pain. Atticus tells Jem that Mrs. Dubose was sick for a very long time. The doctor had prescribed Mrs. Dubose pain medication to relieve her suffering. However, as is often the case in such a situation, Mrs. Dubose eventually became wholly reliant on morphine to manage her pain.

Meanwhile, Scout accompanies Jem to Mrs. Dubose's home. She notices that the alarm clock rings a few minutes later every day. What Scout doesn't know is this: Mrs. Dubose is trying to beat her morphine addiction by timing her doses just a little further apart each day.

As Jem reads to her, Scout worries that the alarm clock will eventually cease to ring. This would mean that Jem would have to continue reading to Mrs. Dubose indefinitely. Later, Jem argues with Atticus about having to read to Mrs. Dubose for an extra week.

At the end of the chapter, Jem learns that an extra week was all Mrs. Dubose needed to finally beat her morphine addiction.

I'll put the most important quotes in bold text below for easy reference.

In the beginning of the novel, Scout only mentions Mrs. Dubose a little bit here and there, talking about what a mean old lady she is, how she finds fault with Scout and Jem and everything they do, and so on. The kids clearly hate her. But Atticus wants them to be kind, to show understanding toward Mrs. Dubose.

In Chapter 11, here's a brief conversation Atticus has with Jem:

“Easy does it, son,” Atticus would say. “She’s an old lady and she’s ill. You just hold your head high and be a gentleman. Whatever she says to you, it’s your job not to let her make you mad.”  Jem would say she must not be very sick, she hollered so. 

As you can see, Atticus is telling Jem to cool it: to recognize that Mrs. Dubose is elderly and in bad health, and that he should take the high road and not show anger to her, no matter what she says. Jem resists this advice, telling his father that the old lady can't be that sick, since she has the strength to yell so much.

Later in that chapter, after Jem has gotten angry and destroyed Mrs. Dubose's flowers, Atticus chides him:

“Son, I have no doubt that you’ve been annoyed by your contemporaries about me lawing for n******, as you say, but to do something like this to a sick old lady is inexcusable. I strongly advise you to go down and have a talk with Mrs. Dubose,” said Atticus. “Come straight home afterward.”

Here, Atticus is telling Jem that although Mrs. Dubose made Jem angry with her comments, Jem shouldn't have damaged her plants, and now he has to go back to her house and apologize to her.

Jem begins reading to Mrs. Dubose after that, and he discusses what this is like with Atticus, who reminds Jem to be tactful and to overlook any of the lady's bad habits:

“Did she frighten you?” asked Atticus.

“No sir,” said Jem, “but she’s so nasty. She has fits or somethin‘. She spits a lot.”

“She can’t help that. When people are sick they don’t look nice sometimes.”

Finally, the whole last scene in Chapter 11 is worth rereading. This takes place right after Mrs. Dubose dies. Atticus talks to Jem about her again, revealing that she had been addicted to a painkiller, and that her fits that Jem had witnessed were the lady's brave efforts to end her own addiction. Here are some of the most memorable things Atticus says then about Mrs. Dubose to Jem:

"She said she was going to leave this world beholden to nothing and nobody. Jem, when you’re sick as she was, it’s all right to take anything to make it easier, but it wasn’t all right for her. She said she meant to break herself of it before she died, and that’s what she did."

"You know, she was a great lady."

"I wanted you to see something about her—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."

In chapter 1, Scout gives a brief description of her small town of Maycomb, Alabama, and comments on her summertime boundaries as a child, which is the first time Mrs. Dubose's name is mentioned in the novel. Scout says,

When I was almost six and Jem was nearly ten, our summertime boundaries (within calling distance of Calpurnia) were Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose’s house two doors to the north of us and the Radley Place three doors to the south (Lee 6).

Later in the same paragraph, Scout refers to Mrs. Dubose as "plain hell." As the novel progresses, Scout describes Mrs. Dubose as the "meanest old woman who ever lived," and in chapter 11, the reader learns more information about Scout's mean-spirited neighbor.

In chapter 11, Mrs. Dubose is portrayed as an obnoxious, outspoken racist who goes out of her way to tell Jem and Scout that their father is "no better than the niggers and trash he works for!" (Lee 105). Mrs. Dubose's comment infuriates Jem, who ends up destroying her camellia bush. He is then forced to read to her as punishment. Mrs. Dubose ends up passing away, and Atticus explains to his children that she conquered her morphine addiction before she died. Atticus also describes Mrs. Dubose as the most courageous person he has ever met, and the children learn that even the most despicable racists have admirable character traits.