ATTICUS AND THE LAW
By
Susan B. Arthur
A Thesis submitted to the
Faculty of the English Graduate Program of
Ohio Dominican University
Columbus, Ohio
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of
MASTER OF ARTS IN ENGLISH
December 2020
iii
ATTICUS AND THE LAW
Abstract
This work compares and contrasts the Atticus of Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a
Mockingbird, with the Atticus of Lee’s novel, Go Set a Watchman. Although Atticus appears to be a proponent of equal rights and justice in one and a staunch segregationist in the other, this work argues that Atticus is essentially the same man in both novels, and supports this perspective with an examination of Atticus’ positions on racism, the law, and justice. This work also examines Atticus and racism in the South from a regional point of view during the time period of both novels, and asks relevant questions as to the universal moral obligations the characters may have to one another.
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Dedication
In memory of Harper Lee, who got it right the first time -- “For thus hath the Lord said unto me,
Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth” -- Isaiah 21:6.
To my wonderful daughter, Emily – “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of
their dreams” – Eleanor Roosevelt. v
Acknowledgments
Dr. Squire: I appreciate your excellent overall direction on my thesis. I am also grateful for your
eagle-eyed editing and spot-on assessments of areas that needed attention. Your own
published Watchman project was an added inspiration when I considered this topic.
Dr. Brick: Thank you for your overall support on this project, for reading Go Set a Watchman,
for your astute observations and excellent comments, and especially for your class,
“Contemporary Issues Literary” (ENG 586), that helped me to bring this idea to fruition. vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract ………………………………………………………………………… iii
Dedication ……………………………………………………………………….iv
Acknowledgments ……………………………………………………………….v
Introduction ……………………………………………………………………...7
Chapter I: Justice and Equity ……………………………………………………11
Chapter II: Regionalism and Racism ……………………………………………22
Chapter III: Morality and Obligation ……………………………………………34
Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………43
Works Cited ……………………………………………………………………..46 7
Introduction
To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman author Nelle Harper Lee began her college career planning to study law, and in fact she attended law school at the University of
Alabama for a little over a year. But Lee was miserable, and in the words of a classmate, “hated” studying law. A friend who worked with Lee on the campus newspaper said that Lee “could have been a good lawyer. Her mind was so quick, but she just wanted to write” (Shields 100-101). Lee was mostly trying to please her lawyer father, A.C. Lee, who expected his daughter to follow in his footsteps and join the family firm, which also included Lee’s older sister, Alice, who was already a lawyer. In the spring of 1948, A.C. Lee realized his daughter was unhappy, so he financed a summer semester abroad for Lee to study literature at Oxford University in England.
After the summer, Lee attended one more semester of law school, then told her father over the holidays that she planned to “drop out, move to New York, find a job, and write” (Shields 109).
Following several years of trying to write while working low-paying jobs in New York, and with a surprise financial gift from friends, Lee was able to take a break from the daily grind to write all day every day. In early 1957, in her early thirties by now, Lee took the first fifty pages of Go
Set a Watchman to publishing house J.B. Lippincott. The editors thought the manuscript needed revising, and several months and manuscript drafts later, Lee was offered a contract along with a book advance, and Lippincott editor Tay Hohoff officially began working with Lee on the manuscript that would eventually become the best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning, To Kill a
Mockingbird (Shields 112-116). Some fifty-five years later, and a few months before Lee’s death, Go Set a Watchman would be published and met with a critical mixture of shock and disbelief at the different portrayal of Atticus. Atticus of Mockingbird has primarily been perceived as a champion for justice and equal rights. In Watchman, readers learn that Atticus, 8 though still a kind person, is a staunch segregationist who believes the federal government has no right interfering in the laws made by states.
Amid the myriad critical reviews, Samford University law professor Mark Baggett says,
“the one, inevitable, unblinking fact is that Watchman was written first. This was the message the real Harper Lee (not the fictional Scout) wanted to say first by writing a kind of Jeremiad of her frustration and disillusionment with racial progress. We also know that the Atticus of Go Set a
Watchman is the portrait of Atticus that she painted first – not the Gregory Peck version” (13). In fact, the character of Atticus is modeled after Lee’s father. “Mr. Lee himself only gradually rose to the moral standards of Atticus,” says Lee biographer Charles Shields. “Though more enlightened than most, A.C. … was typical of his generation, he believed that the current social order, segregation, was natural and created harmony between the races” (121). But later in the
1950s, A.C. Lee changed his views, and Shields writes that “Nelle watched as her father, formerly a conservative on matters of race and social progress, became an advocate for the rights of Negroes” (125).1
Although some critics and readers feel that Watchman should not have been published,2 as it in some ways spoils the reputation of the beloved Atticus, Baggett believes otherwise. He
1 A.C. Lee’s change of heart took place over the course of a decade in the 1950s that saw Emmett Till murdered in Alabama and black student Autherine Lucy denied admission to the University of Alabama. The race war was heating up, and “a civic-minded man like A.C. Lee could not fail to recognize it happening in his own backyard,” says Lee biographer Charles Shields. In 1959, the Ku Klux Klan threatened to kill members of the all-black Union High School band if they marched in the Monroeville Christmas parade, and wrote racist graffiti on the front of a local store that was owned by the Kiwanis Club president, A. B. Blass. The Kiwanis Club sponsored the parade, so Blass decided to call off the parade for safety reasons. According to Blass, A.C. Lee walked in the store, put his hand on Blass’ shoulder, and said, “Son, you did the right thing.” Shields also reports that by the time Mockingbird was published in 1960, A.C. Lee told a journalist who was interviewing his daughter that reapportioning voting districts to make the black vote fairer has “got to be done” (Shields 125). 2 At the time that Watchman was published in 2015, there were concerns over whether the 89-year-old Lee, who had suffered a stroke and was confined to a nursing facility, was of sound enough mind to approve the release of the novel, as well as questions about Lee’s attorney’s motives for doing so. Alabama officials investigated and found no signs of elder abuse. For more see Neely Tucker’s article in The Washington Post, July 13, 2015. 9 says, “Watchman is nowhere near as good a novel as Mockingbird, but it might prove an equally significant one, if it helps us look to history for our lessons, rather than to our consoling, childish, whitewashed fables” (9). History professor Matthew Crow agrees, “Taken together,
Harper Lee’s two books dramatize the trouble legalism has with the inscrutability of motive, conscience, and judgment, and how the history of the law intersects, if it does, with what we might call the history of justice” (42). Indeed, resolving race relations involves using the law, and in both Mockingbird and Watchman, Lee, with insider legal knowledge gleaned from her days at law school, uses aspects of the law mixed with social customs to deftly portray serious inequities between blacks and whites in and outside of the courtroom in the old South.
Vanderbilt professor Eric Sundquist describes Mockingbird as “something of a historical relic,” even though it “continues to have a widespread influence on the imagination of many young
Americans” (183). As such, it continues to be widely taught in schools around the world. Perhaps in the future, teachers will begin to incorporate portions of Watchman into the classroom discussion, especially the debate between Atticus and his adult daughter, Jean Louise, over integration and states’ rights that was triggered by the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. The difference between the two portrayals of Atticus in the books is dramatic, but important, as is the way in which Atticus uses the law. As Baggett says, “The Atticus of Go Set a
Watchman, which lay … in a safety deposit box for almost 60 years, eventually proved more authentic than the Atticus of Mockingbird” (4).
