Segregation in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird Hamza Koudri Reviewed (original) (raw)

2017, SEGREGATION IN HARPER LEE’S TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD: A CASE OF RACE, CLASS AND GENDER

Abstract

This dissertation constructs a comprehensive reading of race, class and gender as portrayed in Harper Lee’s 1960 novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, and attempts to separate those forms of segregation in order to better understand their interaction. This work aims to investigate to what extent To Kill a Mockingbird is an anti-racism novel. While race is at the heart of the novel, Lee strives to denounce different forms of bigotry such as class and gender. This dissertation also explores the extent to which Harper Lee’s novel can be considered to be a progressive novel by analyzing the author’s use of narration techniques and critiquing the solutions she suggests for social ailments. A question that is often brought up in this context is how well can a white author write black stories? The dissertation uses two main literary theories to reach the said objectives. The first one is Stephen Greenblatt’s New Historicism, a theory that explains a literary work reconnecting it with the time period in which it is produced and identify it with the cultural and political movements of the time. The second approach used in this work is Kenneth Burke’s Sociological Criticism, which aims at placing literature within its economic, political and, especially social context, and seeks to find social flaws by looking into the structure of society. Following the guidelines of these two theories, this works revolves around four main axes. The first chapter compares between the representations of black and white characters in the novel. Lee deals with blacks mostly in terms of masses, with little emphasis on individual agents, whereas whites receive much more developed characterization, raising intriguing questions regarding her ambivalent attitude towards race. The second chapter aims at determining the extent to which the author succeeds in highlighting the individuality of blacks, and their role as individual agents of change. Third, the dissertation highlights the author’s view on a decaying old South that clings to old perceptions of class, and her vision for a more progressive society. The fourth and final section of this thesis looks at gender as another basis for segregation, underlining the intersection of gender, race, class and religion and emphasizing the role of women in negotiating their roles in an oppressively prejudiced society. While Lee follows her progressive precedents, Mark Twain and Ralph Emerson, both in their dependence on the individual agents and their call to give up old traditions and follow human ethics and principles in order to bring about salvation for the Old South, it so happens that Lee’s individual agents are white male elite.

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