known mammy in literature: Mammy of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind. Both Mammy and Calpurnia perform similar duties for the white families they work for, and both act as a moral guide to the white children they care for, but their attitude and tactics differ. Unlike Mammy, Calpurnia does not show any interest in the status of the family she works for. She tells the Finch children that they should be proud of their father, but this is merely in response to their complaints that he is not very interesting or athletic. She allows Scout to dress in overalls and act like a boy, knowing that this was against the ideal for young white girls. She does not identify with the Finch family as if they were her own, but
maintains a separate existence. On the other hand, Mammy in Gone with the Wind is extremely preoccupied with the family’s status, partly because she is afraid of how a bad reputation would affect her own reputation, thus aligning herself with the family she worked for.
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already aware that Calpurnia is “a maternal figure who can be hired and fired”
(Shaw-Thornburg 100). While these could be construed simply as a child rebelling against authority, Scout only acts out against Calpurnia and not her father, indicating that she might be in the early stages of testing out her supposed racial superiority. To Calpurnia, it cannot have been easy that the child she raised almost her entire life would treat her in such a manner.
Lee demonstrates in both To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman that Jean Louise is not immune to the status quo of race relationships. Like most children in the segregated South, both black and white, Harper Lee’s protagonist, Jean Louise, nicknamed Scout in Mockingbird is keenly, if possibly unconsciously, aware of the different races and the social implications that come along with racial differences. In addition to her empty threats of having Calpurnia fired, Scout observes that Calpurnia violates racial etiquette when she knocks on the front door in an attempt to warn a neighbouring family of a rabid dog in the street, remarking that she is “supposed to go around in back” (100). Not fully aware of the dangers that a rabid dog entail, her comment is mostly innocent, but it does betray that Scout already knows what a black woman can or cannot do. She also appears to find the preferential treatment she and her brother receive from Maycomb’s African American community at the black church and during the trial unsurprising, indicating that as a white girl Scout is used to this type of behaviour. Moreover, after Tim Robinson’s trial, Scout’s friend Dill is in tears over the treatment that Tim Robinson received at the hands of the prosecutor. Trying to comfort him, Scout eventually says “Well, Dill, after all he’s just a Negro” (Lee 203). This declaration is the clearest example of Scout already having internalized race and racism before the age of ten.
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racial etiquette in the South during the latter half of the 1950’s. Returning to Maycomb from New York, she is shocked to find that the race relationships in the once cordial small town have deteriorated severely. After learning that Calpurnia’s grandson accidentally ran over a white man with his car and is almost certainly going to jail, Scout decides to visit her old housekeeper and nanny. Her visit turns out to be a disappointment. Instead of the closeness that once existed between them, Calpurnia is “wearing her company manners,” (159) effectively shutting Jean Louise out. With a “haughty dignity that appeared on state occasions” and “erratic grammar” Calpurnia treats her as an outsider, telling her without words that she is infringing on a private occasion. Jean Louise breaks down, saying “Cal, Cal, Cal, what are you doing to me? What’s the matter? I’m your baby, have you forgotten me? Why are you shutting me out? What are you doing to me?” (159). Calpurnia only responds by asking “What are you doing to us?” (160). It in this exchange that Calpurnia purposely cuts ties with Jean Louise, who fails to understand what effects her grandson’s arrest has on Calpurnia.
While Jean Louise does not comprehend Calpurnia’s behaviour, it is perhaps the most meaningful exchange between them in both novels. Atticus is supposed to defend
Calpurnia’s grandson at trial, but here Calpurnia shows her knowledge of Atticus’s
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herself, and arguably before her own family, Jean Louise fails to show kindness and compassion to the woman who raised her when she actually needs help.