Through a critique of both Mockingbird and Watchman, and to contrast the differences in
Atticus in each novel, Chapter One takes a look at how Atticus views and uses the law in terms of justice and equity. It becomes apparent through close analysis that although Atticus follows the letter and the spirit of the law, he applies it differently depending upon the circumstances, 10 and that justice in the Old South did not always mean equality. Mockingbird takes place in the
Jim Crow South when a policy of separate but equal was legislated between blacks and whites; while Watchman occurs right after this concept was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Since the novels are set in an era before civil rights were formally implemented on the federal level, Chapter Two delves into how the South was viewed as a region by outsiders at the time, as well as how it viewed itself during this period. This chapter also examines how the South handled racism and those who would attempt to stem its effects. In any situation where an issue such as racism is systemic, people tend to operate instinctively based on a moral code that is often ingrained and unconscious. This appears especially true in the town of Maycomb; therefore, Chapter Three examines the moral development of Atticus and the collective conscience of the citizenry of Maycomb, and asks pertinent questions as to who is ultimately responsible and where the obligations to one’s fellow man may lie. Overall, a picture emerges of
Atticus as both a semi-tragic hero as well as a man of his time, but one who is altogether human and not a God. Rather than dismissing the Atticus of Watchman as an aberration, a thorough examination of all sides of the issues leads to a more nuanced understanding of who Atticus is within the context of both books, and in relation to the law and his daughter. As it turns out,
Atticus is the same person in each novel -- he is merely seen through a child’s eyes in one, and through that same child’s now grown-up eyes in the other. 11
Chapter I:
Justice and Equity
“Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women: when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no
court can save it.” Federal Judge Learned Hand, 19443
In Harper Lee’s own words, she wrote her masterpiece, To Kill a Mockingbird, to “be the chronicler of something that is going down the drain very swiftly, and that is small town, middle class, Southern life … There is something universal in it, and something to lament when it goes,” she said in a 1964 radio interview with Roy Newquist. Mockingbird, set in 1930s Alabama, has been called a “gentle, compassionate work” (Newquist) that portrays protagonist Atticus Finch as the kindly lawyer fighting for justice for a black man wrongly accused of raping a white woman. Over the decades, readers have lauded Atticus as the voice of tolerance and a defender of equal rights, especially as seen through the childhood eyes of his daughter, Scout, who narrates the tale. These idyllic sentiments mostly appeased millions for over fifty years, until another Lee manuscript, Go Set a Watchman, was published in 2015. It is widely considered to be a first draft of Mockingbird that was “toned down … moved back in time,” and “almost totally rewritten” (Rose 618). Watchman, to the disappointment of many fans and book critics around the world, portrays Atticus Finch as a 1950s racist who opposes a recent Supreme Court decision to end segregation. In Watchman, Atticus and his now-adult daughter, Jean Louise, engage in a fierce argument over the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision to desegregate schools. Although some readers and critics may feel let down by the bigoted Atticus portrayed in Watchman, many legal scholars view the Atticus of 1950s
Watchman as a more accurate portrayal of the man than the watered-down, 1930s Atticus of
3 Facing History and Ourselves, p. 139 12
Mockingbird, and believe that the books raise realistic social, legal, and ethical questions regarding justice that Lee, writing through Jean Louise, may herself have struggled with as she sought to reconcile her own racial perspective. “The one firm link between Watchman and
Mockingbird,” says legal scholar Mark Baggett of Samford University, “is Lee’s faith in the law as an instrument of social justice” (1). A close analysis of Atticus and the law in both books, combined with a critical synthesis of the opinions of legal scholars, historians, and sociologists, will show that Atticus, revered as a hero fighting for justice in Mockingbird and scorned as a racist in Watchman, is not a different man in Watchman – that he was and still is the same kindly segregationist who nonetheless continues to uphold, as he did in Mockingbird, both the spirit and the letter of the law that affords equal justice to all. Indeed, viewing Atticus through the lens of the law may be the only legitimate way to reconcile the two opposing versions of Atticus.
Although Mockingbird can easily be read as a small town, southern, coming-of-age novel, the book also provides readers with a window into how Atticus interprets the law in terms of equity and justice. When read alongside Watchman, the contrast in Atticus as a maverick proponent of equal rights in Mockingbird versus a staunch defender of segregation in Watchman initially appears antithetical, yet in reality Atticus’ beliefs do not deviate much from one book to the other – they are simply expressed differently in Watchman. Indeed, feminist critic Elaine
Showalter says Watchman is “not a good enough novel to justify reading on its own;” however, she thinks reading it with Mockingbird “may lead to more sophisticated political analyses” (51).
In Mockingbird, Atticus believes in equal justice in the courtroom whether a defendant is black or white; whereas in Watchman, Atticus still believes in equal justice in the courtroom, but he supports the segregationist policy of separate but equal between the races for everything outside the courtroom. The truth comes to light in Watchman when Atticus is challenged by his adult 13
daughter during a tumultuous time of social change in the 1950s. “Watchman, among other
things, is a meditation on the legal and political history of equity,” says Matthew Crow, Assistant
Professor of History at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. In fact, Crow points out that
literature like Mockingbird and Watchman can portray “historical realities of law that legal and historical scholarship often cannot” (37).
In Watchman, Jean Louise is furious to learn that Atticus is a proponent of segregation.
Although the book reveals that both Atticus and Jean Louise harbor prejudice, Jean Louise is
more aware of reality and the need for change. In fact, Showalter points out that Jean Louise is
“just as angry as Atticus at the Supreme Court decision,” and that Jean Louise is also “insensitive
to her class privileges” (50). Yet, Atticus’ perceived fall from grace for being revealed as a
segregationist has caused many a Mockingbird fan to dismiss Watchman; still others do not care
for the grownup Jean Louise. In fact, as much truth as Watchman reveals about Atticus, the book
also portrays a highly conflicted Jean Louise. Law professor Judy Cornett of the University of
Tennessee College of Law finds Watchman “authentic, insightful, and ultimately satisfying”
(26). Cornett views Jean Louise as being on an important psychic journey to reconcile her
upbringing against the racial practices of the “Old South” (33). Watchman, says Cornett, is the
story of one “young white Southerner’s attempt to come to terms with the culture she loves: a
culture based upon abhorrent principles” – that is, Jean Louise is from the culture but may no
longer be of the culture (26). It is through the grownup Jean Louise’s challenge to Atticus’
opinion of the Brown v. Board of Education decision that readers learn where Atticus really
stands on matters of race, and separately, where he stands on matters of the law. Readers also
learn that Jean Louise is conflicted over her own feelings about Atticus’ revelations, as well as
her own feelings about the recent court decision and racial equality. Whereas Jean Louise had 14
looked to Atticus as a role model of fairness when she was a child, she now realizes that his
definition of justice does not extend beyond the courtroom. She also questions the sometimes
competing issues of justice and equity and how Atticus uses the law and equity4 to achieve goals.
The historian Crow offers a look at how the concepts of equity and the law are illustrated
in Watchman, and says Jean Louise raises the issue when she confronts Atticus about the
“difference between justice and justice” (40). Crow maintains that the divisions between law and
equity – between the rule of law and morality and conscience – “do not hold firm under
historical and literary scrutiny” (40). Alfred Brophy, professor at the University of North
Carolina – Chapel Hill, agrees. “Go Set a Watchman opens up the question of just how much
‘the law’ has to do with justice,” he says (19). In one example, Jean Louise, angry with Atticus
for speaking at a white council meeting, attacks him for his stance:
… you balanced the equities, didn’t you? I remember that rape case you defended,
but I missed the point. You love justice all right. Abstract justice written down
item by item on a brief – nothing to do with that black boy, you just like a neat
brief. His cause interfered with your orderly mind, and you had to work order out
of disorder … Why didn’t you tell me the difference between justice and justice,
and right and right? Why didn’t you? (Lee, Watchman 248-249)
In her comments, Jean Louise presents her father and the reader with the contrast between justice
“as either abstract and formal equality before the law, or equity as a kind of balancing of interests,” according to Crow, who says that “equity requires that we see the public and the constitutional at stake in the supposedly private, personal, and transactional” (40). Furthermore,
4 Equity is defined as “the recognition of an exception to a general rule; a moral reading of the law; and the doctrines and remedies developed in the English courts of equity, especially the Court of Chancery” (Samuel L. Bray, Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law). 15
Crow maintains that due to the Brown decision, “the moral weight of the U.S. Constitution and
of history itself are brought to bear on the lives of the characters” (40-41). He also states that
“considerations of equity are everywhere” in both of Lee’s books; indeed, there are several examples, such as when Atticus decides to represent Tom Robinson in the rape case in
Mockingbird. This is the case that Jean Louise refers to in her argument with her father, when she puts the contradictions between justice and equity together, and suddenly sees Atticus as a possible hypocrite. Atticus had long ago balanced the equities when he explained to young Scout and Jem that it was a matter of conscience when he took the case: “… if I didn’t I couldn’t hold up my head in town, I couldn’t represent this county in the legislature … Every lawyer gets at least one case in his lifetime that affects him personally. This one’s mine, I guess …” (Lee,
Mockingbird 86).
