Comparing the Roles of Aunt Alexandra and Calpurnia

There are a lot of ways Aunt Alexandra and Calpurnia’s roles differ. This may be because of the prejudice towards blacks in the era whilst Harper Lee wrote this book.

However they do share similar roles in the house and this causes a personality clash when they are living in the same house because they both usually do the same chores around the house and it does not work because they are both trying to compete for the same lifestyle in the same house and this causes their differences to show and eventually one of them will try and get rid of the other. In this case it is Aunt Alexandra attempts to get Calpurnia out of the house generally because as Calpurnia could not do this because she is black and in that era if a black was outspoken like that she would not have a reputation and would not be respected by the white community even less then she usually is.

But Calpurnia get respected in the finch house because Atticus Respects Calpurnia and she has built up a good relationship with the children and Atticus with her responsibility of having two roles in the house these are cooking and cleaning the house and general household chores and looking after and bring up the children This is abnormal for a black maid of this era because most white families would not trust a black person to bring up their children. Another reason for Atticus getting a black maid is that he would find it nearly impossible to get a white person ...

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On the other hand Aunt Alexandra still gets respect from Atticus but it is a different sort of respect. It’s more of the fact that Aunt Alexandra is Atticus’ sister than the fact that she has earned the respect from Atticus truthfully and properly. But Atticus is obliged to respect her. Another reason why he needs to respect her is that she owns finches landing and Atticus was the one who inherited it but he didn’t want to live there and the passed it over to Aunt Alexandra who forever holds this against Atticus and therefore making him respect her.

But Aunt Alexandra still cares about Calpurnia’s feelings one example of this is when the Finch Family are talking about how Mr Underwood despises Negroes and Aunt Alexandra says “don’t talk like that in front of them.” This shows that she does care about their feelings, but she does not acknowledge Negroes because she referrers to Calpurnia as them. But then Atticus stands up and shows the reader the relationship between Calpurnia and the family by saying “anything fit to say at the table’s fit to say in front of Calpurnia” and this really shows the abnormal relationship between a negro and a white family in the era when the book was written.

So in conclusion Aunt Alexandra’s and Calpurnia’s roles are very similar in many ways but they are very different in many different ways too.