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Chapter III: The Cult of Atticus Finch
Very few literary characters have proven to be as divisive as Lee’s creation Atticus Finch. Indeed, in 2009 he is called both “Christ-like” and “paternalistic and downright
accomodationist” by two different authors in the same collection of essays on To Kill a Mockingbird (Wood 86, Shaw-Thornburg 110). Atticus’s message of equality and empathy, as well as his defence of Tim Robinson on the stand led to the image of the lawyer as an outstanding example of morality which was not criticized by scholars until the 1990s, when law professor Monroe Freeman discussed Atticus’s lack of social activism. Yet, his and following critiques were often undercut by the many critics and the larger public who view Atticus as the hero of Lee’s creation. However, the publication of Go Set a Watchman provided an insight into the older Atticus’s opinions on race and de-segregation that may have surprised even his staunchest critics. Readers and critics alike reacted with surprise and shock at the revelation that the Atticus that Lee had initially envisioned before finishing Mockingbird was a member of the notorious White Citizens’ Council and lectured his daughter on African Americans’ shortcomings as contributing members of society.
When To Kill a Mockingbird was first published in 1960, Atticus was hailed as a hero who honestly and vigorously defended Tim Robinson in court and stood up against the racism of his times. A book review in the New York Times in July 1960 called Atticus “a highly esteemed lawyer and legislator and the embodiment of fearless integrity, magnanimity and common sense”, while Harper’s Magazine described him as “an old-fashioned hero” in their August 1960 issue (both qtd. in Crespino, 16). In his article “The Strange Career of Atticus Finch”, Joseph Crespino notes that while some reviews commented upon structural
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as an example of the progressive southern liberal. Just one negative review appeared, written months after the novel had won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961. Its author, Elizabeth Lee Haselden critized Mockingbird on the grounds that it offered “character types” rather than believable characters (qtd. in Crespino 16). The release of the film version of To Kill a
Mockingbird in 1962 further cemented this reputation; the film won three Academy Awards and for many Gregory Peck, who portrayed Atticus, and the character itself were forever intertwined. This was also true for Lee herself who, as biographer Charles Shields observes, was delighted that Peck imitated many of her own father’s mannerisms for the role of Atticus Finch, as she had partially based the character on her own father.
There are many similarities between Amasa Coleman Lee, Harper Lee’s father who mostly went by A.C., and his daughter’s fictional creation. Lee’s father was a prominent attorney and for some years a legislator in Monroeville, Alabama where the family lived. He had, as does Atticus, an aversion to practicing criminal law. After an earlier case had
resulted in the execution of the two men he was defending A.C. Lee never took on a criminal case again. In Mockingbird Scout recounts a similar case that proved the beginning of
Atticus’s “profound distaste for the practice of criminal law” (11). The status that A.C. Lee and his fictional counterpart occupied in their hometowns was also largely similar: both had solid reputations, did not drink, smoke, or gamble, and were steadfast churchgoers.
However, Atticus’s reputation as a southern liberal when it comes to civil rights did not necessarily reflect A.C. Lee’s views: biographer Charles Shields contends that Lee did not appreciate the civil rights cause until later in life when he adopted his daughters’ politics, but he had previously been a “conservative on matters of race and social progress” (160).
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Atticus’s conduct on and off the stand inspired debate about the attributes a good lawyer should possess and the notion of the gentleman-lawyer. A curious side effect of Mockingbird is that both “novel and film have attracted numerous individuals to the legal profession” for as long as the “past two generations” (Engar 62). Multiple articles in law reviews exist that call upon lawyers to look to Atticus’s behaviour as an example for moral guidance, with one law professor naming him a “paragon, role model, and professional exemplar”, as well as “the embodiment of the gentleman-lawyer”, with another lawyer going as far as saying that when in doubt, lawyers should ask themselves “What would Atticus Finch do?”, implying that Atticus Finch would invariably do the right thing (both qtd. in Engar, 64). Another concept that the law profession often discusses in relation to Atticus Finch is the concept of the gentleman lawyer. The gentleman lawyer consists of the notion that some lawyers, of which Atticus is an example, have a built-in sense of ethics that transcend written codes of conduct. On the other hand the ideal of the gentleman lawyer is contested as a useless concept and that every lawyer, including Atticus, needs “a written code of ethics to keep them in line” (Durst Johnson 188). Atticus proponents, both in and outside of the law profession, base their admiration on approximately the same grounds: he always makes the choice that services “the higher good”; he defends an African American man to the best of his abilities while this harms his status in the town; he offers everybody the same degree of respect, regardless of whether they deserve it; and he provides “strong moral guidance” for both his children (Woods 75; Evans 91). In this view, Atticus is the ultimate liberal
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Atticus’s critics, like his proponents, first expressed themselves in law reviews during the early 1990s before literary journals entered the debate, focusing on his conduct in the court room in Mockingbird. One of his staunchest critics, law professor Monroe Freedman comments upon Atticus’s lack of actual social activism. Freedman wrote his original article for the Legal Times in 1992, a periodical normally only read by lawyers themselves,
nevertheless the ensuing debate eventually reached the pages of the New York Times. His main argument in the original article is that although Atticus does an admirable job
defending his client, the wrongfully accused Tim Robinson, he does not voluntarily take on the case but rather is appointed by the judge. Atticus even confesses to his brother Jack that he had “ hoped to get through life without a case of this kind,” which directly contradicts the ideal of Atticus as a social activist (Lee Mockingbird 94).
