SCOUT

[Calling out:]  Hey, Mrs. Dubose

MRS. DUBOSE

Don’t you say hey to me, you ugly girl!  You say good afternoon, Mrs. Dubose!  What are you doing up there at this time of day?  Playing hooky, I suppose.  I’ll just call up the principal and tell him!

SCOUT

I’m reading a book.  I don’t have school today.

MRS. DUBOSE

Don’t you contradict me!  Does your father know where you are?

SCOUT

No ma’am.

MRS. DUBOSE

What are you doing in those overalls?  You should be in a dress and camisole, young lady!  You’ll grow up waiting on tables if somebody doesn’t change your ways—a Finch waiting on tables at the O.K. Café—hah!  Not only a Finch waiting on tables but one in the courthouse lawing for niggers!  Yes indeed, what has this world come to when a Finch goes against his raising?  I’ll tell you! Your father’s no better than the niggers and trash he works for!

SCOUT

I can see why most of your scenes wound up on the cutting room floor of the movie.

MRS. DUBOSE

I don’t care about any stupid movie. Come down from there. 

[SCOUT descends from the ladder and approaches MRS. DUBOSE’s BATHTUB.  JEM and ATTICUS go to the breakfast TABLE and begin out-of-focus business there.]

MRS. DUBOSE

That book you are reading, missy, is very much about the experience of growing up as a female in a South with very narrow definitions of gender roles and acceptable behavior. And that dimension of the novel is largely missing from the film. Give me that book.

[SCOUT hands her the BOOK.  MRS. DUBOSE leafs through it until she finds the right passage.]

MRS. DUBOSE

[Handing BOOK to SCOUT:] You may commence reading.  [Points to page:] Here.  Read about Aunt Alexandra.  She’s not even in that movie.

SCOUT

[Reads:]  “Aunt Alexandra was fanatical on the subject of my attire. I could not possibly hope to be a lady if I wore breeches; when I said I could do nothing in a dress, she said I wasn't supposed to be doing anything that required pants. Aunt Alexandra's vision of my deportment involved playing with small stoves, tea sets, and wearing the Add-A-Pearl necklace she gave me when I was born; furthermore, I should be a ray of sunshine in my father’s lonely life. I suggested that one could be a ray of sunshine in pants just as well, but Aunty said that one had to behave like a sunbeam, that I was born good but had grown progressively worse every year. She hurt my feelings and set my teeth permanently on edge, but when I asked Atticus about it, he said there were already enough sunbeams in the family and to go about my business, he didn't mind me much the way I was.”

[SCOUT notices that MRS. DUBOSE has drifted away.]

SCOUT

Mrs. Dubose, are you all right?

[ALARM CLOCK rings.  SCOUT jumps.  MRS. DUBOSE pulls a string of PEARLS out of the BATHTUB and gives them to SCOUT.]

MRS. DUBOSE

That’s enough.  Shoo.  You go do another scene now.

SCOUT

Hey, Mrs. Dubose.

MRS. DUBOSE

Don’t you say hey to me, you ugly girl!  You say good afternoon, Mrs. Dubose!

SCOUT

Did you like that scene at the kitchen table?

MRS. DUBOSE

No.

SCOUT

But I thought it illustrated the "disjointed subjectivity" of the film, which is also characteristic of the experience of women in patriarchy.

MRS. DUBOSE

Patriarchy, pah!  It made absolutely no sense.  Now read something that does.  [Hands SCOUT the BOOK and points to a passage.]

SCOUT

[Reads:]  “Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it.  In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks; the courthouse sagged in the square.  Somehow, it was hotter then:  a black dog suffered on a summer’s day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square.  Men’s stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning.  Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o’clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.”

[SCOUT notices that MRS. DUBOSE has drifted away again.]

SCOUT

Mrs. Dubose, are you all right?

[ALARM CLOCK rings—MRS. DUBOSE controls it.  SCOUT jumps.  MRS. DUBOSE takes a POWDER PUFF out of the BATHTUB and powders SCOUT’s neck.]

MRS. DUBOSE

That’s enough.  Shoo.

