(Nelle) Harper Lee WRITINGS by the AUTHOR
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(Nelle) Harper Lee American Novelists Since World War II: Second Series (Nelle) Harper Lee Dorothy Jewell Altman (Bergen College) Born: April 28, 1926 in Monroeville, Alabama, United States Died: February 19, 2016 in Monroeville, Alabama, United States Other Names : Lee, Nelle Harper Nationality: American Occupation: Novelist American Novelists Since World War II: Second Series. Ed. James E. Kibler. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 6 . Detroit: Gale, 1980. From Literature Resource Center . Full Text: COPYRIGHT 1980 Gale Research, COPYRIGHT 2007 Gale, Cengage Learning Table of Contents: Biographical and Critical Essay To Kill a Mockingbird Writings by the Author Further Readings about the Author WORKS: WRITINGS BY THE AUTHOR: Book To Kill a Mockingbird (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1960; London: Heinemann, 1960). Periodical Publications "Love--In Other Words," Vogue , 137 (15 April 1961): 64-65. "Christmas to Me," McCalls , 89 (December 1961): 63. BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY: Harper Lee's reputation as an author rests on her only novel, To Kill a Mockingbird (1960). An enormous popular success, the book was selected for distribution by the Literary Guild and the Book-of-the-Month Club and was published in a shortened version as a Reader's Digest condensed book. It was also made into an Academy Award-winning film in 1962. Moreover, the novel was critically acclaimed, winning among other awards the Pulitzer Prize for fiction (1961), the Brotherhood Award of the National Conference of Christians and Jews (1961), and the Bestsellers magazine's Paperback of the Year Award (1962). Although Lee stresses that To Kill a Mockingbird is not autobiographical, she allows that a writer "should write about what he knows and write truthfully." The time period and setting of the novel obviously originate in the author's experience as the youngest of three children born to lawyer Amasa Coleman Lee (related to Robert E. Lee) and Frances Finch Lee. The family lived in the sleepy little town of Monroeville, Alabama. After graduating from Monroeville's public schools, Lee spent a year (1944-1945) at Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Alabama, and then attended the University of Alabama for four years (1945-1949), including a year as an exchange student at Oxford University. She left the University of Alabama in 1950, six months short of a law degree, to pursue a writing career in New York City. Harper Lee became interested in writing at the age of seven. While she was a student at the University of Alabama, her satires, editorial columns, and reviews appeared in campus publications. Living in New York in the early 1950s and supporting herself by working as an airline reservations clerk, she approached a literary agent with the manuscripts of two essays and three short stories. The agent encouraged her to expand one of the stories into a novel which later became To Kill a Mockingbird . With the financial help of friends, she gave up her job and moved into a cold-water flat where she devoted herself to her writing. Although her father became ill and she was forced to divide her time between New York and Monroeville, she continued to work on her novel. She submitted a manuscript to Lippincott in 1957. While editors criticized the book's structure, suggesting it seemed to be a series of short stories strung together, they recognized the novel's promise and encouraged Lee to rewrite it. With the help of her editor, Tay Hohoff, Lee reworked the material, and To Kill a Mockingbird was finally published in July 1960. To Kill a Mockingbird is narrated by Jean Louise "Scout" Finch, a six-year-old girl who lives with her ten-year-old brother Jem and her lawyer father Atticus in the small Alabama town of Maycomb during the 1930s. During the three years covered by the novel, Scout and Jem gain an increased understanding of the adult world. A key incident in their maturing is the legal defense by their father of Tom Robinson, a black man falsely accused of raping a white girl named Mayella Ewell, daughter of the nefarious Bob Ewell. In the months preceding the trial, Scout and Jem suffer the taunts of classmates and neighbors who object to Atticus's "lawing for niggers." As the trial nears, the situation intensifies, and a threatened lynching of Robinson is narrowly averted by the innocent intervention of Jem and Scout. In a climactic scene, the jury finds Robinson guilty even though Atticus has clearly proven him innocent. Maycomb's racial prejudice is so engrained that Atticus cannot influence the verdict of people reared to believe "that all Negroes lie, that all Negroes are basically immoral beings, that all Negro men are not to be trusted around ... [white] women." Another major interest in the novel is