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walk around in it”, advice he frequently gives his own children (474). Freedman negates the notion of Atticus as a “paragon of moral character”, but does not attempt to vilify him either: he ends his article with the observation that “Atticus Finch is both more and less than the mythical figure that has been made of him. He is human – sometimes right and
sometimes wrong" (“Right and Wrong” 476; 482).
Another problematic aspect regarding Atticus is the patriarchy surrounding him in Mockingbird. When Atticus leaves the court room after losing Tim Robinson’s case, the Finch children are seated upstairs in the segregated section for African Americans. They all rise to pay tribute to Atticus Finch, with the black Reverend Sykes saying “Miss Jean Louise, stand up. You’re father’s passin’” (150). In this scene the focus lies solely on Atticus’s
disappointment in having lost the case, coupled with the respect and gratitude the black community expresses to him. While the verdict essentially means the end of Tim Robinson’s life, the black community of Maycomb still stands up to salute the white lawyer moments after hearing the verdict themselves while they are presumably still in shock. It makes sense that Scout concentrates on her father and not on Tim Robinson: she sees her parent upset. However, in this scene the black community is also more concerned with showing the white lawyer their respect, which under the circumstances seems an implausible scenario, thus denying the black characters in Mockingbird genuine emotions. In this manner the novel “endorses, with the best of intentions, ideologies and ideas about people of color that foreclose the possibility of agency” (Shaw-Thornburg 101). The foregrounding of Atticus in this scene over Tim Robinson decreases the latter’s worth as a person; instead Tim Robinson and the rest of the black community of Maycomb serve only to highlight Atticus’s
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A harsher side to Atticus’s nature can be seen in his interrogation of Mayella Ewell. Tom’s innocence is evidently established during the trial, but it also becomes clear that Mayella Ewell is indeed a victim who is sexually abused by her father. Neither Atticus, the judge, nor the prosecutor take any action upon hearing that the girl is most likely sexually abused at home, and it is not further discussed in the court room. Moreover, none of them hesitate to send Mayella back to her abusive father after the trial, exposing her to possible further harm and discounting her status as an actual victim. Only two reasons could explain why Atticus does not act upon hearing this information: either he does not believe the claim, or he does not care. It is possible that Atticus simply does not believe that Bob Ewell was abusing his daughter, but it was not Mayella herself who told the court about the abuse – Tom Robinson did, ostensibly a more trustworthy character. It is more likely that Atticus simply does not care about Mayella. In Mockingbird, Atticus never speaks ill of African Americans or his middleclass neighbours, but fails to empathize in any way with the Ewell family. Scout cannot remember her father ever having spoken about any family the way he speaks about the Ewells: “Atticus said the Ewells had been the disgrace of Maycomb for three generations. They were people, but they lived like animals” (36). Atticus’s treatment of the Ewell family, and especially Mayella, contrasts starkly with the respect he gives other Maycomb residents with the same racist predilections, the only difference being their social class in the town. Shaw-Thornburg contends that Atticus’s lack of compassion for Mayella stems from her not conforming to “the dominant notion of whiteness,” because of Mayella’s upbringing and family history, Atticus sees her as part of the Ewell family, which to him is synonymous with white trash, rather than as a real person (102).
