The Autobiography Of Miss Jane Pittman (1982) - Plot & Excerpts
The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman: Ernest J. Gaines' novel of the long journey to freedomA Note from the incomplete readerThe Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman was originally published by Ernest J. Gainesthrough the Dial Press in 1971. A second printing followed in 1972. The Second PrintingHowever, it was not until 1974 when Gaine's novel was filmed as a television movie that sales mushroomed with the issue of the mass-market Bantam Paperback tie-in edition. The movie aired on CBS. Cicely Tyson played the title role from approximately age 23 to 110. The production garnered nine Emmy Awards, including Best Actress for Ms. Tyson. Cicely Tyson portrayed a century of the life of Miss Jane PittmanI was a first year law student when "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman" first aired. I was twenty-two years old. But it was thirty-eight years later, as a sixty year old man, before I read the novel. It was the Bantam movie tie-in edition I read, after checking it out of my local public library.Now that check-outs and check-ins are digitized, it is no longer possible to see how often a book has been checked out, or when it was read. But you can still tell from the condition of a book when it has passed through generations of hands. That little paperback was one of the first paperback editions. The spine was loose, bowed from having been placed down many times, and the cover had a distinct curl indicating one or readers had been cover and page benders, turning what had been read to the back of the volume. Previous readers had dog-eared the pages. Others had underlined passages, some times in pencil, some times in ink. Inevitably the same passages had been marked more than once, starred, underscored in different colors, but clearly having some impact on many readers.But I was not one of them. I was born and raised in Alabama. No book by an African-American author appeared as a part of my curriculum through high school. While I was raised by my mother and family to "Sir" and "Ma'am" any person, no matter the color of their skin, neither had they ever been exposed to African American literature of any sort. It was only in college that I was introduced to Charles W. Chestnutt,briefly, by my favorite literature professor O.B. Emerson, during his Southern Literature Course which I took in 1973.I knew of the injustice suffered by Tom Robinson in To Kill a Mockingbird and idolized Atticus Finch because he fought for justice for an innocent man. I read The Confessions of Nat Turner, was furious at the thought of slavery, but wondered why the story was written by a white man, William Styron. It occurred to me to ask if I were a literary racist.It was during my work as an Assistant District Attorney working child abuse and domestic violence cases that Alice Walkerbegan a literary awakening for me with The Color Purple. Then came Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, and Natasha Trethewey. I began to assuage my guilt over my ignorance of an entire culture's literature. But I wondered where were the male writers? Surely there was someone other than Chestnutt. Oh, I could read Booker T. Washington, and Frederick Douglass. I have their books. But I wanted someone more contemporary. And then, thanks to a member of our goodreads group On the Southern Literary Trail there he was. Ernest J. Gaines. Ernest J. Gaines, an author I'm grateful to have discoveredMy reading of Gaines has not followed my usual practice. I've read him as I've found him. First came A Lesson Before Dying, then A Gathering of Old Men, and now The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. Each has affected me deeply, but I chose to share my thoughts regarding Jane Pittman because of the magnificent voice of the protagonist and the sweep of history seen through the eyes of one person, with the assistance of those who shared parts of their lives with her and lived around her.Gaines structures his novel as a series of interviews of Jane Pittman conducted by an unseen and unnamed teacher of history. The "Teacher" emerges much as Homer does in The Odyssey, calling on Jane Pittman to tell of her personal odyssey to freedom from the final days of her life as a slave during the American Civil War up to the Civil Rights Movement of the early 1960s. A Note From The Teacher "I had been trying to get Miss Jane Pittman to tell me her story of her life for several years now, but each time I asked her she told me there was no story to tell. I told her she was over a hundred years old, she had been a slave in this country so there had to be a story..." From the Interviews of Miss Jane PittmanThe Teacher told me he wouldn't take no for an answer. So I asked him when he wanted to get started. He had one of those recorders. One thing led to something else. Sometimes I wasn't able to remember. But there were all those of my people around me who were my memory when it was gone. The Teacher said it was all our story. I guess it was.When you are born a slave like I was you don't own anything. Not even your ma'am and Pap get to name you. The Mistress named me