Scout Finch is the narrative voice in Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. Scout lives in the South during the 1930’s when everyone is poor and when people, both black and white, are expected to behave according to their race, gender, and position in society. People must stay within the boundaries placed on them and are punished when they step outside their boundaries.
Racial Boundaries and Prejudice
The originator of the Finch clan, Simon Finch, left England because liberal Christians persecuted Methodists. Simon settled in Alabama where he proceeded to forget John Wesley’s teaching against slavery and lived the rest of his life as a cotton grower.
Simon’s distaste for the persecution of one group, the Methodists, and his willingness to ignore the persecution of another group, slaves is echoed later in the novel when Miss Gates, Scout’s third grade teacher, discusses Hitler’s persecution of the Jews. During the discussion, Miss Gates says, “Over here we don’t believe in persecuting anybody. Persecution comes from people who are prejudiced.” (245)
Scout remembers overhearing Miss Gates say after the trial that it was good to teach “em a lesson, and how they were getting way above themselves, and the next thing they will think they can marry us.” (247) The difference between Miss Gates attitudes towards Jews and her attitude towards blacks puzzles Scout.
On the Inside of the Boundaries
Mr. Dolphus Raymond shares a method of dealing with racism and social boundaries that doesn’t require battling convention when he reveals to Scout and Dill that one of the roots of prejudice is the inability to understand someone who is different. Writing off those one can’t understand is easier than trying to understand them.
Mr. Raymond comes from a ‘well-bred’ family and had been engaged to marry a white woman. However, she shot herself before the wedding because she discovered his black mistress. After the failure of his marriage, Mr. Raymond pretends to be a drunkard and socializes almost exclusively with blacks.
Dill and Scout discover that Mr. Raymond’s drunkenness is fake and Scout asks him why. He replies, “I try to give ‘em a reason, you see. It helps folks…folks can say Dolphus Raymond’s in the clutch of whisky…He can’t help himself…It ain’t honest but it’s mighty helpful to folks…they could never, never understand that I live like I do because that’s the way I want to live.” (201)
Social Boundaries
A crucial overstep of social boundaries creates one of the climactic turning points in To Kill a Mockingbird, when Atticus Finch is appointed as defender for Tom Robinson who is accused of raping Mayella Ewell.
The Ewell’s are white trash. They never work, they live off public assistance and what they find at the city trash heap, and the father often spends what little money they have on alcohol. However, Mayella is a different from the rest of her clan. She tries to create a little beauty at home by maintaining a small plot of flowers.
Tom Robinson is a hardworking respectable black man. Every day on his way to work, he walks past the Ewell household. Tom is a gentle man and feels sorry for Mayella and helps her in anyway he can. Poor Mayella, who is an outcast too, accepts the help and pity of a man who is technically below her social station. In her loneliness, she propositions him and when he refuses she claims rape.
Even though the citizens of Maycomb despise Mayella and her family and even though Tom Robinson is known as a good and hardworking man, the overstepping of social boundaries and the prejudice against black men is enough to cause Robinson to be declared guilty.
Two Ways of Treating Those on the Other Side
Scout learns about the two approaches to social convention through her relationship with a schoolmate. When she first begins school, she brings Walter Cunningham home for lunch and then belittles his manners. Calpurnia scolds her; she tells Scout that all people should be treated with respect despite their social status. Calpurnia and Atticus do not think that social status should dictate how people treat each other.
Scout learns to see Walter in the opposite light after Aunt Alexandra lives with them. Scout is impressed by the fact that one of Walter’s relatives wanted to acquit Robinson. She decides that when school starts she wants to invite Walter over. Aunt Alexandra indicates that it is not a good idea and when Scout questions her, Alexandra replies “there is no doubt in my mind that they’re good folks. But they’re not our kind of folks.” (224)
Gender Boundaries
Scout is motherless and is mothered by the family’s black servant Calpurnia. Her best friend and playmate is her brother Jem. Her father, Atticus, disdains social and gender distinctions and so doesn’t bother to teach them to his children. As a result, Scout is a tomboy with little regard for femininity. Maycomb is a patriarchal society and a woman who does not marry, have children, and fill her spare time with baking, sewing or gardening is seen as unwomanly.
For a long time, Scout refuses anything ladylike. However, after her Aunt Alexandra comes to stay with them and installs herself in the Finch household, Scout begins to soften. When Jem enters puberty and becomes moody and disagreeable. It becomes easier for Scout to embrace her femininity.
One day Scout helps her aunt with the missionary circle meeting. Things become tense when a report of Tom Robinson’s attempt to escape and subsequent death is circulated among the ladies. After the excitement of the interruption, the meeting resumes and Scout reflects “After all, if Aunty could be a lady at a time like this, so could I.” (237)
While To Kill a Mockingbird questions boundaries, the progression of Harper Lee’s story reveals the internalization of personal differences and the approval of external behavior that fits the socially acceptable norm.
Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. Warner Books, Inc. 1982. ISBN 0-446-31078-6
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