The Morality of Mrs. Dubose

This is part 2 of my reflections on To Kill a Mockingbird. As I mentioned in the previous post, these two essays were written for chapel talks, and the essay in this post was the text for the chapel talk here. 

The text presented here is only slightly revised. The book by Joseph Crespino on Atticus Finch is cited a few times. 

Is it okay to watch The Cosby Show? It’s been a few years since I’ve seen the classic show from the 1980s, but in my adult life I have watched many episodes, so I know that the show stands up very well. There are some scenes that are permanently imprinted on my memory, especially the one early in the series when the Huxtable family is on the stair case lipsyncing “The Right Time” by Ray Charles on the occasion of the wedding anniversary of their paternal grandparents. The Cosby Show is the perfect family show—except for one little element. The eponymous star of the show is a convicted sex abuser. (See wikipedia.) Or, maybe right now he’s no longer convicted; I think I remember that his conviction was overturned on a technicality. I don’t know where we are in the legal matters, but let’s at least say that he has been credibly accused of sexual abuse of many women over a period of decades. How much do those actions taint his work? I would like to start watching the show again, mostly so I can show it to my kids. I admire the show a great deal, for a few specific reasons, the same reasons everyone admired the show in the mid-80s: first, because it’s hilarious, and then also because of its depiction of an uber-successful Black family, with mother and father and a bunch of kids all living together and loving one another, not to mention two sets of grandparents who show up frequently, and they were all joyful, and moral, and kind. Heathcliff Huxtable was a great human and a great dad; he just happened to be portrayed by a despicable person, or, to be more specific, a person who did some despicable things. Should that matter? If I watch The Cosby Show, am I supporting sexual abuse? Am I harming vulnerable women? I’ve said that I admire The Cosby Show. Is that okay? 

I’m not venturing into a new topic, but the same one from last week, Mrs. Dubose of Maycomb, Alabama, the woman whose death prompted Atticus Finch to declare her the bravest person he’d ever met. Last week I spent all my time arguing that To Kill a Mockingbird, despite its faults, is a morally serious novel, and the centerpiece of its moral seriousness is Atticus Finch. I made this argument in the face of criticisms—real and imagined—faced by the novel and its main adult character from the standpoint of America circa 2024. The point I was trying to make is that meditating on the characters in the novel is worth our while, that such an activity will contribute to our own moral formation. I was arguing that we should take seriously the evaluation of Mrs. Dubose as voiced by Atticus in the novel. Having cleared my throat last week, today I want to attempt to take seriously Mrs. Dubose—cantankerous racist that she is. 

Maybe once we meet Mrs. Dubose, we will be so repulsed by her that we will reject the opinion of Atticus, deciding either that the best of men are wrong sometimes or perhaps that Atticus is, not, in fact, the best of men, but that the common understanding of his virtue is misguided. I think the novelist, Harper Lee, would not want readers to adopt either of these approaches. I think, rather, that she wanted readers to accept Atticus as virtuous and wise, and therefore his opinion of Mrs. Dubose as true somehow. I interpret Lee’s intentions partly from the structure of the novel, which is divided into two unequal parts, and the chapter focusing on Mrs. Dubose, chapter 11, is the conclusion of the first part. The reader’s acquaintance with Mrs. Dubose and our encounter with Atticus’ opinion of her stands at a crucial point in the novel. So let’s exercise our critical faculties. If we wanted to support the contention of Atticus about Mrs. Dubose, that she was an unusually brave person, how would we do so? How could we deal with the obvious problems standing in tension with the opinion of Atticus? 

These problems are ones the novel takes pains to highlight. Most of the chapter presents Mrs. Dubose as a character with whom we do not sympathize. Harper Lee’s point in constructing such a character is obviously to prod readers to think deeply about human virtue, how it is developed, where it is found, how to identify it in others. Can a bad person display virtue? 

Before continuing, let me comment on some words used in the novel as in the movie. There are two n-words that I think deserve some comment. One of them is the n-word. It comes up a fair number of times in the novel, including in this chapter. I think it is correct to say that it never appears on the lips of the Finches, Atticus and his children, except when the children are repeating words told them by others, or when Atticus tells them not to say it. The other n-word is negro. It is definitely considered the nicer word in the context of the novel—not just that, but the appropriate word to call people with dark-colored skin who today would be called “Black.” It was the term used by Black people for self-identification. I think this changed somewhere along about 1980, so that today the word “negro” is archaic and perhaps mildly offensive—but, I think, not so offensive that it should not be pronounced when discussing a historical period in which the word was in common use. So, the one n-word I will not say, the other n-word I will. I hope this is the right decision.  

