In the article The Female Voice in To Kill a Mockingbird: Narrative Strategies in Film and Novel, Dean Shackleford (Winter 1996) compares To Kill a Mockingbird with its film version. Shackleford argues that “That the film shifts perspectives from the book’s primary concern with the female protagonist and her perceptions to the male father figure and the adult male world is noteworthy”.
The article begins with a passage from the novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee with Aunt Alexandra obsessively concerned with Scout’s ways of dress and mannerisms that were perceived to be un-lady like and more befitting of a boy in the setting of the southern state of Maycomb, Alabama. In both novel and film an antifeminist stance is taken throughout whenever focused on Scout implying that “Girls are weak and afraid” with Foote taking things a little further by hinting that Scout was going through an identity crisis while trying to fit in. These passages set the stage for what the author Dean Shackelford is conveyed as how the narratives differ between Film and Novel and how “Gender roles and acceptable behavior” …show more content…
This seems to be a point of contention throughout the film and touched upon a few times in the novel. Scout shouldn’t cry, be fearful, and wear dresses, or fight like a boy in order to be valued as equal to a male in her town, accepted by her brother or being seen as of age by her father. The film’s adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird lacked female narrative to the point some parts of the book seemed redundant or did not come across as powerful as the book which made the film more endearing to the male viewer due to it being centered on a God like male
The article begins with a passage from the novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee with Aunt Alexandra obsessively concerned with Scout’s ways of dress and mannerisms that were perceived to be un-lady like and more befitting of a boy in the setting of the southern state of Maycomb, Alabama. In both novel and film an antifeminist stance is taken throughout whenever focused on Scout implying that “Girls are weak and afraid” with Foote taking things a little further by hinting that Scout was going through an identity crisis while trying to fit in. These passages set the stage for what the author Dean Shackelford is conveyed as how the narratives differ between Film and Novel and how “Gender roles and acceptable behavior” …show more content…
This seems to be a point of contention throughout the film and touched upon a few times in the novel. Scout shouldn’t cry, be fearful, and wear dresses, or fight like a boy in order to be valued as equal to a male in her town, accepted by her brother or being seen as of age by her father. The film’s adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird lacked female narrative to the point some parts of the book seemed redundant or did not come across as powerful as the book which made the film more endearing to the male viewer due to it being centered on a God like male