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By shifting the blame for the event to Mayella, Atticus effectively employs the “She Wanted It” defence, often used to imply that a victim either was “asking for it” through provocative dress or behaviour, or that no rape occurred, but consensual sex which the victim later regretted (Lubet 1345). Atticus does not only employs this defence, but he takes it one step further by naming Mayella as the sexual aggressor and Tom as the helpless victim, which is true to a certain extent: as a black man, Tom cannot physically resist Mayella without facing serious repercussions if he harms her in the process. Atticus demeans Mayella even further in his closing argument where he claims that she knowingly crossed one of society’s strictest boundaries. Atticus tells the jury that Mayella “tempted a Negro” willingly: “She was white and she tempted a Negro. She did something that in our society is unspeakable: she kissed a black man” (208). Not only does Atticus here claim that Mayella consented, he insinuates that Mayella is unfit to participate in society because she does not adhere to its rules, and that the jury should therefore not believe any claims she makes.
In his closing argument Atticus pleads with the jury to give Tom Robinson a fair chance in court by insinuating to them that equality in the court room does not equal equality in every aspect of society. Atticus concludes his closing argument with a reference to Thomas Jefferson’s statement that all men are created equal, and takes issue with parts of this statement.
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In his speech Atticus seems to refer to desegregation, saying that although the jury should give people of all colours the same opportunities in open court, they are not expected to maintain this equality outside of the court room. The phrases Lee selects here, “stupid and idle” and “terrible feelings of inferiority,” make a direct connection to both the white supremacy myth in which African Americans were denounced as lazy and inherently stupid, and the ongoing efforts to improve education for African American children. Although
Atticus does not mention race specifically, he is effectively making the argument that while a black man should be judged fairly in court, this does not mean that the jurors, nor himself, have to be open to all progressive ideas.
While Atticus’s behaviour in Mockingbird veers between progressive and
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Atticus’s participation in the Citizens’ Council refutes his status as a liberal or a progressive citizen, yet entering or refusing membership of the Citizens’ Councils entailed more than simply opposing civil rights or opposing white supremacy. The various chapters of the Councils often consisted of influential members of the community who presented
themselves as a reasonable affiliation, but who were able to intimidate their opponents to such an extent that in large areas of the Deep South “it became impossible for candidates to run successfully for office without council endorsements” (Goldfield 82). In small, rural communities this meant that the Council could influence almost every aspect of daily life: who was approved for a loan, whose lease would be extended or revoked and who would keep their job while someone else was fired. In such a climate, membership of the Council for many was not necessarily a ideological choice, but an act of self-preservation. Henry, Jean-Louise’s boyfriend and one of the “staunchest members” (103) of the Council alludes to this when he attempts to explain his membership to her: “Maycomb’s given me a good living. But Maycomb asks certain things in return. It asks you to lead a reasonably clean life, it asks that you join the Kiwanis Club, to go to church on Sunday, it asks you to conform to it’s ways” (230-1). To Henry, joining the Citizens’ Council is simply another way of
conforming to what Maycomb’s society expects from him, a necessary requirement in order to be allowed to participate in its community. It is more likely than not that he is right. Maycomb’s Citizens’ Council meeting is attended by nearly all men in the county, many of whom Jean Louise considers “respectable” (110).
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accepting Henry’s claim that she has her status as a Finch to fall back on, while he only has his current status and no noteworthy family history. Whereas Jean Louise is allowed her quirks in the eye of Maycomb County, Henry is not: “let Henry Clinton show any signs of deviatin’ from the norm and Maycomb says, not ‘that’s the Clinton in him,’ but ‘that’s the trash in him’” (232). Henry Clinton has painstakingly risen above the social class he was born into, and is not willing to risk his status and livelihood by not participating in Maycomb’s most important association.
