"To Kill a Mockingbird" (book) minor question

Cafe Society
1

A bit of a random thing, fetched up by myself and my brother’s recently re-reading Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, and reading its sequel / prequel / whatever, Go Set a Watchman. Concerns a passage late in TKAM, and a remark by the neighbour and fanatical gardener Miss Maudie, who comes across in TKAM as being on Atticus’s wavelength, as one of the few local whites who consider that black people deserve basically fair and decent treatment, which under the status quo they are not getting.

Attention also brought to this, by posts on a past SDMB thread which I’ve been reading: “To Kill a Mockingbird: Discuss the book with me !” – in Cafe Society, started by ivylass, 03-22-2008. If my linking skills allowed, I’d give a link to it here – unfortunately, they don’t.

At a ladies’ get-together at Atticus’s home, shortly after the Tom Robinson trial, various ladies are comparing notes and grousing about how morose and sulky their black servants have been since the trial; and complaining about said servants’ ungrateful and entitled attitude re same, when in an economic depression, it is kind and magnanimous of the white families to employ the blacks at all – including declared intentions of admonishing the malcontents to shape up, or else. At a break in this conversation, Miss Maudie says: “His food doesn’t stick going down, does it?”

The ladies express genteel bafflement; but are to some extent discomfited and subdued by this sally. When reading the book, I had trouble figuring out what Miss Maudie was getting at: the best I could work out was, “the blacks are your maids and cooks, doing the grunt work for keeping your household fed; yet because of the present circumstances, your sentiments toward them are resentful – well, if your husband (provider and breadwinner) doesn’t feel the food which your black servants – about whose (justified, in-the-light-of) negative attitude, he and you grumble – make, sticking in his throat: then he ought to”. A poster in the abovementioned thread more or less echoed – in fewer words – this interpretation. Another saw Miss Maudie’s words as indicating that the ladies are partaking of Atticus’s hospitality, but at the same time – if indirectly – badmouthing him for causing their black servants to be pissed-off and behave accordingly: which is not proper or patrician behaviour on the ladies’ part. This interpretation never occurred to me until seeing it in the mentioned thread. Other posters in the thread, admitted to puzzlement as to Maudie’s meaning.

Would be interested to know if people think that either or both of the above, explain what the fictional lady concerned, was on about – or are there other possible meanings, again?

2

I only ever read the book once but my assumption would be that yeah, it’s a left-handed verbal smack to the rude guests who are talking shit about Atticus in his home and while partaking of his hospitality.

3

Having now looked at the context more carefully, I must say this is in fact about Atticus’s hospitality. Mrs. Merriweather mentions Sophie, but only by way of example. She’s talking about Atticus, obliquely. I think her evasive language is only intended to impede Scout’s understanding. Scout had indeed lost the conversation, and didn’t notice as her father wasn’t mentioned by name. When called out, Mrs. Merriweather looks to Scout in her shame.

So yes, given the context, Miss Maudie is angry at Mrs. Merriweather for insulting Atticus in his own home.

Additionally, I have to say on my last reading that I was amazed by the quality of Lee’s writing. This thread shows that there’s still more I’ve yet to learn from this novel.

4

Thanks, both. In my reading Mockingbird so far, the ladies’ covert swipes at Atticus went right over my head. I’d just imagined that it was a standard and regular thing that in a particularly egregious example of standard operational practice in that milieu – i.e. in a case involving black man and white woman, the black man always being automatically rated as guilty even if he was obviously innocent – the black folk would be unhappy and let it show; and that this was just the latest example of the phenomenon, which the ladies were, very insensitively, griping about.

On reflection, and reading people’s explanations – I get that Atticus was indeed being resented by local “polite” society, for the Tom Robinson case having become so high-profile and the details of it so well-known, because of his strategy in conducting the defence. In more run-of-the-mill instances of this particular kind of anti-justice in that time and place, probably less would be known about the circumstances and details, by both white and black communities, and less notice overall would be taken. The blacks are aggrieved beyond the normal in this particular situation, by reason of the defence in the trial having demonstrated the obviousness and certainty of Tom’s being innocent, and yet the jury’s still finding him guilty. Complicated place, the South – then and now.

Lee certainly writes with subtlety. I was favourably impressed, mostly, by Watchman; feel that it hangs together less well than Mockingbird, but it’s still excellently written.