Jem Finch and Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose (forced reader and subject)

The relationship between Jem Finch and Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose begins in violent conflict and is transformed through a forced reading punishment into a profound lesson about courage, moral integrity, and the nature of true strength. Mrs. Dubose, a very old, ill, and morphine-addicted woman living two doors up from the Finches, becomes the unlikely instrument through which Atticus Finch teaches his son what real courage looks like—not a man with a gun, but someone who knows they are licked before they begin and begins anyway.

Origins of Conflict

Mrs. Dubose lived alone except for a Negro girl in constant attendance, in a house with steep front steps and a dog-trot hall. She spent most of each day in bed and the rest in a wheelchair, and it was rumored she kept a Confederate Army pistol concealed among her numerous shawls and wraps. Jem and Scout hated her. If she was on the porch when they passed, they would be raked by her wrathful gaze, subjected to ruthless interrogation regarding their behavior, and given a melancholy prediction on what they would amount to when they grew up, which was always nothing. They had long given up the idea of walking past her house on the opposite side of the street; that only made her raise her voice and let the whole neighborhood in on it. She was vicious. Once she heard Jem refer to his father as "Atticus" and her reaction was apoplectic. Besides being the sassiest, most disrespectful mutts who ever passed her way, they were told that it was quite a pity their father had not remarried after their mother's death. A lovelier lady than their mother never lived, she said, and it was heartbreaking the way Atticus Finch let her children run wild. Jem, who remembered his mother, went livid when Mrs. Dubose shot them this message.

The Destruction of the Camellias

The day after Jem's twelfth birthday, he and Scout headed for town. Mrs. Dubose was stationed on her porch when they went by. She shouted accusations about playing hooky, lying, and breaking down Miss Maudie's scuppernong arbor. Then she pointed an arthritic finger at Scout and demanded she wear a dress and camisole, predicting she would grow up waiting on tables at the O.K. Cafe. But the shot that went home was: "Not only a Finch waiting on tables but one in the courthouse lawing for niggers!" Jem stiffened. She drew a long silver thread of saliva and declared, "Your father's no better than the niggers and trash he works for!" On the way home, Jem snatched Scout's baton and ran flailing wildly up the steps into Mrs. Dubose's front yard, forgetting everything Atticus had said, forgetting that she packed a pistol under her shawls, forgetting that if Mrs. Dubose missed, her girl Jessie probably wouldn't. He did not begin to calm down until he had cut the tops off every camellia bush Mrs. Dubose owned, until the ground was littered with green buds and leaves. He bent Scout's baton against his knee, snapped it in two, and threw it down.

The Reading Punishment

When Atticus came home carrying Scout's broken baton and fat camellia buds, Jem admitted he had done it because Mrs. Dubose said Atticus "lawed for niggers and trash." Atticus told him that to do something like this to a sick old lady was inexcusable and strongly advised him to go down and have a talk with her. Jem returned with a queer look on his face: he had cleaned it up for her and said he was sorry, but he wasn't, and he would work on the camellias every Saturday and try to make them grow back out. Mrs. Dubose wanted him to come every afternoon after school and Saturdays and read to her out loud for two hours, for a month. Jem asked if he had to, and Atticus said certainly. Jem complained that inside her house it was all dark and creepy, with shadows and things on the ceiling. Atticus smiled grimly and told him to just pretend he was inside the Radley house.

The Reading Sessions and Mrs. Dubose's Fits

The following Monday afternoon, Jem and Scout climbed the steep front steps to Mrs. Dubose's house. An oppressive odor met them when they crossed the threshold, an odor Scout had met many times in rain-rotted gray houses. In the corner of the room was a brass bed, and in the bed was Mrs. Dubose, lying under a pile of quilts. On the marble-topped washstand by her bed were a glass with a teaspoon in it, a red ear syringe, a box of absorbent cotton, and a steel alarm clock standing on three tiny legs. Jem sat down in a cane-bottom chair and opened Ivanhoe. Mrs. Dubose was horrible: her face was the color of a dirty pillowcase, the corners of her mouth glistened with wet which inched like a glacier down the deep grooves enclosing her chin, and her bottom plate was not in. As Jem read, Mrs. Dubose's corrections grew fewer and farther between. Something had happened to her. She lay on her back, her head moving slowly from side to side. From time to time she would open her mouth wide, and Scout could see her tongue undulate faintly. Cords of saliva would collect on her lips; she would draw them in, then open her mouth again. Her mouth seemed to have a private existence of its own, working separate and apart from the rest of her, out and in, like a clam hole at low tide. The alarm clock went off and scared them stiff. A minute later, Jessie was in the room pushing Jem and Scout out, saying it was time for her medicine. Gradually a pattern emerged: everything would begin normally—Mrs. Dubose would hound Jem for a while on her favorite subjects, her camellias and their father's nigger-loving propensities—then she would grow increasingly silent and go away from them. The alarm clock would ring, Jessie would shoo them out. Each day they stayed a little longer, the alarm clock went off a few minutes later every day, and she was well into one of her fits by the time it sounded.

The Lesson in Courage

One afternoon a month later, Atticus came in and took Mrs. Dubose's hand. She said, "Do you know what time it is, Atticus? Exactly fourteen minutes past five. The alarm clock's set for five-thirty. I want you to know that." Atticus said he had a feeling that Jem's reading days were numbered. "Only a week longer, I think," she said, "just to make sure..." The following week, the alarm clock had ceased sounding, but Mrs. Dubose would release them with "That'll do" so late in the afternoon Atticus would be home reading the paper when they returned. At last the day came. When Mrs. Dubose said "That'll do," she added, "And that's all. Good-day to you." It was over. That spring was a good one. But one evening Atticus stayed away until long past Scout's bedtime. When he returned he was carrying a candy box. He told Jem that Mrs. Dubose had died a few minutes ago. She was a morphine addict. She had taken it as a pain-killer for years, but she meant to break herself of it before she died, and that's what she did. "Most of the time you were reading to her I doubt if she heard a word you said. Her whole mind and body were concentrated on that alarm clock." Jem asked, "Did she die free?" Atticus said, "As the mountain air." She had Jessie fix Jem a box. Inside, surrounded by wads of damp cotton, was a white, waxy, perfect camellia—a Snow-on-the-Mountain. Jem screamed, "Old hell-devil, old hell-devil!" and flung it down. Atticus told him that was her way of telling him everything's all right now. "She was a great lady." Jem raised his head, his face scarlet. "After all those things she said about you, a lady?" Atticus said she had her own views about things, but he wanted Jem to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. "It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do. Mrs. Dubose won, all ninety-eight pounds of her. According to her views, she died beholden to nothing and nobody. She was the bravest person I ever knew." Jem picked up the candy box and threw it in the fire, but he picked up the camellia, and when Scout went off to bed she saw him fingering the wide petals.