However, Henry’s reasons for joining the Council do not necessarily apply to Atticus. As Henry tries to explain to Jean Louise, the Finch family are allowed their idiosyncrasies because they are part of the establishment, moreover, Atticus’s brother Jack does not attend the meetings, indicating that Atticus’s position, as part of the Finch family, is sufficiently strong for him to not associate with a segregationist organization for fear of losing his livelihood. Instead, Atticus’s motivation according to Henry is a combination of two distinct elements. On the one hand, the Council’s goal is to remind the African American community in the county of their status, “a sort of warning to the Negroes for them not to be in such a hurry” (229). The second aspect of Atticus’s motivation is that he wants to know what is happening in his community. Henry here reveals to Jean Louise that Atticus attended a Klan meeting for the same reason in the 1920s. It is conceivable that Atticus, who is very involved in Maycomb’s society, would want to know what powers are at play in his
community, but Henry’s explanation bypasses the fact that Atticus not only attends
meetings, but is a member of the board, which requires a more active participation. Atticus is a part of this organization not out of curiosity, but because he approves of their
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When Jean Louise confronts Atticus about his politics, he attempts to explain to her his philosophy of slowly giving African Americans more rights and, in his eyes, more
responsibility when they are “ready”. While trying to convince Jean Louise of his position he makes the following statement
Honey, you do not seem to understand that the Negroes down here are still in their childhood as a people. You should know it, you’ve seen it all your life. They’ve made terrific progress in adapting themselves to white ways, but they’re far from it yet. They were coming along fine, traveling at a rate they could absorb, more of ‘em voting than ever before. Then the NAACP stepped in with its fantastic demands and shoddy ideas of government – can you blame the South for resenting being told what to do about its own people by people who have no idea of its daily problems? (246-7).
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Lee’s two versions of Atticus give two different perspectives on how white, wealthy male Southerners reacted to the segregated system and the inequalities this system created. While it cannot be maintained that Atticus in Mockingbird is politically progressive, or that he was truly a Southern liberal; he does recognize the injustice done to a member of the black community in his town and sincerely attempts to rectify this injustice. The more
strenuous race relations in the 1950s South however evoke a conservative version of Atticus, who attempts to maintain the status quo.
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Harper Lee’s first book has had a limited presence in academic literature, and the amount of academic literature that is vocally critical about the way Lee represents the realities of the segregated South during the 1930s is even smaller and has only relatively recently received more attention. The publication of Go Set a Watchman however, has provided scholars with new insights into Lee’s writing process and the origins of some of the ideas that would later become integral parts of To Kill a Mockingbird. While most of the work written on Lee’s novels, particularly Mockingbird, addresses race relations and themes such as injustice and intolerance, relatively few articles have placed Lee’s work in a frame that combines race, gender, and class, as I have attempted to do in this paper.
While Calpurnia plays an important role in the upbringing of the two Finch children and is the only African American character with any agency in both novels, her character is often not considered into any depth. While this is understandable to some degree, as there is comparatively little biographical information to base an analysis on and she seems to play a mere supportive role in Mockingbird, it is precisely for these reasons that Calpurnia is in fact important. Her marginalized status as a black woman in a segregated society is mirrored by her marginalized position in Lee’s novels, which fail to ascribe the same type of emotional depth to Calpurnia as is given to the main characters that are white. She is central to the upbringing of the two Finch children, yet Jean Louise ultimately cares only about her own emotions and disregards Calpurnia’s personal life as secondary to her own. The
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how black women working for white families often lived two lives: one with the white family that they worked for and one within the black community, and how the relationship with a white family was unequal and vulnerable beyond a normal relationship between employer and employee. Through the interactions with Calpurnia it also becomes clear that Lee’s protagonist Scout, or Jean Louise, has internalized racism to such an extent that she is incapable of recognizing it as such.
Atticus Finch serves as both the most famous character in Lee’s work, and the one where the two different narratives seem to be the hardest to reconcile with one another. His conduct in Watchman stands in stark contrast with the image the public had formed of him in Mockingbird. However, as several passages in Mockingbird show, Atticus was more a product of his time than readers and various critics have acknowledged. A white male in a privileged position, his conduct towards African Americans is often paternalistic, which Lee further emphasizes by having the black community in Maycomb treat him with deferential respect, even after he loses the court case. While Atticus in Mockingbird is not a bigot, he is not a progressive either.
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relations in the South. Characters internalized racism goes unchallenged and the only black character in both novels is not provided with an inner life in the way the white characters are. Together, the two novels tell an interesting story about race relations in a small town in Alabama, but from a decidedly white point of view.
This essay has only selected two characters for an in-depth analysis. A deeper understanding of Lee’s work could be gained from an in-depth analysis of the two works focusing on other elements of the two novels to see whether my conclusions can be fully upheld. It also remains to be seen if Watchman will have any effect on the use of
Mockingbird in western education and how the two can be incorporated to teach about history and the civil rights movement.
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