To Kill a Mockingbird — Chapter 13

Narration Prompt

Trace Chapter 13 in three movements: Aunt Alexandra's arrival and Maycomb's social ratification of her installation, the elaboration of her doctrine of Streaks and gentle breeding within the household, and the borrowed-voice speech that ends with Atticus walking it back. Conclude by considering how Lee uses the chapter as the structural hinge between Part One's childhood-mystery register and Part Two's trial register, and what categories the trial chapters will inherit from this household chapter.

Discussion Questions

1. Aunt Alexandra's doctrine of Streaks performs three functions simultaneously: explanatory (a suicide is the morbid family streak, a giggle is family flightiness, a nosiness is hereditary tendency), absolving (once the Streak has been named, no further inquiry is required), and hierarchical (families with admirable Streaks are 'fine folks'). Examine the doctrine as a small-scale model of the racial logic the trial will dramatize. What is the precise intellectual continuity between the dinner-table doctrine of Streaks and the courthouse doctrine that will obscure Tom Robinson's individual character, and what does Lee accomplish by placing the small-scale rehearsal immediately before the large-scale failure?
2. Atticus's two-stage performance — the lawyer's-voice delivery of Aunt Alexandra's speech about gentle breeding, followed by his retraction when Scout begins to cry — is a working model of how a principled man negotiates real and competing loyalties. Examine the moral economy of the scene: what does Atticus owe his sister, what does he owe his children, what does he owe the household whose function depends on Aunt Alexandra's labor, and how does the renegotiation in real time reveal the layered character of his principles? Defend or challenge the reading that Atticus's willingness to deliver the speech in the first place compromises the integrity of the retraction.

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