A Rebellious Little Bird

Monroeville, Alabama & To Kill a Mockingjay

Monroeville is a town in the southwest part of Alabama, below Montgomery and above Mobile.  It is the literary capital of the state, made famous by the most popular work of U.S. fiction according to a 2018 poll on PBS – “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Nelle Harper Lee.  It was her home town and also the childhood home of Truman Persons (Capote,) her next door neighbor.  Capote was the writer of “In Cold Blood,” “Breakfast at Tiffanys” and many stories and a few novels, including another hidden, supposedly true-crime ‘non-fiction novel,’ “Music for Chameleons.”

The Old Courthouse - Nicest Building in Town

A visit to Monroeville gives you an idea of why Nelle left, though reading “Go Set A Watchman,” her first book, also explains her move to New York City. As anyone who has lived in a small town will tell you, they are ‘small’ in more ways than one.  Monroeville is a typical rural town, whose old town square remains with a selection of stately homes stretching out beyond it.  At the same time it is overrun on its south-side by chain stores and the 1960s concrete-block car-culture of gas stations, fast food joints, automobile repair shops and car-part stores.  The line of cars at the local McDonald’s drive-through window tells the tale.

I asked at the Chamber of Commerce if the county was dry, as I had not seen a bar or roadhouse after my long, thirsty drive.  They kindly pointed me to the Mexican restaurants out of downtown.  It seems only Mexicans would think of drinking here …

There is no bookstore in Monroeville, though I was told some books are sold out of an antique store down the block from the town square, the location of the old county courthouse and also the new county courthouse.  The old county courthouse and museum is well preserved, stately and run by the historical society.  It was the setting for the trial in Mockingbird and also the model for the set in the 1962 film starring Gregory Peck, who stayed at a hotel just off the town square that is now the library.  Nelle and Truman, given the paucity of entertainment in so tiny a burg, enjoyed watching trials from the court balcony.  This balcony was made famous by the book as the place where African-Americans were allowed to view the proceedings.

The Lee house and the Faulk house, where Truman was dumped on relatives by his mother, were on South Alabama Avenue, two blocks from the town square.  Both houses no longer exist.  The Lee’s is an ice cream drive-in, the Faulks, some rubble rock walls in an empty lot.  Boo Radley’s house two doors down is also gone under a gas station. But there is some truth in the Boo story, as one of Nell’s neighbor kids was kept in the house by his strict father as punishment for breaking some windows. 

I visited the courthouse museum and took pictures, while talking to a volunteer and a staff member.  I had not seen a copy of Lee’s early work, “Go Set A Watchman” in the gift shop, although numerous copies of Mockingbird were spied, so I asked if they had one.  They had one, seemingly under the counter.  The volunteer told me there is a coldness in town towards the female attorney of the Lee estate who allowed publication of that book in 2015.  The attorney does not visit the courthouse museum, perhaps because of that coldness.  And so Maycomb, ah, Monroeville continues.

Now “Go Set A Watchman,” (full review below) is more of a personal description by Nelle of her time in Monroeville, including some first encounters with a boy which do not go well and her arguments with her father.  Her father, a.k.a. Atticus Finch, was actually a segregationist who believed black people were ‘children.’  He supported segregation, opposed black voting rights and attended White League meetings, though he said it was ‘just to keep an eye’ on the real racists.  So the reveal of the book was that the educated white middle class of the south were not ‘saviors’ but part of the oppressive system of Jim Crow.  This is one of the secrets of Monroeville's middle class at that time. 

Finch, a lawyer, does defend an African-American man unjustly accused of rape by a white girl from a destitute white family outside town, the Ewells.  Nell explains their shabby financial situation in Mockingbird.  So ‘equality before the law,’ a liberal standard, is upheld in Mockingbird.  But the laws of Jim Crow – and there were many – were not questioned by her father.  After all, many times the worst crimes are those embedded in the law.  The class question that comes to mind is if the ‘slatternly’ Ewell girl had been a member of one of the prominent business families in town, would the trial have gone quite the way it did?  I doubt it.  It is even possible that the false accusation was an attempt by this lower-class family to gain respect and support from the more upper-class whites in the town.

Harper thinking about Monroeville

The volunteer told me not to read ‘that’ book (Watchman) while the staff member said she considered it more badly written than Mockingbird (true…) and a ‘prequel / sequel’ to the second book.  I told them that I had a different take on the Watchman book than they, as it is far more truthful than the later glossy version.  From their unease in this discussion, I did not ask the second question, perhaps even more embarrassing to Monroeville.  Was Nelle Harper Lee a lesbian?  This is a common question, and almost no one who looks into this issue thinks she was heterosexual. 

She / Scout grew up a ‘tomboy,’ didn’t get along well with the Monroeville boys, hung around with an effeminate male friend Dill who became a famously gay friend Truman, wore baggy pants throughout her life, dated once or twice, never married, didn’t wear makeup or jewelry, … so the suspicion is there.  It is seems to be the sub-text of her life. There will be no absolute proof, but the evidence is multiple.  Even using the pen name of “Harper” as a first name suggests a male author, which might be beneficial in a male-run industry, but also indicates something else.  Being a closeted lesbian from a small bible-belt southern town in the 1950s must have been suffocating. I spared the ladies their feelings.

All of which explains why Nelle moved to New York when she was able, got a job as an airline ticket agent and began writing Watchman for 8 years, before her publisher friends told her to just concentrate on the trial story.  And so she did.

P.S. - I have a suspicion the writer of the "Hunger Games" series was aware of the potency of the 'mocking' bird in southern life and literature, but realized it needed a bit of a punch. 

P.P.S. - Here is a link to a letter written by Lee that shows her anger at Monroeville and the museum: 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-12/-mockingbird-author-compared-hometown-to-elvis-graceland

Other reviews on this topic, below: "Go Set A Watchman," "White Trash," "Southern Cultural Nationalism," "The Neo-Confederate States," "Struggle & Progress," "Why the South Lost the Civil War," "Hunger Games."  Use blog search box, upper left, to find these articles.

The Cranky Yankee

February 15, 2019