Jack Finch, Scout and Jem's uncle, teases Miss Maudie, who he has known since they were children, by asking her to marry him each Christmas. When he yells across to her, she responds by yelling back, "Call a little louder, Jack Finch, and they’ll hear you at the post office, I haven’t heard you yet!”
Uncle Jack and Miss Maudie are simply trying to tease each other. Miss Maudie, Jack says, has absolutely no desire to marry Uncle Jack, so she yells loudly as a way to get back at him and embarrass him. The quote in the question means that Miss Maudie thinks that the best way to defend herself against Uncle Jack's jokes is to make him even more embarrassed than she is and to mount an offensive against him, which consists of her own jokes aimed at him.
Uncle Jack and Miss Maudie had known each other since they were children. They had grown up together in Finch's Landing and had developed a kind of teasing, playful relationship. Every Christmas, when Uncle Jack came to visit, he would yell out to Miss Maudie and ask her to marry him. HE made the first contact, that put him on the offensive. She would respond with
"Call a little louder, Jack Finch, and they'll hear you at the post office. I haven't heard you yet." (pg 44)
It was a playful banter between the two of them. Uncle Jack had no intention of marrying Miss Maudie, and Miss Maudie had no intention of accepting his proposal. He knew that. He just needed to get the teasing started on his terms. He told the children,
"... he was just trying to get Miss Maudie's goat, that he had been trying unsuccessfully for forty years, that he was the last person in the world that Miss Maudie would think about marrying but the first person she thought about teasing...." (pg 44)
When teasing someone, it is always best if you start it instead of respond to someone else's teasing. So, his best defense to her teasing was if he waged a "spirited offense" and teased her first.
Uncle Jack Finch says the “best defense to her [Miss Maudie] was spirited offense.” What does he mean by that?
Uncle Jack likes to joke around with Miss Maudie. This is understandable, given that she has such a lively sense of humor. Every Christmas when he comes over to visit his brother and the kids, he always yells across the street at Miss Maudie, jokingly requesting her to come and marry him. She, in turn, always responds by hollering, "Call a little louder, Jack Finch, and they’ll hear you at the post office, I haven’t heard you yet!"
Miss Maudie and Uncle Jack have known each other since they were kids, and for the last forty years, Jack's been trying manfully to get Maudie's goat, but without success. Jack's the last person on earth that Maudie would ever consent to marry, but he's the very first person that she'd consider teasing. So Jack figures that it's best to get his retaliation in first. And as...
See This Answer Now
Start your 48-hour free trial to unlock this answer and thousands more. Enjoy eNotes ad-free and cancel anytime.
Already a member? Log in here.
attack is often the best form of defense, he always makes sure that he's the one to start teasing. This is what's meant by "spirited offense."
Uncle Jack Finch says the “best defense to her [Miss Maudie] was spirited offense.” What does he mean by that?
Uncle Jack and Miss Maudie had known each other since childhood. In other words, they had a history together. They knew how to push each other's buttons and tease each other. When Uncle Jack would yell his marriage proposal across to Miss Maudie, he wasn't serious. He has told the children that Miss Maudie loved to tease him. He was,
"...the first person she thought about teasing...." (pg 44)
So, if he could get to her first and tease her or give he a bad time first, then he would be ahead of the game. In other words, if he made the first attack, hence the offense, she would have to defend herself. He liked to attack first before she had a chance.
Uncle Jack Finch says the “best defense to her [Miss Maudie] was spirited offense.” What does he mean by that?
Uncle Jack and Miss Maudie have had an ongoing back-and-forth banter for forty years. Miss Maudie provides both loving counsel and witty insights to the Finch children, her neighbors. She delivers lines such as:
Stephanie Crawford even told me once she woke up in the middle of the night and found [Boo Radley] looking in the window at her. I said, 'What did you do, Stephanie, move over in the bed and make room for him?' That shut her up a while. (Chapter 5)
Since Uncle Jack and Miss Maudie have known each other since they were children, he is aware of her dry sense of humor and tries to beat her at her own game. Therefore, when he visits, he is sure to yell across the street for Miss Maudie to marry him even though he knows that he is "the last person in the world Miss Maudie would think about marrying but the first person she thought about teasing." The best way to keep himself out of her line of teasing is to tease her first; therefore, the best way Uncle Jack can defend himself from her teasing banter is to throw the first verbal punch—a spirited offense.
Uncle Jack Finch says the “best defense to her [Miss Maudie] was spirited offense.” What does he mean by that?
Throughout the narrative of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbirdthere are a number of parodic images of hetereosexual relationships, contends writer/critic Gary Richards and Uncle Jack's calling over to Miss Maudie exemplfies one of these. In his forties, Uncle Jack has never married and expresses his distaste for female company as he remarks that his yellow cat is one of the few females he could stand permanently, and, as Scout points out, he "confined his passion to digging in his window boxes in Nashville, and stayed rich."
Miss Maudie and Jack have known each other since they were children, having grown up together on Finch's landing, and they are friends. So, when he visits his brother at Christmastime, he calls to Miss Maudie as though she is his "Coy Mistress" just to tease her, and because he is the "last person she would want to marry," he uses his "spirited offense" as a defense. The parody of hetereosexuality here is nothing but satiric, and also hints at the hand of Truman Capote in the narrative.