and prejudice he sees around him as well as Mrs. Dubose. 

Mrs. Dubose tells Jem he has to learn to pull the camellias out by the roots to get rid of them. This symbolizes the need to attack the South's racism at its roots. Attacking a "bloom," like Mrs. Dubose, is pointless, as Atticus Finch knows. She is merely a symptom of a deeper problem.

Finally, if the camellia represents Alabama/the Old South and also Mrs. Dubose, then her illness and pain are the illness and pain of the Old South. Her stoic bearing of the pain becomes a symbol of the Old South's bearing of its illness. And since Mrs. Dubose is terminally ill, so, Lee seems to be saying, is the south: sick with racism, conformity, and fear.

Yet Jem keeps the camellia Mrs. Dubose sends, learning to appreciate it as well as hate it for what it symbolizes--for as Atticus understands, despite its racism and ugliness, there is a beauty in the South as well. 

The camellias represent how ugly things like racism can hide under pretty shells.

When Jem slashes at the camellias, he has come to some understanding of how the world works and he can’t face it yet. Both Scout and Jem are too young to really appreciate what is happening in Maycomb, but the trial forces them to face it. Mrs. Dubose’s flowers are pretty, but she is ugly.

Scout believes that Jem has lost his mind when he attacks Mrs. Dubose’s flowers. He is not unprovoked, though. Mrs. Dubose is a horrible woman who often shouts insults at the children. Atticus treats her respectfully and politely, and encourages his children to do the same. Jem reaches a tipping point on this day, though, and takes out the meanness of Mrs. Dubose and all of Maycomb on her flowers.

Mrs. Dubose is just one of the racists in Maycomb. No one in Maycomb believes that all people should be treated equally.  They do not approve of Atticus defending a black man. Many of them take it out on his children. Mrs. Dubose yells at the Finch children.

“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!” (Ch. 11)

Scout is aware that they are not supposed to react to these taunts. Jem is as well, and has been keeping his head held high until now. This is the time he just snaps. Jem is an idealist, and the reality of the world is too much for him to face.

The last thing Jem does after destroying the flowers is destroy the baton.

He did not begin to calm down until he had cut the tops off every camellia bush Mrs. Dubose owned, until the ground was littered with green buds and leaves. He bent my baton against his knee, snapped it in two and threw it down. (Ch. 11)

He realizes that his approach is not going to work. Getting angry and throwing a fit might have made him feel better at first, but in the long run it makes him just as bad as she is.  Her ugly behavior became his ugly behavior. The flowers were innocent. Taking out your anger on the innocents never does any good. Racism and intolerance cannot be fought with violence.

Atticus takes an interesting approach to the problem. He tries to teach Jem and Scout that things are not what they seem. Mrs. Dubose is a horrible, mean old woman, but she is also in a great deal of pain. Knowing this, Atticus has Jem read to her until she finally kicks her morphine habit.

Why would Atticus, the pillar of compassion, subject his son to this woman’s abuse? He wants to teach Jem a lesson in courage. Mrs. Dubose was courageous for fighting her addiction. Scout and Jem will need to be courageous to fight the racism they will face in the coming months.

I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. (Ch. 11)

Jem tends to see the good in people. The underlying racism that is a part of everyday life in Maycomb doesn’t seem to faze him. When Tom Robinson is convicted, Jem is horrified.  He was sure that the people of Maycomb would see the truth. It is a hard lesson that is part of growing up. People are not always what they seem.

Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose is an elderly, racist, seemingly bitter woman about whom Jem harbors intense emotions.  Jem and Scout have been raised by their father, the eminently decent Atticus Finch, to judge people solely on the basis of their behavior, and not even on that basis unless you know that person’s history.  Such is the case with Mrs. Dubose.  A neighbor of the Finches, Mrs. Dubose is known for her animosity towards the children as well as for her virulently racist comments.  In Chapter One of To Kill a Mockingbird, Jem describes this elderly neighbor as “plain hell,” and it’s not hard to see why, given the personal nature of Mrs. Dubose’s verbal assault on the Finch children.  Finally, Jem retaliates against Mrs. Dubose by destroying her prized camillias. Sentenced by his father to attend regular sessions at Mrs. Dubose’s house as punishment for his destruction of the flowers, Jem and Scout gradually discover the importance of those flowers.  They represent Mrs. Dubose’s humanity.  What Atticus knows that the children are too young to appreciate is that this old woman battles constantly, every day, an addiction to morphine, which she had started taking to relieve pain.  After Mrs. Dubose has died, Atticus reveals to his children the old woman’s secret, which included the humanity she retained in her heart, if not always in her political convictions.  It is revealed that she has left for Jem a single camellia, a Snow-on-the-Mountain, an enduring symbol of her humanity.  As Atticus explains to a crestfallen Jem, “I think that was her way of telling you – everything’s alright now, Jem, everything’s alright. You know, she was a great lady.”

In Chapter 11, Jem cannot control his anger after listening to Mrs. Dubose's racist comments directed at his father, and he ends up destroying her camellia bush. As punishment for his behavior, Atticus makes Jem read to Mrs. Dubose for two hours a day, except on Sundays. Jem ends up reading to Mrs. Dubose for a little over a month, which is just enough time for her to conquer her morphine addiction. Unknown to Jem, Mrs. Dubose was struggling with a chronic illness and wanted to die addiction-free. Jem's reading helped occupy Mrs. Dubose's mind in between her doses of morphine. Before she passed away, Mrs. Dubose told Atticus to give Jem a present from her. Jem opens up the candy box to find a perfectly white camellia inside.

In my opinion, Mrs. Dubose's camellia symbolizes forgiveness and hope. Initially, Jem destroys the camellia bush, which represents Mrs. Dubose and her racist, hateful ideology. However, Jem will learn that in order to thrive in Alabama, he must learn to forgive and have hope for a better future. Allegorically, Jem's attack on the white camellia bush can represent his initial reaction to encountering prejudice. However, Mrs. Dubose's gift represents the power of forgiveness, love, and hope. The white camellia will remind Jem of approaching ignorance and hate with love and patience.

That's an interesting question, and I don't think we will ever know for sure unless we ask Harper Lee directly.

In my opinion, they represent a form of innocence lost. Jem was provoked to cut down all of those camellias by Mrs. Dubose saying something mean about his father. In great revenge, Jem cut them down. He was making a statement. Remember, this occurs in chapter 11, by chapter 12 Calpurnia is calling him "Mister Jem". Jem knew it was wrong, he knew it was a great sin to destroy someone else's belongings but he just snapped in a passionate sense of justice for his father. This moment separated Jem from a childhood of ignorance, and an adolescence of knowing more than he should.

I think she gave Jem a flower in rememberance of the innocence of childhood. I think this could have also been a moment of forgiveness although Jem in his immaturity took it as a haunting.

Earlier in the story, Jem had acted out of rage and cut off the buds of Mrs. Duboses' camellia bushes, little flowering shrubs. To pay her back for the damage, Jem had to clean up the mess, work in her yard, and read to her every day after school for a month.

When Mrs. Dubose gives Jem the snow-on-the-mountain flower, it serves as a symbol of her forgiveness and admiration. His good works had far outweighed the initial bad one. There is also the matter of the flower's name: snow-on-the-mountain is also an old southern euphimism for old age, or the greying of hair. It seems only appropriate that the one character who seems most attached to the "old ways" in this novel gives Jem a flower with that particular label.