I’ve been re-reading *To Kill a Mockingbird * in preparation for a summer twilight screening of the film next weekend.
At one stage in the book, the following description of Scout’s Aunt Alexandra is given:
My WAG is that the word “born” could be used as an adjective to describe her, not merely the fact that she had been “born” in the usual sense of the word.
I think it means that the person is impossible to please, that they can always find something to object to. I imagine it’s just a fanciful interpretation of the word “objective”, because I don’t see how it relates to the grammatical objective case.
And I thought it meant that she always referred to herself in the third person.
I don’t recall any examples in the book.
I quite like **Usram’s ** suggestion that “objective case” is a play on words commenting on her propensity to interfere in others’ affairs, rather than a grammatical reference.
There’s a phrase I heard once a number of years ago: “He was born in the objective case and the kickative mood.” I don’t know if this phrase derives from Mockingbird or if Harper Lee adapted an existing phrase.
Thanks bibliophage. The double “grammatical” description using both case and mood puts the whole thing into context and makes a lot more sense as a comment on a person’s character.
The objective case is the case of a noun that is the object of a verb, and only a few words in English still have it. The objective case is why you say “to whom” instead of “to who”, and this and a few other such usages are the mark of a grammatical stickler.
Thus I think it’s saying Aunt Alexandra’s the kind of woman who would correct the grammar of others, ie Scout and Jem. She’s uptight, prim and proper. It fits with the stuff about manners.
Cunctator, I assume you already knew the grammatical background with your knowledge of Latin, just trying to illustrate my point.
The objective case refers to a noun (usually a pronoun) which is the object of a transitive verb. That means the phrase “She was born in the objective case” means that the verb “born” is not to be taken for its intransitive meaning (“coming into the world”) which cannot take a direct object, but for its transitive meaning “carried.” “She was born” means “she was (figuratively) carried.”
Latin has no objective case but it would correspond to the Latin accusative.
Thanks Atticus. I should have thought of you straight away. Clearly Alexandra’s own brother would know. 
Seriously though - yes, I do know what the objective case is. I ought to have made my initial question a bit clearer. I was really asking what the phrase implied since I couldn’t see that it had a grammatical meaning in the context. I think **bibliophage’s ** answer makes the most sense.
That doesn’t seem correct to me. Wouldn’t the word then be spelt borne (as the past participle of “to bear”)?
Yes, that’s true. But I don’t believe the grammatical term is meant to apply to the phrase “she was born”. There’s no transitive verb of “born”.
Double-checked and turns out I’m wrong. There’s a rare transitive verb meaning of born meaning to cause to be delivered, to bring a baby into the world. Don’t think that’s relevant here though.
Good point but then would be the transitive verb. If it doesn’t refer to the word “born,” then could it just mean that she exists in some sort of permanent state as a direct object for other verbs? A person that things always happen TO?
I’m guessing it could also be a way of saying that she never does anything in the subjective case…i.e she never actively does anything active but just allows things to happen to her passively.
All in all, obviously a passage written by Lee rather than Capote… 
My assumption was that she was more likely to talk about others than about herself; that she was a gossip.
Given the nature of the question, I think Atticus Finch has got to be right.