This page provides the evidence for essays on the attititudes of the people in Maycomb.  Some of these are implicit, such as the nature of women as gossips, some explicit such as the views about courage and the racism of whites.  There are many instances of the author’s implied criticism and satire of the community she depicts.

A small town in 1930’s America

Here are some useful starting points, when considering Maycomb:  I have organised the material under the following headings:

• • Physical and Historical Features (below)
  • Family and Social features (below)
  • ‘Small Town’ Mentality and Values (below)
  • Gossip and Hearsay (below)
  • Attitudes regarding women and men, and their roles – a gender reading.
  • Racial Inequality & Attitudes to Race
  • Attitudes to Education (below)

N.B. Page numbers refer to The Arrow Books 2010 edition.  See the bottom of the page for the list of chapters by page number.

The Significance of Physical Features and Historical Elements

Maycomb, despite being the county seat’ (4), has the dubious past of having sprawled out from Sinkfield’s tavern’, its hub (144).  It is ‘a tired old town’ (5), with red muddy streets and a sagging courthouse; the scales of justice are weighed down in the town, they are imbalanced by intolerance and prejudice.  The courthouse may be the ‘most venerated’ but it is also both literally and metaphorically the most ‘hideous’ (165); the accuracy of this latter observation has considerable relevance when one considers the jury unanimously finding Tom Robinson guilty; fair and open operation of the law is a key motif in the novel but justice is physically set in the ‘sagging’ courthouse’s to show that it is inextricable from the burden of the nature of Maycomb, itself; this tension, between justice and the people, lies at the heart of the novel.

The town has failed to progress, having ‘remained the same size for the last one hundred years’ (144).  The events occur at the time of The Great Depression (context) when there was considerable poverty and few jobs.   Scout conveys the lack of purposefulness in her description of Maycomb, saying: ‘there was no hurry for there was nowhere to go’ (6) and she, unknowingly, refers to Roosevelt’s upbeat inaugural Address of 1933 indicating that Americans ‘had nothing to fear but fear itself’ (6); the contrast between the town’s listlessness and entanglement with the past and the prospect of better times for the courageous is a significant structural, writing feature.

Family and Social features

‘Small Town’ Mentality and Values

Gossip and Hearsay

Attitudes to Education

Chapters by page number