Miss Maudie Flashcards
“I said what did you do, Stephanie, move over in the bed and make room for him? That shut her up a while.”
Shows how she doesn’t care how she is perceived by others. She instead uses her sharp tongue to counteract meanness rather than perpetrate it- she doesn’t just refuse to listen to Stephanie Crawford, she confronts her.
Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.
It’s Maudie’s advice that is the title of the novel and shows how, to Scout and Jem, she is a leading figure in their lives- she is not just a neighbour but a friend and advice giver- allowing them to mature and grow up over the course of the novel.
“There are just some kind of men who—who’re so busy worrying about the next world they’ve never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.”
Although, she’s directly talking about Nathan Radley here, Maudie is also referencing to the ‘foot washing’ Baptists who, as she puts it ‘Think being a woman is a sin by definition’
She had never told on us, had never played cat-and-mouse with us, she was not at all interested in our private lives
Just like Atticus who is ‘the same in his house as he is on the public streets’, Miss Maudie treats the children the same as she would Adults. This causes Scout and Jem to treat her as a friend as she treats them with respect.
“The handful of people in this town who say that fair play is not marked White Only; the handful of people who say a fair trial is for everybody, not just us”
Maudie also speaks up for those defending the black community and by doing so, shows how she is sympathetic towards the black community. Like Atticus’ advice to Scout to ‘put herself in the other person’s shoes’, Miss Maudie’s respect is based off sympathy.
She was a widow, a chameleon lady who worked in her flower beds in an old straw hat and men’s coveralls
Miss Maudie gives Scout an example of how being a lady isn’t having your self-hood squished. She is able do do as she likes and still be accepted into the community as a woman (she is in the Missionary Society ect.) and so shows to Scout that being a woman isn’t how it’s portrayed.