So here goes: according to the second paragraph of the relevant chapter in the novel, “Mrs. Dubose lived alone except for a Negro girl in constant attendance.” 

According to the narrator of To Kill a Mockingbird—that is, according to an older version of Scout, or perhaps as a narrator she should be called Jean Louise—she and her brother, Jem, hated Mrs. Dubose. The reason is that she was mean to them, yelled at them from her front porch, insulted them and their father. She would say things like, “Jeremy Finch, Maudie Atkinson told me you broke down her scuppernong arbor this morning”—which, the narrator assures us, was a complete fabrication designed merely to harass. To Scout, Mrs. Dubose would say, “what are you doing in those overalls? You should be in a dress and camisole, young lady! You’ll grow up waiting on tables if somebody doesn’t change your ways—a Finch waiting on tables at the O.K. Café—hah!” The narrative tells us that “Countless evenings Atticus would find Jem furious at something Mrs. Dubose had said when we went by.” Atticus would then counsel his son with these words: “Easy does it, son. She’s an old lady and she’s ill. You just hold your head high and be a gentleman. Whatever she says to you, it’s your job not to let her make you mad.” 

But then Mrs. Dubose hit her aim when she yelled at the children in regard to their father: “Not only a Finch waiting on tables but one in the courthouse lawing for [Black people]! … Yes indeed, what has this world come to when a Finch goes against his raising? I’ll tell you! … Your father’s no better than the [Black people] and trash he works for!” 

So, there it is. Those are the problems with thinking that Mrs. Dubose might display virtue. She’s a racist in the Deep South in the 1930s, and specifically she mocks Atticus Finch for … for … what? For agreeing to serve as the defense attorney for a Black man, Tom Robinson, accused of raping a white woman. It’s not that Atticus is generally known for providing legal services to Black people. In this particular instance, Atticus is a court-appointed attorney. Maybe he had a choice in the matter. Maybe most lawyers would have refused to take the case. At any rate, Tom Robinson did not seek out Atticus, it was arranged by the court. It turns out that Atticus does an admirable job of defending Mr. Robinson, proving to every reader of the novel the complete innocence of his client and the depravity of his accusers—though he failed to persuade the jury (or, if Atticus did persuade the jury, they chose to convict anyway.) But, of course, Mrs. Dubose can’t know how hard Atticus will work to prove Mr. Robinson’s innocence. Apparently she’s mad that he agreed to take the case. She’s not the only one. By the time we meet Mrs. Dubose, we’ve already heard about other townspeople who have lobbed insults at the children on account of their father being a lover of Black people. According to Joseph Crespino, a professor of American history at Emory, “The storyline involving Mrs. Dubose serves an essential purpose in the novel by helping the reader imagine the bitter gossip and harsh words spoken against Atticus behind closed doors by members of Maycomb’s established families” (p. 139).

Does Mrs. Dubose have redeeming qualities? Wherein lies her courage, according to Atticus? As it turns out, she’s addicted to morphine, a drug prescribed to her years earlier that helps her cope with some pain, the cause of which I forget. And once her doctor tells her that she has not long to live, she decides she wants to kick the addiction. Morphine has enslaved her, and she wants to die free. So in the last weeks of her life, she weans herself off of morphine. She voluntarily experiences the symptoms of withdrawal, and she manages to break free of her addiction and so die liberated. This is what prompts Atticus to say that she was the bravest person he’d ever met. 

Is that bravery? Um, yes, sure, absolutely, that is brave. Is “brave” the right word? I guess brave is the right word. Whatever. Yes, breaking free of an addiction is a brave thing to do. Is it the bravest thing I’ve ever heard of? No, I wouldn’t put it in that category, but let’s ignore the superlatives and just think about whether it was brave. She was a dying woman who used pain medication that she felt was too controlling of her life and her mind. Her doctors and the other people in her life were telling her that there was no need to end her days in pain, that she could simply continue using the morphine and leave life peacefully. She refused, because she wanted to die free. Whether or not that’s the decision I would have made, or would have advised a loved one to make, it’s the decision she made and she suffered for it. She entered willingly and in the face of opposition into a painful situation, and she persevered. She displayed bravery. 