the unraveling of the mystery surrounding the neighborhood recluse Arthur "Boo" Radley, who has remained secluded in the Radley house since he was arrested many years before for some teenage pranks and then released in his father's custody. Initially a victim of his father's uncompromising religion and family pride, Boo gradually becomes a victim of community prejudice, feared by adults and children alike. When Jem and Scout befriend Dill, a little boy who is spending summers in Maycomb with his aunt, the three devote themselves to Dill's idea of making Boo come out. At first the children imagine that the recluse dines on raw squirrels and roams the neighborhood by night. But finally they learn that Boo is truly a friend who has done a number of kind deeds for them. He hides gifts for the children in a hollow tree. He secretly mends Jem's torn pants, which were badly snagged on the Radleys' fence and abandoned there by the boy during an attempt to spy on Boo. Boo leaves them on the fence for Jem to retrieve. One cold winter night, while Scout stands shivering near the Radleys' steps as she watches a neighbor's house burn, Boo, unseen, covers her with a blanket. Finally, it is Boo who rescues Scout and Jem from the murderous attack of drunken, vengeful Bob Ewell. To Kill a Mockingbird contains a number of complex and opposing themes in a deceptively simple narrative--ignorance-knowledge, cowardice-heroism, guilt-innocence, and prejudice (persecution)-tolerance. The ignorance-knowledge theme is developed through characterization and action. Lee believes that children are born with an instinct for truth and justice. Their education, which is the result of observing the behavior of the adults around them, can nurture or destroy their intrinsic goodness. Fortunately, the Finch children have Atticus to provide the true education which the Maycomb school fails to provide. The structuring of the action around the Boo Radley mystery and Robinson's trial is well suited to the gradual revelation of truth and further develops the ignorance-knowledge theme. The character most central to the development of the cowardice-heroism theme is Atticus Finch; in counterpoint to Atticus's courage is the bullying cowardice of Bob Ewell. In part one of the novel, the children begin to think of their father as a hero when they see him shoot a rabid dog and learn for the first time that he was once "the deadest shot in Maycomb County." Atticus reforms the children's definition of courage when he has Jem read to Mrs. Dubose, a former drug addict, after school. The day after she dies, he tells Jem about her victory over morphine: "I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what." In part two of the novel, Atticus fulfills this definition of courage in defending Tom Robinson. The themes of guilt-innocence and prejudice (persecution)-tolerance are closely related in the novel. The characters who are innocent--Tom Robinson and Boo Radley--are judged guilty by a prejudiced society. Tom is killed trying to escape from prison but the novel expresses hope that prejudice will be overcome. Jem sheds tears at the end of the trial and vows to combat racial injustice. However, the climax of the trial is melodramatic, and the narrative flounders when characters mouth pious speeches against prejudice. Lee's use of symbol is masterful. The mockingbird closely associated with Boo Radley and Tom Robinson represents joy and innocence. Both Atticus and Miss Maudie, an optimistic neighbor, tell the children that it is a sin to kill a mockingbird. Lee's use of the symbolic mockingbird has been compared to Whitman's in "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking." When Maycomb has a light snowfall for the first time in years, Jem builds a snowman underlaid with mud to give it sufficient substance. The snowman melts when Miss Maudie's house burns. Thus, in a day the snowman's color goes from black to white and from white to black, proving how superficial skin color is. When To Kill a Mockingbird appeared in 1960, its critical reception was mixed. R. W. Henderson called it "a compassionate, deeply moving novel, and a most persuasive plea for racial justice"; others praised Lee's "insight into Southern mores" and her "wit, grace, and skill." Negative comments were made about the novel's sermonizing and its melodramatic climax. Some critics found fault with the point of view. In Atlantic Phoebe Adams found the story "frankly and completely impossible, being told in the first person by a six-year-old girl, with the prose style of a well-educated adult." Granville Hicks noted in Saturday Review that "Miss Lee's problem has been to tell the story she wants to tell and yet to stay within the consciousness of a child, and she hasn't consistently solved it." Scholars writing articles about the novel in the 1970s praise its technical excellence and recognize its place in literary tradition.