Finch's Landing
Finch's Landing is the ancestral home of the Finch family, a two-storied white house on the Alabama River that embodies the family's history, its patriarchal origins, and the social codes of the Old South, serving as the site of tense Christmas gatherings and a symbol of the family's deep roots in Maycomb County.
Geography and Architecture
Finch's Landing is located twenty miles east of Maycomb, on a high bluff overlooking the Alabama River. The property is reached by descending three hundred and sixty-six steps down the bluff to a jetty. Farther downstream, beyond the bluff, are traces of an old cotton landing where Finch Negroes once loaded bales and produce, and unloaded blocks of ice, flour, sugar, farm equipment, and feminine apparel. A two-rut road runs from the riverside and vanishes among dark trees. At the end of the road stands the house itself: a two-storied white structure with porches circling it both upstairs and downstairs. The house was built in his old age by the family's ancestor, Simon Finch, to please his nagging wife. The internal arrangements of the Finch house are indicative of Simon's guilelessness and the absolute trust with which he regarded his offspring. There are six bedrooms upstairs: four for the eight female children, one for Welcome Finch, the sole son, and one for visiting relatives. The daughters' rooms can be reached only by one staircase, while Welcome's room and the guestroom are reached only by another. The Daughters' Staircase is in the ground-floor bedroom of their parents, so Simon always knew the hours of his daughters' nocturnal comings and goings. There is a kitchen separate from the rest of the house, tacked onto it by a wooden catwalk. In the back yard is a rusty bell on a pole, used to summon field hands or as a distress signal. A widow's walk is on the roof, but no widows walked there; from it, Simon oversaw his overseer, watched the river-boats, and gazed into the lives of surrounding landholders. There goes with the house the usual legend about the Yankees: one Finch female, recently engaged, donned her complete trousseau to save it from raiders in the neighborhood; she became stuck in the door to the Daughters' Staircase but was doused with water and finally pushed through.
Family History and Social Standing
The Landing is the seat of the Finch family's history in Maycomb County. Simon Finch, the ancestor, built the house, and the property has been passed down through generations. Atticus Finch's sister, Aunt Alexandra, and her husband, Uncle Jimmy, live at the Landing, keeping the place going. The family's history is intertwined with the land and the river, and the Landing represents the family's established, genteel roots. The town of Maycomb itself was founded when a nimble-witted innkeeper named Sinkfield, operating an inn where two pig-trails met, manipulated surveyors to place the county seat near his tavern, Sinkfield's Tavern, rather than in the center of Winston Swamp. This decision placed Maycomb awkwardly inland, twenty miles east of Finch's Landing, and the town remained the same size for a hundred years, an island in a patchwork sea of cottonfields and timberland. The Landing, by contrast, is the older, more original point of connection to the river and the land.
Christmas Gatherings and Family Conflict
Every Christmas in Scout's memory, the Finch family goes to Finch's Landing. The journey is a ritual, and the house is the stage for the family's annual gathering. The Christmas visits are marked by tension, particularly between Scout and her cousin Francis Hancock, and between Scout and Aunt Alexandra. Aunt Alexandra is fanatical on the subject of Scout's attire, disapproving of her wearing overalls and insisting she should be a ray of sunshine in her father's lonely life. At Christmas dinner, Scout is isolated at a little table in the diningroom while Jem and Francis sit with the adults, a practice Aunt Alexandra continues long after Jem and Francis have graduated to the big table. The cooking, however, makes up for everything: three kinds of meat, summer vegetables from her pantry shelves, peach pickles, two kinds of cake, and ambrosia constitute a modest Christmas dinner. It is at the Landing that Francis, goaded by his grandmother's views, calls Atticus a "nigger-lover," provoking Scout to attack him and split her knuckle to the bone on his front teeth. The Landing, then, is not merely a home but a crucible where the family's internal conflicts over race, class, and proper behavior are brought to a boil.
Narrative Significance
Finch's Landing functions as a counterpoint to the Finch home in Maycomb. It represents the family's past, its connection to the land, and the rigid social codes of the Old South, embodied by Aunt Alexandra. The Landing is where the family's history is physically present, from the house's architecture to the legends of the Civil War. It is also where the children are most directly confronted with the hypocrisy and prejudice within their own family, as Francis's taunts and Aunt Alexandra's disapproval make clear. The Landing is a place of memory and tradition, but also of conflict and constraint, standing in contrast to the more open, questioning atmosphere of Atticus's household in Maycomb. Calpurnia herself grew up down there between the Buford Place and the Landing, and she moved to Maycomb when Atticus and his wife married, further linking the two locations. The Landing is the ancestral seat, the source of the Finch name and its attendant expectations, and the place where the children must navigate the demands of family and heritage.