Does that make her a good person? No. From a Christian standpoint, that’s a pretty easy question if we remember Romans 3. “There is none righteous; no, not one. … There is none that doeth good, no, not one” (verses 10, 12). The Apostle continues: “Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips: Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness” (vv. 13–14). That sounds like Mrs. Dubose. Of course, if this is the line we’re going with, that Mrs. Dubose is not a good person because ultimately no one is, then that also implicates Atticus; it implicates, of course, Bob Ewell, but it also implicates Tom Robinson; and it implicates me, and you. And it implicates the Apostle himself. I’m pretty sure that was exactly the point Paul was trying to make. 

Okay, so no one is righteous, but some people are more virtuous than others. Is Mrs. Dubose a virtuous person? Well, Atticus didn’t say she was virtuous, he said she was brave. Is it okay to admire some aspects of the character of someone who is otherwise not a good person? Or, to put it another way, are there character flaws that are so disqualifying that a person displaying them cannot be admired for anything? Are there character flaws that compel us to write off a person completely as unworthy of our attention? This is the question I was trying to get at regarding Cosby. The question seems appropriate in our day, since for the past decade or more a great amount of the public discussion on morality has been an all-or-nothing proposition, with two opposing sides. One side says if J.K. Rowling questions whether a trans-woman is in every way a real woman, then we should no longer read Harry Potter, and the morality on display in those books was all a lie. (By the way, have you listened to the podcast The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling. Highly recommended!) The other side says that if Target sells a onesie with a rainbow on it, you can’t shop there anymore. Either you agree with me all the way (or at least you do not overtly disagree with me) or I reject you—or, I guess “cancel” is the word to use. 

Obviously, Atticus does not subscribe to this all-or-nothing approach to morality. Though he is a subject of Mrs. Dubose’s most virulent attacks, he manages to find aspects of her character admirable. How does he think through this? Well, for one thing he says that she’s sick. “Jem, she’s old and ill. You can’t hold her responsible for what she says and does. Of course, I’d rather she’d have said it to me than to either of you, but we can’t always have our ’druthers.” Is that right, that she’s not responsible for what she says? I do think there are occasions when we might be right to absolve someone of responsibility for what comes out of their mouths, depending on their mental state, due to disability or something else. Due to sickness? Probably. Should we afford Mrs. Dubose that grace? Um, maybe. I do think that if your aunt had cancer and was using cannabis and opioids for the pain and had some nasty things to say about immigrants, you might not hold it against her. 

Let me suggest something else. With her words, Mrs. Dubose comes across as someone who hates the Finch family. But her actions suggest otherwise. When Jem Finch overreacts to Mrs. Dubose, so that he has to apologize to her for his behavior, she punishes him by making him visit with her every day after school. The first day Jem showed up with Scout, Mrs. Dubose greeted them by saying, “So you brought that dirty little sister of yours, did you?” So, she’s not nice to them, but she does want them around. Is that like in middle school, when the boy constantly pulls the pigtails of one particular girl? Is Mrs. Dubose just trying to get the attention of these kids? And then even though she has criticized Atticus up and down, it is Atticus that she has asked to write her will, and when the moment of her death comes, she asks for Atticus to be near her. Does she really hate Atticus, or does she just like picking at people? One day when the children stay with Mrs. Dubose later than normal, Atticus came looking for them after work. The narrator describes the scene: “Mrs. Dubose smiled at him. For the life of me I could not figure out how she could bring herself to speak to him when she seemed to hate him so.” 

The fact that Mrs. Dubose, in her fight against morphine, was doing something according to her conscience, against the advice of her doctor and family, probably reminds Atticus of himself. In the novel, Atticus explains a couple times why he felt he had to take Tom Robinson’s case. In chapter 9, he tells Scout: “The main one is, if I didn’t I couldn’t hold up my head in town, I couldn’t represent this county in the legislature, I couldn’t even tell you or Jem not to do something again.” When Scout asks if Atticus has hopes of winning the case, he responds straightforwardly, “No, honey.” And then later, in the chapter about Mrs. Dubose (chapter 11), we encounter this speech:

“Scout,” said Atticus, “when summer comes you’ll have to keep your head about far worse things … it’s not fair for you and Jem, I know that, but sometimes we have to make the best of things, and the way we conduct ourselves when the chips are down—well, all I can say is, when you and Jem are grown, maybe you’ll look back on this with some compassion and some feeling that I didn’t let you down. This case, Tom Robinson’s case, is something that goes to the essence of a man’s conscience—Scout, I couldn’t go to church and worship God if I didn’t try to help that man.” 

