Student Question
How is the character of Miss Jane Pittman described in Ernest J. Gaines' novel?
Quick answer:
Miss Jane Pittman is depicted as a resilient and complex character who survives the harsh realities of slavery, the Jim Crow era, and the Civil Rights movement. Despite her experiences, she is not portrayed as bitter but as a straightforward, conscientious individual who believes in doing what is right, even at personal cost. Gaines crafts her character with realism, avoiding the trope of a flawless heroine, and uses her story to personalize historical events.
Some writers might have created Miss Jane Pittman to be a bitter character, based on her early life, which was informed by the tragedy of slavery, the Jim Crow era and a long series of decades that led to the sometimes violent Civil Rights movement; however, Gaines created instead a woman who is a survivor, one willing to share her story in a straightforward manner, without whining, but acknowledging all the same her distaste for the government, white people, and her own tendency to dislike many people immediately. In this sense, she is a complex, realistic character, and Gaines resists the temptation to make her look like a flawless heroine. However, Jane also has a conscience that leads her to believe in the necessity of one doing what's right, even when it inconveniences others or causes them pain, uch as when she loses her adopted son after encouraging him to continue...
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his work in civil rights. She believes in the principle of standing up for what is right, and is willing to do it when necessary.
How can one evaluate Ernest J. Gaines's style in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman?
Published in the early 1970's, this work of historical fiction is probably best described as a blend of oral history and slave narrative and has been categorized as Southern fiction and/or African-American fiction. Gaines opens his story with a high school history teacher attempting to teach his students how history has affected real people. The teacher wonders if perhaps using Miss Jane Pittman's experiences, might accomplish this goal. Miss Pittman is 110 years old and has lived through the Civil War of the 1860's through the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's.
Gaines created fictional characters to make the history more personal; the editor/interviewer/high school teacher and Miss Jane are both fictitious, as is the Louisiana county which is the setting for this story, and most of his other written works. In fact, the strength of historical fiction often lies in the ability of a good writer to include a vast amount of history simply by setting his characters against the backdrop and then making the reader care about the characters. Once the reader cares about the characters, it is more likely that he or she will come to care about the events that are acting upon said characters' lives.
The genre and style Gaines structured allowed him to capture regional dialect, local color, and details of Southern life that some have suggested could rival William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway, authors who Gaines admired, and whose influence is not hard to find in Gaines's work.