However, not every legal critic sees Atticus taking the case the same way that Atticus sees himself. The late Monroe Freedman, former Distinguished Professor of Legal Ethics at
Hofstra University, believes that Atticus responds appropriately in Mockingbird when he takes the Robinson case, but Freedman believes Atticus does so from “an elite sense of noblesse oblige” and “under compulsion of a court order” (21). Furthermore, Brophy states that Atticus takes the case so that “NAACP lawyers will not come to Maycomb to challenge the white-only jury pool” (20). Brophy explains that there was a history in Alabama of outside lawyers being run out of town and of their clients being lynched, and that this effort was meant to “intimidate the entire African American community and to stop them from asserting their rights” (20).5 In
2003, well before Watchman was published, Samford University professor Christopher Metress
called Mockingbird and Atticus “at best, morally ambiguous or, at worst, morally reprehensible”
5 Brophy cites a 1930s case in which the NAACP used this argument when it asked U.S. Department of Justice officials to prosecute local officials who were complicit with lynchers in Alabama. 16 due to “Finch’s complicity with, rather than his challenges to, the segregationist politics of his hometown” (2). In fact, Atticus taking the case is “paternalistic” and for “his own sense of personal rectitude and his need to be seen as virtuous by others” and not about Tom Robinson
(Atkinson qtd. in Metress 10). Perhaps this is what Jean Louise realizes when she confronts her father in Watchman. In a heartbroken-sounding tone, she tells Atticus: “I believed in you. I looked up to you, Atticus, like I never looked up to anybody in my life” (Lee, Watchman 249-
250). Although Atticus does accept the Robinson case because he believes the defendant deserves a chance at a fair trial, he also has other reasons that have nothing to do with justice or the law. This is what Jean Louise refers to when she tells Atticus he “balanced the equities.”
Atticus will defend Tom Robinson to the best of his abilities, but he is also keeping NAACP attorneys at bay and safe-guarding his own reputation. It is as though Jean Louise speaks for readers everywhere when she expresses her anger and disappointment in Atticus over the segregationist beliefs that she has just realized Atticus holds, and apparently has held all along.
For his part, Atticus expresses compassion but does not appear chastened as he tries to explain his involvement with the citizen’s council.6 “You seem to think I’m involved in something positively evil,” he says. “The council’s our only defense, Jean Louise” (Lee, Watchman 250). If
Atticus was not so far on the wrong side of history (Zwick 1367), one could almost feel sorry for him, knowing that he will never win the battle, and in his old age must adjust to a different way of life than the one he has been accustomed to for all of his seventy-two years. Atticus may be
6 White Citizens’ Councils organized throughout the Deep South following the Supreme Court’s desegregation decision, primarily to fight the NAACP, but also to “cancel much else that the Negro has gained over the last half- century by keeping him out of the polling booth,” and to “achieve a constitutionally illegal purpose by ‘all legal means,’” historian David Halberstam, “The White Citizens Councils: Respectable means for Unrespectable Ends,” Commentary, October 1, 1956. 17 out of step, but in his defense, Atticus’ brother, Jack, tells Jean Louise that Atticus had also been opposed to the New Deal (Lee, Watchman 198).
For Atticus, it seems the law is less about justice and more about order. Brophy explains that for Atticus the law was a rule of separate but equal, and this is why Atticus moves from opposing lynching in Mockingbird to supporting Maycomb’s white citizens’ council in
Watchman. “He was against the violence of lynchings, but he was not in favor of a law that upheld equal status nor of other changes to the law …,” says Brophy (22). In Atticus’ summation to the jury in Tom Robinson’s trial, he says that not all people are born equally smart or equally wealthy, but he points out the one single place where all men are created equal, and “that institution, gentlemen, is a court” (Lee, Mockingbird 233). Atticus tells the jury that “a court is only as sound as its jury,” and that “a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up” (233). In
Atticus’ world, “whatever inequities [people] suffer outside the court, within it, they are to be treated as equals,” says philosophy professor Tim Dare of the University of Auckland (97). This is how Atticus views the order of the day – the order being racial inequality -- against the role of the law and the courts. However much Atticus believes this in his heart, it is not how most citizens of Maycomb feel, and therefore Tom is convicted “in the secret courts of men’s hearts” by the members of an all-white jury (Dare 98). “These courts were governed not by presumptions of equality and innocence,” says Dare, “but by prejudice and bigotry” (98). Atticus hoped the jury would apply public standards to the rule of law in the Robinson case, and not apply their own private wishes and standards, but the equities due to the order of the day were balanced against Robinson. It would seem that Atticus wants to have it both ways, and in the Jim
Crow south of 1930s Mockingbird, this was simply not going to happen. Deep down, Atticus never expected to get an acquittal for Tom Robinson, no matter how well he tried the case. 18
However, Atticus’ hopes that the rule of law will prevail in court does not stop him from deviating from his own principles when it comes to the question of whether to put Boo Radley on trial for killing Bob Ewell. Although Atticus first assumes his son, Jem, has stabbed Boo in self-defense, and expects Jem to be acquitted, he soon realizes that Sheriff Tate is trying to protect the shy hermit, Boo, from appearing in court. It is Boo, after all, who has actually killed
Ewell while protecting Scout and Jem. Sheriff Tate declares that Ewell “fell on his own knife,” and after a long pause, Atticus agrees. Atticus and the sheriff “have tried [Boo] in the secret court of their hearts and declared him innocent,” says Dare. “What was a wicked thing in Tom’s case is a good thing in Boo’s case” (98-99). Furthermore, Dare goes on to point out that the apparent inconsistency between the two episodes shows Atticus’ “praiseworthy character and laudable attitude toward the law” (99). This approach balances the equities yet again in a situation where prevailing law – law that says Boo must be arrested and charged – violates reason – reason which dictates that trying Boo in court would be like shooting a mockingbird.
Dare attempts to explain Atticus’ conduct by casting him as a tragic figure and by suggesting that both Tom and Boo are innocent like mockingbirds, who it would be sinful to harm (101):
Both Tom and Boo are “outsiders”; Tom because he is black and Boo because he
is a handicapped recluse, isolated from the dominant community. Each must rely
on this community to ignore the fact that they are outsiders. In Tom’s case, the
community does not do so … Confronted with the possibility of another tragedy,
Atticus’ faith in the rule of law … fail[s] him. He cannot bear the possibility that
he will be party to the death of another mockingbird. (Dare 101-102)
The tragedy here, according to Dare, is in a principled man doubting the adequacy of the principles by which he lives, and abandoning those principles. This leads Dare to ask the ethical 19 question of when a case is tried in the secret court of men’s hearts, does it depend on which men’s hearts? (102). Indeed, Claudia Durst Johnson, a former English professor and department chair at the University of Alabama, and personal friend of Harper Lee, points out that “Atticus is grieved by what he cannot … say … that the law of the land is one thing and ‘the secret court of men’s hearts’ quite another” (67). Indeed, Johnson further points out that “[Mockingbird] presents the argument that the forces that motivate society are not consonant with the democratic ideals embedded in its legal system” and that the “disjunction between the codes men and women profess and those they live by threatens to unravel individual lives as well as the social fabric” (967-68).