I think Atticus thought of the struggle Mrs. Dubose was going through in regard to morphine to be similar to his own struggle. It didn’t make sense to most people in town why Atticus would take that case, but it boiled down to his own conscience. Same for Mrs. Dubose. When Atticus praised the courage of Mrs. Dubose, he defined courage this way: “It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.” Atticus was talking about Mrs. Dubose, but of course that’s a description of himself. 

When the children visit Mrs. Dubose, she continues to berate them on a selection of subjects, including Atticus’ reputation for being unusually kind to Black people. She uses a term that I’ve already said I won’t repeat, this time hyphenated with the word “lover.” It’s a locution that puzzles Scout to the point that she asks her father its meaning, to which he responds: “it’s hard to explain—ignorant, trashy people use it when they think somebody’s favoring Negroes over and above themselves. It’s slipped into usage with some people like ourselves, when they want a common, ugly term to label somebody.” Scout immediately asks Atticus whether he really is a lover of Black people in the way that people are accusing him of being. He answers: “I certainly am. I do my best to love everybody … I’m hard put, sometimes—baby, it’s never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn’t hurt you. So don’t let Mrs. Dubose get you down. She has enough troubles of her own.” 

I think what Atticus is getting at is that Mrs. Dubose may be a racist, and she certainly says nasty, racist things, whatever the reason, but there are other aspects of her character, as well. Some are admirable, some are not. And I think Atticus means that to the extent that she says racist things, you’ve got to look at the situation in which she has grown up and lived. She was dying as an old woman in the 1930s, so she was probably born in Alabama around the time of the Civil War. Life experiences will shape someone’s character. I’ve done a chapel before about how I’m thankful for Juneteenth, because it celebrates the removal of a sin that can no longer be a temptation to me. I am not presented with the opportunity of owning someone else. I know we’ve all had the thought, if I had been born at that place at that time, would I have done the same thing as those people did? Such a thought experiment is right in line with Matthew 7:1. If you were a member of the Nazi party in Germany in, say 1937, that does not necessarily tell me all about your character. I don’t know whether Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a member of the party, but I do know that he worked for the Nazi government—but that emphatically does not tell me everything I need to know about him, not by a long shot. But, if you’re a member of the Nazi party in America in 2024, well, that still may not tell me everything I need to know, but it is a more significant fact about you than if you lived in the 1930s in Germany. Atticus stood (somewhat) opposed to his society when it comes to the subject of race, so he gets points for that. Mrs. Dubose did not stand opposed to her society on that score, but she was unusual in her courage. Atticus was willing to acknowledge the fact. 

So, do we need to approach the morality of people with an all-or-nothing attitude, or should we advocate a more nuanced approach? I am reminded of a passage from Mere Christianity, where C. S. Lewis writes: 

Some of us who seem quite nice people may, in fact, have made so little use of a good heredity and a good upbringing that we are really worse than those whom we regard as fiends. Can we be quite certain how we should have behaved if we had been saddled with the psychological outfit, and then with the bad upbringing, and then with the power, say, of Himmler? That is why Christians are told not to judge. We see only the results which a man’s choices make out of his raw material. But God does not judge him on the raw material at all, but on what he has done with it. Most of the man’s psychological make-up is probably due to his body: when his body dies that will fall off him, and the real central man, the thing that chose, that made the best or the worst out of his material, will stand naked. All sorts of nice things which we thought our own, but which were really due to a good digestion, will fall off some of us: all sorts of nasty things which were due to complexes or bad health will fall off others. We shall then, for the first time, see every one as he really was. There will be surprises.

This passage fits so well with chapter 11 of To Kill a Mockingbird that I could almost think Harper Lee wrote the character of Mrs. Dubose after reading Mere Christianity. 

The movie To Kill a Mockingbird ends with narration by Jean Louis reflecting on Atticus’ advice that to understand a person, you’ve got to walk around in their shoes for a bit. In the novel, this advice appears early. “First of all,” Atticus said to his young daughter, “if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view, … until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” That advice assumes that morality is not all-or-nothing. As the apostle said, there is none righteous, no, not one. Judge not, our Lord said. Climb into someone's skin and walk around in it. I certainly want people to do that for me before judging me, and we're all fortunate that Jesus did that exact thing.