Mockingbird (43 page)

It wasn't the hardship of being lonely and without money that made her yearn to go home. If that were true, then after becoming famous and wealthy she wouldn't have returned to southern Alabama for months at a time every year. She did so because she had a profound love of place. That's why Lee's readers recognize her characters and the town of Maycomb. It's a place they feel sure they've been to, and where they'd always like to be. It was where they belonged, where people knew them—where they felt loved.

Lee often said that
To Kill a Mockingbird
was a love story, meaning Scout's boundless love for her father. And when Scout has grown into a young woman in
Go Set a Watchman
, it's love again that makes Jean Louise forgive Atticus for being imperfect. Love was the alpha and omega of life, and should be in all relationships, the lens through which we look at others. She believed that she could say it no plainer, and when she was asked why she didn't write more, she didn't see the need to restate the importance of love in different words: “I have said what I wanted to say, and I will not say it again.”

 

Notes

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1. T
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2. “E
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ACKWARD

We knew ‘colored people' as servants. In both our houses we had a cook who was really a general housekeeper. About half her time was spent with the baby if there was one. She did whatever was necessary at the time. We had a yard man who came about once a week. Our clothes were picked up by a black woman with a wagon. She took them home, boiled them on an outside fire, starched them, ironed them and returned them. Sheets, etc., went to the commercial laundry. Extra help came in for fall cleaning. It was the way of life.

Roberta Steiner, “My Cousin Carson McCullers,”
Carson McCullers Society Newsletter
, no. 3. University of West Florida, Pensacola, FL, 2000.

Arch Persons “came from a fine, well-respected family in Tuscaloosa. His father was a prominent lawyer and a first cousin, Gordon Persons, was once governor of Alabama. Archie first came to Monroeville in the early 1930s as houseguests of two brothers with whom he had become good friends while they were students at the University of Alabama. It was during a visit that he met Lillie Mae. A whirlwind romance ended in marriage … followed by the birth of Truman and subsequently by Archie abandoning them in New Orleans. It was at this time that Lillie Mae brought her baby to Monroeville to keep both of them from starving.”

Ibid., 3 July 2003.