Similar sentiments are evident in Watchman when Jean Louise not only confronts Atticus over his contradictions, she also accuses her boyfriend, Hank, of being a hypocrite for attending the citizens’ council meeting with her father. During an argument, Hank tells Jean Louise that the Maycomb Citizens’ Council is “a protest to the court, it’s a sort of warning to the Negroes for them not to be in such a hurry …” (Lee, Watchman 229). Jean Louise is disgusted and tells Hank that “she looked up to [him],” and expected him to have “guts” and to “stand on his own two feet” and not attend council meetings (Lee, Watchman 232-33). Hank attempts to explain that he is not privileged like the Finches, whose peccadilloes around town are often excused, and that he needs and wants to fit into the social fabric of Maycomb in order to get along and to make a living as an attorney himself (234). Jean Louise responds, “I know I can’t live with you. I cannot live with a hypocrite,” (234). It seems that Jean Louise has returned home to Maycomb,
Alabama, from New York City to find that everyone she thought she knew before has turned into a hypocrite she no longer recognizes. In her anger and disappointment with everyone Jean
Louise decides she will pack and cut short her trip by ten days. However, her Uncle Jack has 20 heard about Jean Louise’s fight with Atticus and shows up in an attempt to knock some sense into her, first by literally striking her against her face, and next by trying to explain Atticus and the big picture to her. Uncle Jack explains that Atticus needed to “kill” Jean Louise so that she could become “her own person” because she had confused her father “with God” all her life
(264-65). Uncle Jack says, “You never saw him as a man with a man’s heart, and a man’s failings” (265). Uncle Jack also tells Jean Louise that she is a “bigot,” and she looks in the dictionary for the meaning and reads it out loud: “One obstinately or intolerably devoted to his own church, party, belief, or opinion” (266-67). Uncle Jack explains that Jean Louise wants to run because she does not like “the way these people do,” instead of allowing people “elbow room” for their own ideas. This makes her a bigot. He tells her that if she does not learn to listen to others, she will never grow, and will be the same person at sixty that she is today (267). Uncle
Jack also explains that Atticus has principles, does not condone violence, and will always follow the law. Thus, readers are to assume that though Atticus is not a fan of the Supreme Court’s decision on integration, he will most certainly follow the law, despite attending white council meetings. As Uncle Jack says, “That’s the way he lives” (268).
Jean Louise is devastated when it dawns on her that her father is not who she always believed him to be. She had put Atticus on a pedestal and in her eyes he was a larger-than-life hero who treated everyone equally no matter their social class or the color of their skin. As much of a shock as the discovery is to Jean Louise and Lee’s readers that Atticus is a segregationist,
Watchman paints Atticus as much more of a human. Meanwhile, Jean Louise herself has been narrow-minded and is now forced to confront her own opinions about her father, her hometown, and the coming civil rights movement. Atticus believes in states’ rights and resents the interference of the federal government in local affairs, but he also believes that violence is not a 21 means to an end. Though critics may find fault with the ethical choices Atticus makes -- and he may well seek to fight the Brown decision legally -- he will do so using the law in his own principled way. While some critics have pegged Atticus as “an apologist for racism and Jim
Crow,” according to Showalter, she says the “dominant critical view” about Watchman is that it
“tells the painful but necessary truth about white racism in 1950s Alabama and in white America generally today” (50). 22
Chapter II
Regionalism and Racism
“Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win.” Atticus Finch7 In delving into Atticus’ vision of the law, it is important to note the cultural and political situation in the South during the late 1950s when Lee wrote Watchman. Although author Lee lamented over the fading away of the small-town, southern way of life, the reality is that such a languid lifestyle -- one that conjures up visions of iced tea enjoyed on wide front porches and everybody knowing everybody else’s business -- initially evolved through the use of black slave labor, and later, continued to prosper through white supremacy, a racist doctrine that kept blacks poorly educated and politically powerless. For decades, while blacks in northern states enjoyed far more rights, the country’s southern states enforced Jim Crow laws that mandated racial segregation, a concept that was upheld in the 1896 Supreme Court decision, Plessy v. Ferguson.
Plessy established the doctrine of separate but equal for African Americans, which ensured that whites were not forced to co-mingle with blacks or to educate their children alongside them. The doctrine’s unspoken effect was to treat blacks as the underclass in southern society, and in reality, to deny them equal opportunity. However, in 1954 the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v.
Board of Education that educational segregation was unconstitutional and schools would now be integrated. The Brown decision created a great deal of social and racial unrest in the South, and the changes that Brown might inflict on Maycomb are at the heart of the philosophical argument in Watchman between Atticus and Jean Louise that reveals where they both stand on the subject of race relations. In fact, many southerners deeply resented the federal government telling them
7 Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, p. 87 23 how to live their lives. Evidence of this sentiment is seen in an exchange between Atticus and
Jean Louise. When Atticus asks Jean Louise how she feels about the Supreme Court decision, she replies that she was “furious” because “there they were, tellin’ us what to do again” (Lee,
Watchman 239). Her father, “grin[ning],” responds to her anger with “you were merely reacting according to your kind” (239). Atticus’ reference to “your kind” in this passage is interesting in that he implies that true born-and-bred southerners will naturally have an ingrained resentment against those they consider as outsiders to the South. In fact, Yankee influence was perceived as a threat to what many southerners considered “good race relations” – which was code for segregation and white supremacy (Killian 5).
The opinions expressed so openly by Atticus and Jean Louise in Watchman’s riveting
Chapter 17 – resentment of the federal government’s intervention and resistance to integration -- represent widely held feelings of many southerners of the time, and some sociology scholars say those ideas play into how the South has defined itself as a region through the years, as well as how the South is viewed in general by non-Southerners. Vanderbilt sociologist Larry J. Griffin wrote in a 1995 essay for the book he edited, The South as an American Problem, that “the South has been understood by both natives and outsiders as something more than merely different from
America … It has also been celebrated and vilified with a fervor absent from meditations about other sections of the country” (11). Griffin asks why this is so, and suggests the answer “has something to do with the understanding that the South historically has presented a special and troubling problem to American ideals, identity, and practices.” As examples, Griffin cites the fact that the South practiced slavery far longer than the rest of the nation, and relinquished it only after losing the Civil War in which a combined 600,000 deaths occurred from both the Union and Confederate armies. He says the South was the only region of the country to organize itself 24
“by law, custom, and force through racial segregation and white supremacy.” Adding to the list,
Griffin also cites “night riders, chain gangs, the Klan, the closing of public schools to avoid desegregation, (and) violent repression of labor unions” (12-13) as issues primarily unique to the
South. Griffin attributes much of the perception of the South as a problem due to its long-term opposition to the federal government; however, he also points out the South’s positive contributions to the nation -- Thomas Jefferson, a southerner, authored the Declaration of
Independence; southerners held the White House as president for the first 50 years of America’s existence; and cotton, the South’s biggest crop, drove a great deal of the nation’s prosperity for decades (21).
The late sociologist, Lewis Killian, distinguished professor at Amherst until his death in
2010, cites reasons similar to those of Griffin when he defined white Southerners as an ethnic group in the 1970 first edition of his book, White Southerners. Killian notes that southerners
“share a strong sense of identity based on a common history,” as well as a common culture that includes “rules of conduct, values, and ideologies,” and they share a common language – “often replete with its own dialect.” Additionally, Killian cites Protestantism as the common religion of white, Anglo-Saxon Southerners and says “they make clear distinctions between themselves and others,” with others being “Negroes,” as well as those who they feel, “put them down as backward and reactionary troglodytes, namely but not exclusively Northern liberals” (qtd. in
Rose 617). Indeed, regarding southern anger towards the north, Killian writes in the 1985 second edition of his book that,
The ancient battle cry, “states’rights!” has always carried a connotation of
“regional rights” in the South. Whatever it might mean to politicians and voters in 25
sections of the nation, below the Potomoc the slogan means
"southern rights" and freedom from Yankee interference. (6)
Killian goes on to define “white southernness” in terms of “exposure to southern culture” and as either “a white person who has been born and raised at least until young adulthood in the South and who still thinks of himself as a southerner” or as “a white person who, no matter where he was born and raised, lives in the South and identifies himself as a southerner” (11). In addition to
Alabama, where Watchman is set, Killian refers to the other southern states as being Virginia,
North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas.
