miss jane pittman essays

INTRODUCTIONPLOT SUMMARYTHEMESHISTORICAL OVERVIEWCRITICAL OVERVIEWCRITICISMSOURCESINTRODUCTIONThe novel The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, first published in 1971 by Dial Press, is arguably the best-known work by author Ernest J. Gaines. The text consists of a fictionalized autobiography of Jane Pittman, a woman born into slavery who lived to be nearly one hundred and ten years old. While Jane is still a child, the Civil War ends and the slaves are freed; she is forced to make her own way in the world. Though her first goal is to leave Louisiana for Ohio, the home of a Union soldier who showed her some kindness, Jane never manages to leave the state and spends the rest of her life working in Louisiana. Gaines uses Jane's experiences and her distinctive first-person voice to explore the effects of slavery, emancipation, racism, Reconstruction, and the civil rights movement on African Americans. To a lesser degree, he also considers the consequence of these events on whites, both poor and rich.Gaines spent nearly three years writing The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. For the first year, the novel was not an autobiography but a collected fictional biography that consisted of different people telling Jane's story as well as discussions of related historical topics. He soon found that Jane's own voice was more powerful and decided to make the book a fictional autobiography, an idea inspired by Gertrude Stein's The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933). Like his fictional creation, Gaines was also born and raised on a plantation, the River Lake Plantation, in Louisiana. Many stories he heard throughout his childhood about plantation life ended up in this novel.While many of Gaines's other novels and short stories also reflect this culture, the character of Jane was influenced by a very important woman in his life: a maternal great-aunt named Augusteen.
Ernest Gaines won a Wallace Stegner Fellowship to attend a Stanford University writing program in 1958 and 1959. He received the Joseph Henry Jackson Literary Award in 1959, and he published two short-story collections between 1968 and 1971, the year The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman appeared. Many critics have praised the novel, and much has been written about it. The story is best known as a 1974 television film that starred Cicely Tyson in the role of Jane Pittman. The film won nine Emmy Awards, including awards for Tyson’s acting, John Korty’s direction, and Tracy Keenan Wynn’s screenplay. This powerful novel did not arise without roots. Gaines had studied the fiction of Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner, and those writers acted as tutors for Gaines’s style, which lets the story tell itself and inhabit a local landscape of imagination. While Faulkner’s works seem most influential on Gaines, from love for a place in the South to preoccupations with memory and time, Faulkner’s vision was still a product of a white experience and was, from Gaines’s perspective, thus limited in what it could communicate of black life in America. It is reasonable to compare Faulkner’s character of Dilsey in The Sound and the Fury (1929) with Jane Pittman, because both are black women of the old South and both are powerful figures of virtue amid vicious brutality. Faulkner, however, does not allow his readers to identify with. (The entire section is 452 words.).
  THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MISS JANE PITTMAN FICTION BY ERNEST J. GAINES Bantam Books Reissue edition (August 1, 1982) ISBN: 0553263579 Reviewed by Christina Gosnell iss Pittman knew how to live a life from beginning to end; she neither skipped a page, nor neglected her share of suffering. Few people live that kind of life.          Perhaps that is one reason why this book has been taught in schools for many years now. Former students remember reading it. They can’t remember why, and they can’t remember what there was to remember. Meaning has yellowed like the first editions of this book. That is unfortunate, but also predictable. Miss Pittman reminds us that sometimes the loose ends just don’t get tied up. And maybe this is why those same recalcitrant students will take up this book again and again in their lives—in youth, we aren’t ready to absorb such a story, the meaning of such a life.          As a reviewer, I admire Mr. Gaines' ability to take the clay of life in his hands and craft it into a story. What a job that must have been, even for a writer as talented as Ernest J. Gaines. Think about it. He captured the life of a slave who lived to be almost 110 years old. Here is my story, Mr. Gaines, she must have said. Give it to the world.          I wonder what I may add to this. What can I say about this story that Miss Pittman doesn’t say herself? This is the life of a slave, of a woman who saw segregation, integration, the battles produced by those struggling for a power they thought to be theirs. It’s the story of a woman who lived a life in the middle of it all, but who left this earth without regret. I can only tell you that it’s a life worth reading about, a life worth living.          From her home in Louisiana, Miss Jane sees the people through the Civil War and the 1960s. She witnesses the rise and fall of black militancy from the confines of her plantation.
Study Pack The The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman Study Pack contains: The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman Study Guide Encyclopedia Articles (2) The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman 3,785 words, approx. 13 pages The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines In the fall of 1962, surrounded by more than 2,000 jeering white protesters, James Meredith entered the University of Mississippi as its f. Read more Ernest Gaines Biographies (5) Ernest J. Gaines 8,847 words, approx. 30 pages Biography EssayErnest J. Gaines is one of the best known of contemporary black writers. He received popular and critical recognition for the publication and subsequent television production of The Aut. Read more Ernest J. Gaines 3,291 words, approx. 11 pages When we moved to California I was lonely, so I went to the library and began to read a lot of fiction, Ernest J. Gaines told Paul Desruisseaux in the New York Times Book Review. It was the late 1940. Read more Ernest J(ames) Gaines 3,182 words, approx. 11 pages Ernest J. Gaines novelist and short story writer, was born to Manuel and Adrienne J. (Colar) Gaines on 15 January 1933 in the bayou country near Oscar, Louisiana, which lies about twenty-five miles n. Read more Ernest J(ames) Gaines 8,659 words, approx. 29 pages Ernest J. Gaines is one of the best-known of contemporary black writers. He received popular and critical recognition for the publication and subsequent television production of The Autobiography of. Read more Ernest J(ames) Gaines 8,542 words, approx. 29 pages [This entry was updated by Keith E. Byerman (Indiana State University) from his entry in DLB 152: American Novelists Since World War II, Fourth Series.]Ernest J. Gaines has since the publication of Th. Read more Essays & Analysis (3) Critical Essay by Jerry H. Bryant 2,305 words, approx. 8 pages Critical Essay by Addison Gayle, Jr. 634 words.