“Go Set a Watchman” by Harper Lee: Henry Clinton, boyfriend of Jean Louise Finch (“Scout”), says she is “a Jekyll-and-Hyde character”

Since Go Set a Watchman (mid-1950s) was written before, and was revised under editorial guidance into what became, To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), the former may be a less polished, but more authentic, reflection of the author.

In this novel, twenty-six-year-old Jean Louise returns home from New York City to Alabama to visit her aging father, Atticus, and also to renew her romantic relationship with Henry Clinton, who says to Jean Louise:

“You’re a Jekyll-and-Hyde character” (p. 47).

“In the years when he was away at the war and the University, she had turned from an overalled, fractious, gun-slinging creature into a reasonable facsimile of a human being. He began dating her on her annual two-week visits home, and although she still moved like a thirteen-year-old boy and abjured most feminine adornment, he found something so intensely feminine about her that he fell in love” (p. 13).

“ ‘Want to drive?’ said Henry. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. Although she was a respectable driver, she hated to operate anything mechanical more complicated than a safety pin: folding lawn chairs were a source of profound irritation to her; she had never learned to ride a bicycle or use a typewriter” (p. 11).

At age eleven, when she got her first menstrual period, “It had never fully occurred to Jean Louise that she was a girl: her life had become one of reckless, pummeling activity; fighting, football, climbing…and besting anyone her own age in any contest requiring physical prowess.” And so she felt “a cruel practical joke had been played upon her: she must now go into a world of femininity, a world she despised, could not comprehend…” (p. 116).

As I continue reading, I will be interested to see if the issue of Jean Louise’s duality is developed or dropped.

Harper Lee. Go Set a Watchman. New York, Harper, 2015.

Note (added March 21): "Jean," the French version of "John," is a gender-ambivalent name for the female protagonist.