Another way in which many southerners have traditionally viewed themselves is through a racial and socio-economic caste system which is clearly illustrated in Mockingbird. This well- defined caste system not only separates whites from blacks, but also divides white southerners into distinct classes, according to former Texas Christian University literature professor, Fred
Erisman (126). Erisman says that Atticus, Aunt Alexandra, and Judge Taylor are in the upper class, while Maycomb Tribune owner Braxton Underwood and shop owner Sam Levy (who sold the white sheets to the Klansmen) inhabit the middle class. In the lower class, which Aunt
Alexandra refers to as “trash,” are the Cunninghams, and at the bottom of the heap, citizens like the Ewells are considered “scum,” with their only saving grace being that their skin is white
(127). Erisman says this caste system is “a representation of the Old South,” and that it
“dominates Maycomb attitudes” (127). Even author Lee describes Maycomb as “a tired old town” that survived the Civil War unscathed (Lee, Mockingbird, 5). It is these deep-seated southern attitudes, ingrained in the citizens of Maycomb about each other, and expressed in both
Mockingbird and Watchman, that underscore southern resistance to equality between the races, 26
particularly during the years prior to the passage and enforcement of the nation’s Civil Rights
Act throughout the 1960s.
Peter Rose, sociology professor at Smith College, notes in his 2015 article contrasting
Mockingbird and Watchman, that this white Southern clannish attitude sometimes resulted in
“the often callous disregard for the humanity of those other Southerners, the ‘Negroes,’ most of
whose roots in the area went back as far as their own but were still seen as intellectually and morally inferior” (617). Though author Harper Lee is herself a product of small-town
Monroeville, Alabama, and claimed sentimental reasons for writing Mockingbird – indeed the story includes idyllic descriptions of small-town life – Lee tells the truth in Watchman with her
decidedly darker portrayal of Southern bigotry as Atticus attends white council meetings for the
purpose of thwarting the NAACP’s efforts to end segregation. “In many ways that unsettling fear
of disruption of a way of life is what … Watchman is at bottom all about,” says Rose (617).
Indeed, Atticus shows Jean Louise his bias when he tells her:
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 …. (Lee, Watchman 246-247)
Atticus’s prejudice is on display when he states his belief that the “Negroes” should “adapt
themselves to white ways,” as though the only possible manner in which the two races can
integrate is if blacks become more like whites. Furthermore, Atticus resents the intervention of
the federal government, and after the NAACP has begun defending civil rights cases in the state
he says, “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?” (Lee, Watchman 247). 27
In the 1930s Mockingbird story the small-town, segregated way of life is not challenged.
What is challenged in Mockingbird is one black man’s right to a fair trial rather than a lynching.
However, in Watchman, Atticus is some twenty-five years older and not at all in the mood to defend the Supreme Court’s decision to level the playing field and enforce integration. Whereas
Atticus not only takes the case in Mockingbird, he also sits a vigil outside the courthouse jail to ensure his client gets the fair trial he has been promised. In his closing statement to the jury in that trial, Atticus famously defends the courts and equality when he says, “Our courts have their faults, as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levelers, and in our courts, all men are created equal” (Lee, Mockingbird 233). Now, in the 1950s Maycomb of
Watchman, Atticus is not in a hurry to jump to the defense of black children integrating with white children in public schools. In fact, Atticus feels that the move will make things worse.
Atticus asks Jean Louise: “Do you want your children going to a school that’s been dragged down to accommodate Negro children?” (Lee, Watchman 246).
Legal scholar Brophy says that while Atticus of Mockingbird lays a claim on hearts because he is a solitary figure standing up for justice, the real issue for readers of both books seems to be how to reconcile the 1930s hero with the 1950s racist. Brophy points out that
Watchman gives readers that very opportunity at reconciliation when the novel “announces that the Constitution stands for the principles of equal protection” and points out that “separate was inherently unequal” (23). He further explains how Atticus of Watchman had a “formalist vision of law without a sense of the surrounding social reality” (20). Brophy states that after the Brown decision, lawyers around the country attempted to bring the law into alignment with justice, particularly in regard to violence in Alabama, but that figures like Atticus “attack the whole idea behind Brown by saying that African Americans are not yet ready for citizenship” and instead 28
they propose a policy of gradualism8 (21). For the cultured and educated seventy-two-year-old
Atticus, justice meant an end to violence, but did not extend to equal rights. “Jean Louise,”
Atticus says, “Have you ever considered that you can’t have a set of backward people living among people advanced in one kind of civilization and have a social Arcadia?” (Lee, Watchman
242).
Brophy maintains that the issues in Watchman are constitutional ideas that became central to the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s -- the argument being between states’ rights that are guaranteed in the Tenth Amendment9 and the equal civil and legal rights guaranteed to
African Americans and former slaves in the Fourteenth Amendment.10 However, Jean Louise is
exploring, and struggling with, her own racial beliefs in Watchman even as she argues with
Atticus. Brophy points out that Jean Louise at least had a sense of legal realism when she
acknowledged that “the Supreme Court had no choice but to act” (Brophy 22), and also when she
tells her father she believes it is time “to do right” and to give African Americans a chance.
Atticus is quizzical and asks, “The Negroes? You don’t think they have a chance?” To this
question, Jean Louise responds, “Why, no sir” (Lee, Watchman 241). Jean Louise tells Atticus
that she believes in “equal rights for all; special privileges for none,” a slogan from the Andrew
Jackson Democratic party era. “To me … it didn’t mean one card off the top of the stack for the
8 Civil rights leader Martin Luther King decried gradualism in his April 10, 1957 speech at the St. Louis Freedom Rally by saying, “There are some writing letters from the South to the North saying, ‘Slow up, you are going too fast’ … The gradualism that we hear so much talk about in the South now is … an excuse rather for ‘do-nothingism’ and escapism which end up in ‘stand-stillism’” (King, Martin Luther). 9 The Tenth Amendment is part of the Bill of Rights to the Constitution. It was ratified on Dec. 15, 1791. It states that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people” (National Constitution Center, “Rights Reserved …”). 10 The Fourteenth Amendment was ratified on July 9, 1868, and granted citizenship to all persons “born or naturalized in the United States” (including former slaves); provided all citizens with “equal protection under the laws,” and gave Congress the power to enforce this act, which eventually led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965 (National Constitution Center, “Citizenship Rights …”). 29
white man and one off the bottom for the Negro,” Jean Louise tells her father (Lee, Watchman
242).
On the other hand, Atticus fears that with equal voting rights the African American
population, which outnumbers whites in some areas, will lead to blacks taking over county
elected positions and ultimately, to regressive policies. “You realize that our Negro population is
backward, don’t you?” he asks Jean Louise. Atticus further explains that “… if the Negro vote
edged out the white you’d have Negroes in every county office.” When Jean Louise questions
this, Atticus tells her, “When they vote they vote in blocs” (Lee, Watchman 242-243). Atticus
then gently, proudly, and almost sadly, explains to Jean Louise where he stands politically:
I am old-fashioned, but this I believe with all my heart. I’m a sort of Jeffersonian
Democrat … Jefferson believed full citizenship was a privilege to be earned by
each man, that it was not something given lightly nor to be taken lightly. A man
couldn’t vote just because he was a man, in Jefferson’s eyes. He had to be a
responsible man. A vote was, to Jefferson, a precious privilege a man attained for
himself in a – live-and-let-live economy. (Lee, Watchman 244)11
But Jean Louise, at twenty-six and home for a two-week visit from New York, where her eyes
have been opened to the world beyond the South, does not accept his argument: “Atticus, you are
re-writing history,” she tells him (244). Regardless, Atticus had always insisted on making things right and he taught Jean Louise as a child to do the same. Now, Jean Louise is struggling not only with the law vis-à-vis the recent Supreme Court decision banning segregation, but she is also angry with Atticus. His outspoken beliefs have caused her to experience internal conflict
11 Thomas Jefferson was a lifelong opponent of slavery, which he called, “moral depravity,” yet by 1782 he was the second largest slaveholder in his county with 175 slaves. Jefferson was an advocate for abolition and gradual emancipation, neither of which occurred during his lifetime (Jefferson, Thomas). 30 towards her father, as well as conflicts about her own identity as a Southerner. She says as much to Atticus during their argument:
I mean I grew up right here in your house, and I never knew what was in your
mind. I only heard what you said. You neglected to tell me that we were naturally
better than the Negroes, bless their kinky heads, that they were able to go so far
but so far only … I’ll never forgive you for what you did to me. You cheated me,
you’ve driven me out of my home and now I’m in a no-man’s-land but good –
there’s no place for me anymore in Maycomb, and I’ll never be entirely at home
anywhere else. (Lee, Watchman 247-248)
Jean Louise’s disappointment with Atticus cuts her deeply and painfully, and she points out to
Atticus that since he would never treat an individual poorly, she wonders how it is possible to treat a set of people differently. She brings up Calpurnia, the family’s long-time beloved Negro maid who cooked and cleaned and helped to raise the motherless children: “When you talked of justice you forgot to say that justice is something that has nothing to do with people … nothing to do with our Calpurnia and what she’s meant to us, how faithful she’s been to us …” (Lee,
Watchman 248). Perhaps, as Rose notes, the pre-civil rights saying is apropos here: “The South loves the Negro as a man and hates him as a race; the North loves him as a race but hates him as a man” (619).