Ticey. I didn't start out as Jane Pittman.It was near the end of the war. The Secesh come through. Mistress told me to take water out to them. One boy said if it was up to him, he would let the niggers go, but it wasn't up to him.Then the Yankees came on following the Secesh. It was a Yankee soldier gave me his daughter's own name, Jane Brown. He told me after the war to come see him in Ohio. When Mistress called me Ticey, I told her I wasn't Ticey anymore, I was Jane Brown. She had Master hold me down and she beat me with a cat-o-nine tales an' put me to work in the fields.I don't even know what happened to my Pap. I barely remember my Ma'am. They killed her when I was bout five.It was more than a year after the war Master told us we was emancipated. We could stay but he couldn't pay us nothin'. But we could work on shares. It was slavery all over again. About half of us left. Big Laura you'd call the leader. She carried her baby daughter. I watched after her boy Ned. We didn't know where we was goin' or how we was goin' to live. We only knew we were free at last.Then one day the Patrollers found us. They was like the Ku Klux. They killed ever one of us except me n' Ned. I had been able to keep him quiet. I found big Laura. Them men had even killed Laura's girl child. The Patrollers I made up my mind I was gonna get to Ohio no matter what. Ned, he took two stones, flint stones from his Ma'am. He carried them with him wherever he went. I guess it was his way of remembering his Ma'am. But I think ever time he struck them rocks together what he was makin' was the spark of freedom Laura had wanted for him n' ever body else.Each day we walked. But we was still in Luzanna. I hung on to finding freedom in Ohio until one night we came up on the house of an old white man. He had been a sailor at one point in his life. He had maps ever where in his house. He told me I'd have to cross Mississippi or up through Arkansas n' I might take my whole life gettin' to Ohio. He told me he could be Secesh or he could be a friend of my people. You know I think he was a friend of my people. He could jus' as easy told me sure you take on off for Ohio.So I decided to stay in Luzanna n' find my freedom there some day. I took work on a plantation. Ned was in a school. I never looked on Ned as mine until his teacher had him read his lesson to me n' I was so proud of him I loved him as if he were my own.The only good that come to my people after the war was when the Beero showed up. We were freed men and women. But it didn't last. The North made up with the South, and those northern businessmen came down South to make money with the white businessmen. It was slavery all over again. A Branch of the Freedmen's BureauThe years went on n' Ned went off to Kansas to find an education. I took Joe Pittman, the horse breaker on the plantation as my husband. I couldn't have chilren of my own. The doctor said I had been beat so bad when I was still a slave I had been hurt inside.There was no horse Joe couldn't break. A big rancher hired him to come out to Texas n' made Joe, a black man, his head horse man. But there's always a horse a man can't break. I lost Joe. N' from then on I was just Miss Jane Pittman.I went back to Luzanna. My Ned came home from Kansas. He was full of ideas. He had been down to Cuba in that Spanish American War. He talked about not holdin' with the Booker T. Washington sayin' that the black people needed to stay off from the white folks, work hard and stand on there on. He took after the ideas of Frederick Douglas n' said that this world was for all folks black n' white. He was a teacher. I still remember hearin' him talkin' to the chilren on the plantation. He said, "This earth is yours and don’t let that man out there take it from you." Booker T. Washington Frederick DouglassNow there was a Cajun named Albert Cluveau. He would sit on my porch n' talk. He'd drink tea with me, n' we'd go fishin together' sometimes. Albert would talk about killin' like it was nuthin'. Albert told me if Ned didn't stop his teachin' n' leave, he'd been told to kill him. N' he said he'd do what he was told to do.Ned wouldn't leave. Even knowin' he was going to die. One night Albert Cluveau met my Ned on the road n' shot him through the chest with a shot gun. Black people have had to fight for whatever they ever got. Ned would never quit. But I sure miss him.There was more wars. There's always wars. I thought after all our young men fought the Germans n' Japanese things might be changin'. There was even a black man played baseball for the Dodgers. I never missed Jackie Robinson when he was playin' for the Dodgers. But things hadn't really changed. Miss Jane's favorite ball player, Jackie RobinsonWe had a young man named Jimmy. He was the son of sharecroppers on the plantation. We all thought he might be The One, who would grow up n' make a difference for our people. We wanted him to make a preacher or a teacher.Jimmy went off to school. He got in with young Fred Shuttlesworth and that young preacher Martin Luther King, Jr. They sent him back home to us. He told us we hadn't even begun to fight in Luzanna. Fred Shuttlesworth Martin Luther King, Jr.Jimmy asked us all to meet him