Mockingbird Passing: Closeted Traditions and Sexual Curiosities in Harper Lee’s Novel

1. Mockingbird and Nineteenth-Century Philosophy: A Test Case for the American Scholar

CHApter 1 MOCKINGBIRD And nIneteentHCentury pHIlosopHy: a TesT case for THe aMerican scHoLar There is throughout nature something mocking, something that leads us on and on, but arrives nowhere, keeps no faith with us. all promise outruns the performance. We live in a system of approximations. every end is prospective of some other end, which is also temporary; a round and final success nowhere. We are encamped in nature. ralph Waldo emerson, Nature The canonization of Lee’s Mockingbird can be at least partially, if not mostly, attributed to its refinement of the american romance. aspects of its style are congruent with the symbolism-infused romances of nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville, observes robert butler (124), as is its content. a long line of nineteenth-century texts in which men have followed individual conscience and pursued independence at the expense of their social reputation stands behind Mockingbird’s “democratic vista.” Millions of readers have celebrated atticus finch for his heroism and gregory Peck’s strong performance of him in the film. in her critical essay on which american writings have been favored by critics and why, nina baym identifies a “Melodrama of beset Manhood” as the central mythos of how critics have understood the american romance. To the neglect of men and women writing social novels (the latter scorned by Hawthorne as a “damn’d mob of scribbling women”), critics such as f. o. Matthiessen, Lionel Trilling, Leslie fiedler, richard chase, Henry nash smith, and r.W.b. Lewis have located the “most american” and therefore “excellent” story in dramas in which men oppose “the encroaching, constricting, destroying society” (baym 133) by privileging individuality and nature. “society” in such texts is more than likely femaleidentified , and Mockingbird is no exception. 46 Mockingbird and nineteenth-century Philosophy The protagonist of the american romance typically casts women “in the melodramatic role of temptress, antagonist, obstacle” (baym 133), and anyone familiar with Mayella ewell’s starring role in Mockingbird’s rape trial must admit how nicely the novel conforms to the myth. as baym discusses, the american man defined in opposition to society demands his celibacy, as put forth by richard chase. atticus finch “could make a rape case as dry as a sermon” (169) with his disembodied yet romantic manner, as if he transcends the sordid details of having a body or desire. When atticus merely takes off his coat in the courtroom, the result is “the equivalent of him standing before us stark naked” (202). Just as Twain’s Huck and Jim experience their brief democratic brotherhood by swimming naked in the river, atticus’s brief moment of nakedness takes the form of his impassioned appeal for the african american man. The beset man atticus more than obviously conforms to a series of nineteenth-century romances in which white men and racial others embody authors’ constructions of democratic possibility, such as we find in The Last of the Mohicans, Moby-Dick, and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. These romantic texts depend on binary oppositions between the white man forging his freedom by and through, though supposedly on behalf of, “the africanist presence,” which has been analyzed by Toni Morrison as the symbol for “the not-free” and applied to Mockingbird by diann baecker. further, in Mockingbird, the wholeness of atticus as a man emerges in opposition to Tom, who, “if he had been whole, he would have been a fine specimen of a man” (192). However, the maimed africanist presence notwithstanding, the character of atticus can be more specifically analyzed as suggestive of a legacy of nineteenth-century philosophy. although he was not a writer of fiction, no one had a greater effect on how we think about american letters and the romantic spirit than essayist, orator, andpoetralphWaldoemerson.aresidentofconcord,Massachusetts,which took a leading role in the american revolution, and increasingly dissatisfied with christianity’s reverence for christ—merely the first representative man who proved the presence of god within every man (Loving 36)—emerson was more than poised to become a leading figure in theorizing american independence in terms of the intellect, heart, and mind. indeed, he made these things become one and the same, and he transformed them into facets of masculinity, just as John de crevecoeur’s farmer had stood for american manhood in the prior century. The philosophy of emerson and his circle, a Test case for the american scholar 47 including the civil disobedience articulated...