Atticus understands that change is coming, but he wants it to be gradual. He also resents the federal government telling the white citizens of Alabama what to do. Atticus cites his reasons to Jean Louise for attending the Maycomb Citizen’s Council: “I can tell you the two reasons I was there. The Federal Government and the NAACP” (Lee, Watchman, 238); yet Jean Louise places the blame for the Court’s decision squarely on the shoulders of white citizens: 31
We missed the boat, Atticus. We sat back and let the NAACP come in because we
were so furious at what we knew the Court was going to do … we naturally
started shouting nigger. Took it out on them, because we resented the government
… I think we deserve everything we’ve gotten from the NAACP and more. (Lee,
Watchman 245)
Jean Louise’s comments illustrate her conflicted feelings about the changes that are coming, while Atticus remains resolute. “Do you want Negroes by the carload in our schools and churches and theaters? Do you want that in our world?” (Lee, Watchman 245). Again, Atticus’ choice to use the possessive “our” makes it sound as though whites own the world they live in and it is up to them to decide whether to allow African Americans into it. Quite simply put, this is white supremacy and Jean Louise points out the hypocrisy: “They’re people, aren’t they? We were quite willing to import them when they made money for us” (Lee, Watchman 246).
However, Atticus is from a different generation and continues to argue that Negroes are not ready to be integrated; that it must be gradual. He is also, perhaps, patronizing his daughter by insinuating that she does not see the big picture:
They were coming along fine, traveling at a rate they could absorb, more of ‘em
voting more 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? (Watchman 247)
Atticus continues to maintain the stance of white superiority over the black race when he refers to the South’s “own people.” It is difficult to digest, but again, it is the 1950s, and the reason the
Supreme Court ruled as it did is because the Southern states refused to integrate of their own 32 initiative. There was apparently no real incentive to do so. Jean Louise finally gives in to Atticus and agrees with him on gradualism, but in contrast to Atticus, she is open to change: “I know it’s got to be slow, Atticus, I know that full well. But I know it’s got to be” (Watchman 252).
Atticus, however kindly and otherwise well-meaning, holds tightly to his beliefs, as outdated as they may be. Allen Mendenhall, a lawyer and literature professor, challenges the opinion of many critics who feel that the Atticus of Watchman is not the same as the Atticus of
Mockingbird. Mendenhall says that although readers may be shocked to discover that their beloved
Atticus is a segregationist, he argues that Atticus of Watchman “does not contradict the portrayal of Atticus in Mockingbird” (8-9). Mendenhall maintains that Atticus is still a hero – albeit a flawed one – and he qualifies this by stating that Atticus “can no longer represent the standard of perfection that no actual person or compelling fictional character could meet” (7). Mendenhall insists that “most of us who grew up in the South knew or still know people of a certain generation who might have represented a Tom Robinson against manifestly false charges while also supporting the segregationist order of the day” (9). In fact, Atticus’ brother, Jack, sums up Atticus nicely when talking to Jean Louise after her row with Atticus: “The law is what he lives by. He’ll do his best to prevent someone from beating up somebody else, then he’ll turn around and try to stop no less than the Federal Government … But remember this, he’ll always do it by the letter and by the spirit of the law. That’s the way he lives” (Watchman 268).
Mendenhall also makes clear that although Atticus’ views were not surprising for that period in history, “we should not let people or characters like Atticus off the hook for adhering to the widely held racial attitudes of their time and place” (10). Mendenhall says this is because there is no right or wrong side of history. Mendenhall offers his unique perspective of history: “[It] has no sides; it’s not a finite shape with tangible boundaries … It’s more promising and fruitful to look 33
at history in its complex variety …” (10). He says Atticus should be treated as Atticus, “the man
he was, even in fiction, but not as an improbable demigod of our eager imagination” (11). As for
Jean Louise, Mendenhall says “if Atticus is a bundle of contradictions, so is Jean Louise” (13).
Mendenhall also feels that Jean Louise learns some hard lessons about her parent as well as society
in Watchman as part of growing up. In fact, little is resolved as the novel ends. From her conflicted and clearly uncomfortable standpoint, Jean Louise says, “I can’t beat you, I can’t join you,” (Lee,
Watchman 277) as she meets Atticus at his office at the end of his day. Most importantly, Atticus
tells Jean Louise that he is proud of her for standing up for what she thinks is right, and Jean Louise in turn tells Atticus that she loves him (Lee, Watchman 277-278). 34
Chapter III
Morality and Obligation
“The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.” Atticus Finch12
It would be facile to take Mockingbird or Watchman at face value, seeing only the obvious -- Atticus as a champion for the underdog in the first, or Atticus as a white supremacist in the latter. Although both views are correct, there is much more to Atticus, to Maycomb, and to the novels than what initially appears. Atticus is a serious, yet flawed, character with many facets; Maycomb’s collective consciousness resists the tides of change; and together the novels raise more questions about human behavior than they answer. Therefore, it is important to examine the moral development of Atticus as well as the collective conscience of the citizenry of
Maycomb, and to ask relevant questions as to who is ultimately responsible and where the obligations to one’s fellow man may lie.
The scholar Peter Zwick finds Atticus to be a “morally problematic” character whose profession as a lawyer makes him “especially susceptible” to compromises, even as he is
“respectful of the court” and exercises “unassailably polite decorum” (1353-1354). In fact,
Zwick calls Atticus “a man apart” and points out how Atticus is different from other characters in Mockingbird – older, a bookworm, and deeply considerate of the black household maid,
Calpurnia (1356-1357). Scout, as narrator in Mockingbird, says this about Atticus: “He did not do the things our schoolmates’ fathers did: he never went hunting, he did not play poker or fish or drink or smoke. He sat in the living room and read” (103). Indeed, author Lee as narrator points out that Atticus and his brother, Jack, are the first Finches to leave town to study elsewhere – Atticus studied law in Montgomery while Jack studied medicine in Boston (Lee,
12 Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, p. 120 35
Mockingbird 4). Scholar Fred Erisman goes even further and likens Atticus to a Southern version
of an “Emersonian” man, saying the notion being one of “romantic idealism” that adheres to
“higher laws” and places “principled action above self-interest” (128-129).13 Erisman says that
Atticus “vibrates to his own iron string, the one man in the town that the community trusts ‘to do
right,’ even as they deplore his peculiarities” (128). The reader discerns these qualities in Atticus
when he says, “You never really understand a person until you … climb into his skin and walk
around in it” (Lee, Mockingbird 33). Atticus does appear to embody such qualities in
Mockingbird, particularly in regard to his compassion for both Tom Robinson as well as Boo
Radley; however, readers may find that same compassion lacking in Watchman as Atticus
explains to Jean Louise where he stands on the issue of integration. Erisman makes a distinction
though, when he says that Atticus marries his faith in higher laws to the more “practical laws of
the courtroom” (132). Atticus, says Erisman, is “no idealist,” especially when he tells the jury
that “there is not a person who … has never told a lie” or done “an immoral thing” (132). In their
collective conscience, the jury, and most of the citizenry of Maycomb, do not see things the way
Atticus does.
