In 's
, Aunt Alexandra does not mince words with regard to how she feels about
the Cunninghams. She says they are not people with which the Finches associate, and this
especially confuses young .
When Scout first begins school at the start of
the novel, she has a disagreement with Walter Cunningham because she feels he had gotten her
"off on the wrong foot" with her new teacher. At recess Scout is ready to beat him up,
butstops her and invites Walter home to have lunch at the Finch house. Scout gets in trouble for
pointing out Walter's unusual behavior at the dinner table. She recalls the encounter later in
chapter twenty-three, while having a family discussion that begins about Bob Ewell and moves on
to the Cunningham family. It is clear, and not surprisingly, that Aunt Alexandra is not as
charitable toward Maycomb's lesser folks asis. While Atticus defends the
Cunninghams, noting that once you have them in your corner they always have your back, Alexandra
sees things much differently. For example, she says:
Jean
Louise, there is no doubt in my mind that they're good folks. But they're not our kind of
folks.
Scout recalls her aunt's refusal to allow her to
visit Calpurnia's home. Even in her innocence, Scout notices a similarity between that situation
and the one she faces now:
This time the tactics were
different, but Aunt Alexandra's aim was the same.
So,
Scout questions Alexandra, wondering why, if the Cunninghams are good
folks, she cannot be nice to them. Her aunt insists there is no difficulty in being
nice:
You should be friendly and polite to him, you should
be gracious to everybody, dear. But you don't have to invite him home.
It is relatively easy to see that Aunt Alexandra's social values
allow one to be civil and "gracious" to someone from the same town. But someone who is
not considered a social equal is, in her mind, to be
kept in his or her place; one that does not intersect
with her place. She points out that the Cunninghams are in no way related
and also that no Finch woman would ever be interested in a Cunningham man. And the only way a
Cunningham will be allowed at their house, according to Scout's aunt, is if he comes to see
Atticus on business.
Scout points out that she wants to play with Walter, and
asks why she cannot:
She took off her glasses and stared
at me. "I'll tell you why," she said. "Becauseheistrash, that's why you can't
play with him. I'll not have you around him, picking up his habits and learning Lord-knows-what.
You're enough of a problem to your father as it is."
Before Scout can react (physically, it would seem) to Aunt Alexandra's edict, Jem steps
in and leads her sobbing from the room.
In the same way that Scout cannot see
anything wrong with Dolphus Raymond or Tom Robinson, she does not understand the harm in playing
with a youngster that is, even by her aunt, deemed from a family of "good folks." The
, of course, is that at least one Cunningham (on the jury) can see beyond race to Tom Robinson's
innocence, while Alexandra's social equals possess no tolerance, or even sympathy, for the
wrongs done to the Robinson family.
This incident is at the core of the
struggle regarding the racial divide in the imaginary Maycomb, as well as the South in general,
at that time. It reflects the battle with and the sometimes disheartening outcome in, as Atticus
puts it, "the secret court of men's hearts."
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