SCOUT

Hey, Mrs. Dubose

MRS. DUBOSE

Don’t you say hey to me, you ugly girl!  You say good afternoon, Mrs. Dubose!  [Notices SCOUT’s DRESS:]  You’re mighty dressed up.  Where are your britches today?

SCOUT

Under my dress.  [MRS. DUBOSE hoots with laughter.]  I hadn’t meant to be funny.  I had to wear this dress in the last scene.

MRS. DUBOSE

It’s time again.

SCOUT

What are we reading now?

MRS. DUBOSE

The meeting of the missionary society women, a scene which, like Aunt Alexandra, is completely omitted from the movie.  Start here.  [Hands SCOUT the book:]

SCOUT

[Reads]: “Calpurnia wore her stiffest starched apron. I admired the ease and grace with which she handled heavy loads of dainty things.  From the kitchen, I heard Mrs. Grace Merriweather in the living room giving a report on the squalid lives of the Mrunas.  They put the women out in huts when their time came, whatever that was; they had no sense of family; they subjected children to terrible ordeals when they were thirteen; they were crawling with yaws and earworms; they chewed up and spat out the bark of a tree into a communal pot and then got drunk on it.  I was wearing my pink Sunday dress, shoes, and a petticoat.  Calpurnia put my mother’s heavy silver pitcher on a tray.  ‘Can I carry it?’ I asked.  ‘If you be careful and don’t drop it.  Careful now, it’s heavy.  Don’t look at it and you won’t spill it.’  My journey was successful.  Aunt Alexandra smiled brilliantly.  ‘Stay with us, Jean Louise,’ she said.  This was part of her campaign to teach me to be a lady.  I took a seat beside Miss Maudie and wondered why ladies put on their hats to go across the street.  Ladies in bunches always filled me with vague apprehension.”

[SCOUT notices that MRS. DUBOSE has drifted away again.]

SCOUT

Mrs. Dubose, are you all right?

[ALARM CLOCK rings—MRS. DUBOSE controls it.  SCOUT jumps.  MRS. DUBOSE extracts a PITCHER OF SUGAR from the BATHTUB and pours it into SCOUT’s hands.]

MRS. DUBOSE

That’s enough.  Shoo.

SCOUT

Hey, Mrs. Dubose

MRS. DUBOSE

Don’t you say hey to me, you ugly girl!  You say good afternoon, Mrs. Dubose!

SCOUT

I saw you at the trial.  Did you think he was guilty?

MRS. DUBOSE

That was not me. 

SCOUT

It was not not you, either.

MRS. DUBOSE

[Hands SCOUT the BOOK:]  Read.

SCOUT

[Reads]:  “Mrs. Merriweather was one of those childless adults who find it necessary to assume a different tone of voice when speaking to children.  ‘Jean Louise,’ she said, ‘you are a fortunate girl.  You live in a Christian home with Christian folks in a Christian town.  Out there there’s nothing but sin and squalor.  And lately, even here in Maycomb!  I tell you there’s nothing more distracting than a sullen darky.  Just ruins your day to have one of ‘em in the kitchen.  I told my Sophy “Jesus Christ never went around grumbling and complaining,” and it did her good.  She took her eyes off that floor and said, “Nome, Miss Merriweather, Jesus never went around grumbling.”’”

MRS. DUBOSE

[Ironically;]  You never ought to let an opportunity go by to witness for the Lord.  Ha!

SCOUT

[Reads:]  “Mrs. Farrow was the second most devout lady in Maycomb.  ‘We can educate ‘em till we’re blue in the face,’ she said.  ‘We can try till we drop to make good Christians out of ‘em, but there’s no lady safe in her bed these nights.’  I wondered at the world of women.  There was no doubt about it, I must soon enter this world, where on its surface fragrant ladies rocked slowly, fanned gently, and drank cool water.”

[SCOUT notices that MRS. DUBOSE has drifted away again.]

SCOUT

Mrs. Dubose, are you all right?

[ALARM CLOCK rings.  SCOUT jumps.  MRS. DUBOSE takes a HATCHET out of her BATHTUB and hands it to SCOUT.

MRS. DUBOSE

That’s enough.  Shoo.