How do the collective citizenry of Maycomb see things? Viewing the citizens within the
concept of the “universe of obligation,” a term coined by sociologist and scholar Helen Fein,
may shed light on the answer. The universe of obligation is defined as the circle of individuals
and groups toward whom obligations are owed, to whom rules apply, and whose injuries call for
amends. In other words, those that a society believes have rights that are worthy of respect and
protection (Facing History 64). The concept of the universe of obligation forces questions on readers, such as, what role do laws play in creating a just society, and how does a community
13 Emerson wrote, “Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles,” as quoted in Erisman, 130-131. 36
decide who belongs and who does not belong? In Mockingbird, Jim Crow laws that segregate
black and white races create an unjust society in which one set of people looks down upon
another set. Yet Atticus still believes that every man, regardless of skin color, deserves a fair
trial, so he essentially asks the jury to apply the same rules to a black man that would be applied
to a white man. This seems only right, but in the racist South of the 1930s, the jury convicts an
innocent man without regard to facts because his skin is black. In the jury’s universe of
obligation, no one feels obliged to acquit this man based on the facts, and no one considers him
worthy of respect or protection beyond Atticus and Robinson’s fellow African Americans. The
guilty verdict is the result of choices made by a variety of individuals who are influenced by
powerful forces imbedded into the fabric of Maycomb, the American South, and the United
States as a whole in the 1930s. In this case, the laws exist, but they do not create justice for all, no matter how well Atticus tries the case. Tom Robinson does receive a fair trial and an excellent defense by Atticus, but he does not receive equal justice from the verdict.
In 1950s Watchman, the laws are changing to end segregation, which will theoretically create a more just society, but the same Atticus is not in favor of integration. Readers now realize that Atticus was never in favor of racial equality, but he still believes that under the law, every
man is equal in the courtroom. It is clear that regardless of laws, a society can only be a just one
if the laws are applied equally to all. In the universe of obligation, blacks are owed equality, and
the laws of the American Constitution provide for that justice and equality, yet it still takes a ruling from the Supreme Court to force that to happen. In the long term, it will take a full-on
Civil Rights movement for the collective consciousness of society to accept and incorporate the changes. In the universe of obligation that Atticus inhabits in Mockingbird, he must respect the
feelings of his white friends and neighbors in Maycomb, as well as respect Tom Robinson and 37
his needs. It makes sense then, when Atticus says, “It’s different this time. This time we aren’t
fighting the Yankees, we’re fighting our friends. But remember this, no matter how bitter things
get, they’re still our friends and this is still our home” (Lee, Mockingbird 87). Atticus’ privilege
allows him to remain a member of the community regardless of the trial and its outcome. Not
everyone in the moral universe of Maycomb is as privileged as the Finches. Twenty years later in
Watchman things still have not changed much in town. Jean Louise’s boyfriend, Hank, is one of
those who feels he must earn his status in Maycomb’s often stiflingly small-minded universe.
While getting coffee with an angry Jean Louise, he tries to explain why he went with Atticus to
the white council meeting. Hank asks, “Have you ever considered that men must conform to
certain demands of the community they live in simply so they can be of service to it?” (310).
When Jean Louise bridles at this, Hank elaborates: “I’ve had to work like a dog for everything I
ever had … I’ve had to scratch since I was a kid for everything that you and Jem took for
granted,” he tells her (310). Jean Louise still does not fully grasp what Hank means, so he tells
her that she gets away with doing things in town that he cannot get away with because she is a
Finch. Hank continues: “Maycomb says, ‘That’s the Finch in her, that’s just Her Way.’
Maycomb grins and goes about its business … but 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’”
(Lee, Watchman 231-232). When Jean Louise tells Hank that what he says is not true, he responds, “I just know Maycomb … I’m certainly aware of it. It says to me that there are certain things I can’t do and certain things I must do …” (232). Perhaps Jean Louise does not fully comprehend or appreciate Hank’s position since she has lived in the comfort and safety of privilege all her life, but Hank is right. This is the way things are in Maycomb with its regressive social pecking order, its segregation of the races, and its white caste system in general. Critic 38
Elaine Showalter points out that not only is Jean Louise “insensitive” to her own class privilege,
she is insensitive to “Hank’s tougher circumstances as the offspring of a poor, alcoholic father”
and refuses to acknowledge that Hank is also “dealing with Maycomb’s class prejudices in both
his career and his courtship” (51).
Who in the community decides the social pecking order? Who decides that the Finch
family is okay but the Clinton family is not? Who holds an obligation to whom in Maycomb? In
Mockingbird, the respectable Christian ladies of the Methodist Missionary Circle do not appear
to feel obligated to anyone but each other as their mission takes on charity work for the black
children in Africa but not the black children in Maycomb. Mrs. Merriweather reveals her attitude
about race when she tells the group that “there’s nothing more distracting than a sulky darky …
Just ruins your day to have one of ‘em in the kitchen” (Lee, Mockingbird 264-265). These ladies
cannot see their own hypocrisy as they deride Eleanor Roosevelt for traveling to a Birmingham
meeting and sitting with the blacks.14 “At least we don’t have the deceit to say to ‘em yes you’re
as good as we are but stay away from us. Down here we just say you live your way and we’ll live
ours,” says Mrs. Merriweather during the ladies’ mission meeting. “I think that woman, that Mrs.
Roosevelt’s lost her mind – just plain lost her mind coming down to Birmingham and tryin’ to sit
with ‘em” (267). Life has been segregated for so long in the South that it has become an accepted
way of life for white people like Mrs. Merriweather, and she and those in her friend circle see no
reason to change things. After all, it is working for them. Perhaps it is the hierarchy of the caste
system that exists among the citizens that determines who gets to decide. The higher up the
person, the more decision-making power they wield. The Ewells are at the bottom of the white
14 In 1938, Eleanor Roosevelt arrived late to a four-day conference for Southern progressives in Birmingham. Also in attendance were Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black and educator Mary McLeod Bethune. Roosevelt quickly sized up the situation and sat with the African Americans. When a policeman told her to move, Roosevelt moved her chair in between the black and white sections and sat in the middle. (Today in Civil Liberties History) 39 caste system, but at the end of the day, Bob Ewell ranks higher than Tom Robinson because he is white. Once the universe of obligation is established, it is difficult to alter who gets to belong and who must stay on the outside. Even Atticus with his odd ways is not an outsider; in fact, he is landed gentry in Maycomb since he is descended from Maycomb’s founders.
This white caste system has been around for hundreds of years in America as well as in other countries across the globe. Author Isabel Wilkerson discusses the history and sociology of the caste system in an article she wrote this year for The New York Times Magazine. Wilkerson says that the hierarchy of caste “is not about feelings or morality.” Rather, she notes that it is about “power – which groups have it and which do not. It is about resources – which groups are seen as worthy of them and which are not, who gets to acquire and control them and who does not. It is about respect, authority and assumptions of competence – who is accorded these and who is not” (4). Wilkerson points out how unaware people are of how caste “assigns value to entire swaths of humankind” and how caste “embeds into our bones an unconscious ranking” of humans by race and characteristics that serve to “justify brutalities against entire groups” (4).
