Much has been written about Atticus’s moral compromises in Go Set a Watchman, which might remove him from the list of “Best Dads in American Literature.” However, what I find more remarkable is Scout’s courage to reject the views of the men she loves most and to tell them that they are weak. Readers must remember that this book was written many years before Betty Friedan wrote about “the problem that had no name.” I believe that if this book had been published in the 1950s, the predominant response would have been to Scout’s pre-feminist-movement articulation of her independence.
Harper Lee, Go Set A Watchman (New York: Harper, 2015), p. 247.