at the Courthouse the next mornin', gonna get us some civil rights. I plan on goin'. He reminds me a lot of my Ned. But Albert Cluveau's been long dead. I'm not sure if I'm 110 or I'm a 111, but freedom's been a long time comin'. Miss Jane at the Courthouse The Incomplete Reader Wraps UpErnest J. Gaines filled The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman with so much historical content, and the voice of Jane Pittman carried such a sense of truth, that upon its original publication, many people thought the novel was non-fiction. Gaines said,"Some people have asked me whether or not The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman is fiction or nonfiction. It is fiction. When Dial Press first sent it out, they did not put "a novel" on the galleys or on the dustjacket, so a lot of people had the feeling that it could have been real. ...I did a lot of research in books to give some facts to what Miss Jane could talk about, but these are my creations. I read quite a few interviews performed with former slaves by the WPA during the thirties and I got their rhythm and how they said certain things. But I never interviewed anybody."Well, he could have fooled me. Ironically, as I finish this review, "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman" is on the television. I am watching it thirty-eight years after I first saw it. It is good. However, it cannot match the power of the seamless narrative of Gaines' powerful novel.As for that battered paperback I checked out of our library, I've bought a new trade edition to go on the shelves. It will be a clean slate for others to begin underlining the passages they love and to make their own notes. Periodically, I'll check on that book and see how things are coming along. There's still a lot of life left in the story of Jane Pittman. For us all. Thank you, Mr. Gaines. A New Book For the Library
A work of fiction chronicling a life from the time of slavery to the civil rights era? Wow, I feel smarter already.Meet Miss Jane Pittman, a 110-year-old black woman who lives on a plantation making meager wages from her white boss. She’s not a slave anymore, but she might as well be. She and her fellow workers break their backs on the farm and receive next to nothing. Undereducated but smart as a whip, Miss Jane is quite a character. An unnamed schoolteacher convinces her to let him document her life in a series of audio recordings, suspecting Jane might have quite a story to tell. Oh, and does she ever!Jane’s story encompasses almost a hundred years, dozens of characters, and a multitude of historical events. Jane has suffered years of abuse and heartbreak and has aged into quite a fine woman. She’s loved and lost, suffered and lost some more. But ages of struggle have given her a wise outlook on life. She’s been a slave. She’s been a wife, an adoptive mother, a warrior. But mostly she’s been quintessentially Jane, a experienced lady with a life time of memories to share.I had never read anything by Ernest J. Gaines before The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, but I had heard many good things about him. As soon as I got ahold of a copy, I devoured it relatively quickly (for a slow reader like me, mind). A slim volume with a lot of ground to cover, Jane Pittman maintains the no-nonsense and the plain speech of it’s protagonist. I must confess I liked Jane a lot. I adored her strength and her offbeat spirituality.I found this book to be an enlightening and educational experience without being too preachy. It certainly contains a refreshing lack of white guilt. You’ve got your basically good, decent white men and your dreadful minorities, and vice versa. Your black characters are not above racism and barbarism and your whites are not incapable of compassion. I got the impression Mr. Ernest J. Gaines has a good head on his shoulders and has bigger fish to fry than moaning about the ghastly whites, while still accurately portraying how the white man has fucked things up for many.On the down side, I found the take of keeping all the characters straight daunting, to say the least. There were about two Marys, two Alberts, and innumerable Joes scattered throughout this narrative. Characters are introduced erratically never to be heard from again. Also, I didn’t find myself liking the last segment of the book as much as I enjoyed the first few parts. Miss Jane Pittman is best when dealing with Jane’s early years or the white Tee Bob’s doomed infatuation with a mixed-race schoolteacher.However, when Jimmy, a precocious black boy who Jane mystically insisted could be ‘the one,’ showed up, I was just about ready for the book to end. I guess after introducing a strong, progressive African-American character like Ned earlier on and leaving Jimmy little room to develop, Jimmy just seemed like an extension of Ned. Now I know the decision was somewhat deliberate, but I still found the part of the book focusing primarily on Jimmy to be a bit of a bore.The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman is a fascinating novel featuring a delightful heroine. It’s brilliance is in it’s artful simplicity, and I am looking forward to catching up with Gaines’ other books.