Wilkerson says that caste is “the powerful infrastructure” that holds each group in its place. “Its very invisibility is what gives it power and longevity,” she says (5). Wilkerson makes a distinction between racism and casteism, but says that in America, “the two frequently occur at the same time.” She defines racism as “any action or institution that mocks, harms, assumes or attaches inferiority or stereotype on the basis of the social construct;” whereas, she defines casteism as “any action or structure that seeks to limit, hold back or put someone in a defined ranking, seeks to keep someone in their place by elevating or denigrating that person on the basis of their perceived category” (12). Certainly, readers perceive plenty of evidence of both racism and casteism in Mockingbird and Watchman. In fact, Wilkerson almost perfectly describes 40
Atticus when she says that “many people – including those we might see as good and kind
people – could be casteist, meaning invested in keeping the hierarchy as it is or content to do
nothing to change it, but not racist in the classical sense, not active and openly hateful of this or
that group” (12). In fact, in Mockingbird, Atticus is a skilled lawyer and a state legislator, which
prompts scholar Monroe Freedman to ask, “Could he not introduce one bill to mitigate the evils
of segregation? Could he not work with Judge Taylor in an effort to desegregate the courthouse?
And could he not represent a Tom Robinson just once without a court order to do so?” (481).
Freedman has a point.
In Watchman, Atticus is one of those kindly citizens who prefers things the way they are.
He does not condone violence and would never knowingly mistreat anyone, but he clearly feels
superior to African Americans and is not in favor of integration. Jean Louise tells Atticus that he
neglected to tell her that blacks were “able to go so far but so far only” (Lee, Watchman 247) as
she lashes out against his remarks. The irony here is that in Mockingbird Atticus almost stands
larger than life as a hero and is the beneficiary of a standing ovation by the blacks in the
audience as he exits the courtroom; while in Watchman, Atticus appears to want to put his thumb on racial progress by attending white citizens’ council meetings. In Mockingbird, Atticus seems to be one of the few adults in Maycomb who is evolved enough to live by the dictates of his own conscience. When Watchman comes along, since Atticus is still highly intellectual and self-
aware, it is difficult to understand why he stands opposed to segregation. Lawrence Kohlberg, a
psychologist from the University of Chicago, created a concept he calls the Stages of Moral
Development, which says that moral reasoning, the basis for ethical behavior, has six distinct
stages in an individual. Each stage surpasses the previous stage in its adequacy of response to
moral dilemmas (Facing History 207-208, 214). The first stage is obeying authority figures in 41 order to avoid punishment. Since Atticus favors segregation, he may not appreciate or agree with the Brown decision, but when push comes to shove, being a principled man, Atticus will not only obey the law, he will likely defend it to others even as he disagrees with it. This is the likely moral stance that Atticus of Watchman will take. According to Kohlberg, this matches the first stage in the hierarchy. In contrast, Atticus’ behavior in Mockingbird meets the criteria for
Kohlberg’s sixth and final stage of moral development when he defends Tom Robinson. This stage is one of striving to live according to one’s own conscience and one’s own principles of justice and human dignity, according to Kohlberg. After being socially aware in Mockingbird, it is hard to comprehend the Atticus of Watchman who prefers the races to remain separate, when he well knows that separate does not mean equal. Yet, that is what makes the differences in
Atticus between the two books so confounding, yet so interesting -- that one person can believe in courtroom justice for a man, but not equal justice outside of the courtroom for mankind. In other words, it would seem that a moral and ethical ambiguity exists between the portrait of
Atticus in Mockingbird and that of the Atticus of Watchman. However, though Atticus is a good man in both novels, in Watchman he expresses out loud the segregationist beliefs he still holds but that were unspoken in Mockingbird. The real difference is that readers see Atticus through the eyes of a child who does not fully grasp who her father is in Mockingbird, while the same child, now an adult in Watchman, finally sees Atticus as the man he is and always has been.
Furthermore, in Mockingbird, the citizenry of Maycomb, for the most part, have not attained a collective level of higher consciousness, or moral development, regarding the human race.
Nearly twenty years later, in Watchman, with the advent of the Brown decision, Maycomb will now be forced to accept change. History shows it will not be easy. As Elaine Showalter says in 42 her 2015 review of Watchman, “Lee reveals the complex set of pressures and motivations that exists in Alabama society and in human nature” (51). 43
Conclusion
After close scrutiny of Atticus and his interpretation of the law and justice in both
Mockingbird and Watchman, one must ponder whether Atticus is still worthy of the respect of readers. Is he a hero or simply a man of his time? Does his balancing of equities serve anyone well, or just assuage Atticus of guilt? What is one to make of a man of Atticus’ caliber attending white citizens’ council meetings? These are questions that readers of both books must surely consider, and quite a few scholars have also pondered and attempted to answer since Watchman was published in 2015. Their opinions vary, but one thing is certain. The debate over Atticus in each book will not disappear anytime soon. It may be up to each individual to decide whether to accept Atticus as a hero, a misdirected yet kindly segregationist, or simply as a flawed human being in whom change may be possible with time, and with whom one could potentially relate.
The scholar Matthew Crow suggests that in the final analysis, “we are compelled to drag
Atticus to the bar” (42). He says that taken together, “the point of either book is neither to set
Atticus up as a hero nor to tear him down as a former hero.” Instead, Crow says that “Lee wants us to think about what justice asks of us and from where its call comes, why, and what we are to do about it” (44). The scholar Peter Zwick sees Atticus differently. He says that “anyone with a basic understanding of [racism] knows that Atticus wound up on the wrong side of American history” (1367). This, says Zwick, is because “Atticus is too practical to appeal for a radical social shift toward justice” (1366), and that in Mockingbird Atticus fails to demand that the jury
“abide by its oath and reject racism as a proxy for justice” (1367. In fact, legal scholar Alfred
Brophy notes that “Atticus had a narrow conception of what justice meant,” and that “Atticus was out of step with the times” (21-22). However, Brophy says that Watchman “announces that the Constitution stands for the principles of equal protection and uplift” (23). 44
Legal scholar Tim Dare is critical of Atticus’ less-than-sterling ethical character as a lawyer, and notes that “Atticus allows us to see the importance of the principles of law he defends so eloquently in Tom’s case and abandons so tragically in Boo’s case. In doing so, he shows why we cannot found an adequate professional ethic on the character of practitioners”
(109-110). Still others view Atticus’ message in Watchman as a stain on the legacy of the South.
Legal professor Mark Baggett says that with the publication of Watchman, “For many
Southerners, the polarized characterizations of Atticus in the two books will never be reconciled,” and that for lawyers, “the iconic character of Atticus Finch, whose moral courage towered … over the wasteland of Southern bigotry, now has clay feet” (3). Baggett also notes that in Watchman Atticus now “becomes the kind of lukewarm moderate cursed by Martin
Luther King, Jr., calling meekly for gradualism” (8). In terms of the books’ portrayals of the inequality of the races, Baggett states that “If Mockingbird is the plea, Watchman is the indictment.” In fact, in Watchman, when Uncle Jack is attempting to soothe Jean Louise after her argument with Atticus, Uncle Jack tells her, “Every man’s island, Jean Louise, every man’s watchman, is his conscience. There is no such thing as a collective conscious” (Lee, Watchman
264-265). However, Baggett points out that “the watchman who calls out racism is not Atticus nor Jean Louise, but Harper Lee” (15). Indeed, Fred Erisman, who views Atticus as an
“Emersonian man,” agrees that Lee is “explicitly” suggesting that perhaps Maycomb and the rest of the South “can no longer stand alone and apart,” he says. “It must recognize and accept its place in national … life.” Erisman also states that this is the only way that the South “can escape its stifling provincialism that has characterized its past, and take its place as a functioning region among human regions” (136). Zwick agrees, and says, “only by rejecting injustice out of hand, we know, did the civil rights movement make any progress in the South” (1367). Brophy also 45 agrees saying, “The train that brought Jean Louise back to Maycomb also brought new constitutional ideas which were central to the Civil Rights Movement” that was to come (23).
This is why teaching Watchman alongside Mockingbird is important. Watchman expands on concepts regarding race relations and inequality that lay just under the surface in Mockingbird, and which were status quo to white southerners in the 1930s and oppressive to blacks. As the reader fast-forwards twenty years to 1950s Watchman, one sees how things begin to change, and how difficult that change will be. Watchman also serves to authenticate for readers the flawed, though kindly, human that Atticus really is and always has been. Readers can thank the grown- up Jean Louise of Watchman for exposing the complexities of Atticus that she could not see or tell about when she was a mere child in Mockingbird. 46
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