What do You think about The Autobiography Of Miss Jane Pittman (1982)?
The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines is an inspiring autobiography. The reason why I chose to read this autobiography is because the cover caught my eye. The picture of Cicely Tyson on the front cover which plays Jane Pittman. I haven’t seen the movie but I’m sure that I will better understand times from before and the struggle of surviving. I also picked it because biographies inspire me most of the time because they always have struggles they overcome to become a greater person. This story is about an African American who was a slave as a little girl she escapes from her home with another boy named Ned who later becomes like her son. Her parents were both killed and so she goes on believing she’ll go where she desires to. She goes searching for peace and she also becomes a civil rights leader for her people. Through her journey she faces many problems like discrimination but she works really hard for pay and she wants an education for Ned so she works twice as hard. The protagonist would be the men who treated them bad as slaves. They didn’t have much of a say and if they did say something that went against the white men or if they tried to make a change they would be killed. This is a man vs. man because there is tension between races within the white and black. The theme is you have to let go of your past in order to live on in the future. Pittman leaves the past behind and continues to work hard fighting for her rights. Some of the symbols I found were the black stallion which symbolized death an image that she has in her mind which kills her husband. The river is also a symbol of death and living saved many people and it also overflew homes and peoples hearts. The author gave the point of view and she also gave detail of the setting.I would recommend this book to my fellow classmates because they would appreciate the lives they are living now. Jane Pittman is a hero, and if we were there in those days we would’ve look up to her as her people did.
—Alexa
I remember watching the movie "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman" with Cicely Tyson. I remember reading this years ago. I read it on my kindle this time. A very good historical novel. a young man goes to the house of Jane Pittman. she is over 100 years old. the current time is the early 1960s. it is during the civil rights time. Miss Jane Pittman is being interviewed since she was about 11 when the civil war ended and she was a slave at the time. This book takes Miss Jane from that time to the early 60s she recalls her life during this time, the ups and downs. tragedies and other. a pretty good read. Glad I got the chance to read again.
—Lori
I am kind of stingy with my ratings -- I would make it a 2 1/2 if I could, because it was better than "okay" but I didn't quite "like" it. I didn't DISlike it, either. After reading "The Help," I wanted to read some more historical fiction taking place during the Civil Rights Movement. This biography was suggested to me by the librarian, and it was a pretty easy read. It followed the life of Jane Pittman from her childhood as a slave through emancipation, trying to get out of Louisiana, then as an adult working on a plantation (still in Louisiana,) and ended up with her over 100 years old (still in Louisiana) becoming a civil rights activist. Jane was a "sassy" lady, and although I never fell in love with her, I do admire her ability to carry on and survive so many hardships that I can only imagine (by reading books like these.) I wish there had been a little more emotion in this biography. There were plenty of heart-wrenching stories told (mothers being murdered, babies being murdered, sons being murdered, suicide, etc.) but yet my heart never wrenched. I'm left wondering if Jane was really devoid of too much emotion (surely a blessing) or if the writing just couldn't carry it through.
—Emily
