The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
Encyclopedia
The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman is a 1971 novel by Ernest J. Gaines. The story depicts the struggles of African American
s as seen through the eyes of the narrator, a woman named Jane Pittman. She tells of the major events of her life from the time she was a young slave girl in the American South
at the end of the Civil War
.
, Jane alludes to the Spanish-American War
and her narrative spans across both
World Wars
and the beginning of the Vietnam War
. Jane and other characters also mention Frederick Douglass
, Booker T. Washington
, Jackie Robinson
, Fred Shuttlesworth
, Rosa Parks
, and others. Miss Jane’s voice give these historical meditations a kind of "setting the record straight" mood to the storytelling presented in this novel. For instance, an entire section is dedicated to Huey P. Long in which Miss Jane explains "Oh, they got all kinds of stories about him now .... When I hear them talk like that I think, 'Ha. You ought to been here twenty-five, thirty years ago. You ought to been here when poor people had nothing.'" Because of the historical content, some readers thought the book was non-fiction. Gaines commented:
, stresses the similarities between the conditions of African Americans in slavery and African Americans in the sharecropping plantation. The novel shows how formerly enslaved people lived after freedom. It shows how the patrollers and other vigilante groups through violence and terror curtailed the physical and educational mobility of African Americans in the south. Access to schools and political participation was shut down by plantation owners. Between physical limitations, not having money, and having to deal with ambivalent and hostile figures, Jane and Ned’s travel don’t take them very far physically (they do not leave Louisiana) nor in lifestyle. At the end of the chapter "A Flicker of Light; And Again Darkness", Miss Jane remarks of Colonel Dye’s plantation, "It was slavery again, all right". In the depiction of Miss Jane’s telling of the story, Jim, the child of sharecroppers parallels if not resoundingly echoes the earlier story of Ned, the child born on a slave plantation. Through these stories the novel further highlights the conditions of Louisiana sharecropping in relationship to the conditions of slavery.
, fights in the war, but eventually returns with a family. When his life is threatened for teaching the children, instead of running away, he preaches harder, urging the people to remember that "This earth is yours and don’t let that man out there take it from you", even though he knows that he will be killed for saying so. His death brings the community together. Similarly Jimmy goes away to school in New Orleans; when he returns, he begins organizing the people to help bring Civil Rights movement demonstrations to the Louisiana area. Like Ned he is also shot, but even in his death his efforts help bring the people together when as the novel’s concludes, Miss Jane and other residents of Samson go onto Bayonne to protest even without Jimmy.
in 1974. The film holds importance as one of the first made-for-TV movies to deal with African-American characters with depth and sympathy. It preceded the ground-breaking television miniseries Roots
by three years. The film culminates with Miss Pittman joining the American civil rights movement in 1962 at age 110.
The movie was directed by John Korty
; the screenplay was written by Tracy Keenan Wynn and executive produced by Roger Gimbel
. It starred Cicely Tyson
in the lead role, as well as Michael Murphy
, Richard Dysart
, Katherine Helmond
and Odetta
. The film was shot in Baton Rouge, Louisiana
and was notable for its use of very realistic special effects makeup by Stan Winston
and Rick Baker for the lead character, who is shown from ages 23 to 110. The television movie is currently distributed through Classic Media
.
’s miniseries Roots, the film was one of the first films to take seriously depictions of African Americans in the plantation south. The film, like the book, also suggests a comparison between the contemporary moment of the Civil Rights Movement and the plight of African Americans at various points in history. The film, however, has some noticeable divergences from the novel. In the film the person who interviews Miss Jane is white. There is no indication of the interviewer’s race in the novel. In fact after the first couple of pages the interviewer completely falls out of the frame of the story though he continues to appear between flashbacks in the film.
The film also opens with the book’s final story about Jimmy coming to an almost 110 years old Miss Jane to ask for her participation in a Civil Rights demonstration. The film appears to be a series of flashbacks that happen during this time of Jimmy’s Civil Rights organizing.
In the novel, Corporal Brown gives Jane her name. Originally she had been called Ticey. The Corporal exclaims that "Ticey" is a slave name but then also ironically declares "I’ll call you Jane" after his own girl back in Ohio. In the film however, Corporal Brown only suggests the name "Jane" as one option in a list of potential names, so that it is Jane who says “I like ‘Jane’”. The film is littered with such discrepancies between it and Gaines’ novel.
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
s as seen through the eyes of the narrator, a woman named Jane Pittman. She tells of the major events of her life from the time she was a young slave girl in the American South
Southern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...
at the end of the Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
.
Historical novel
The novel and its main character are particularly notable for the breadth of time and history and stories they recall. In addition to the plethora of fictional characters who populate Jane’s narrative, Jane and others make many references to historical events and figures over the close-to-a hundred years Miss Jane can recall. In addition to its obvious opening in the American Civil WarAmerican Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
, Jane alludes to the Spanish-American War
Spanish-American War
The Spanish–American War was a conflict in 1898 between Spain and the United States, effectively the result of American intervention in the ongoing Cuban War of Independence...
and her narrative spans across both
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
World Wars
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
and the beginning of the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
. Jane and other characters also mention Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass was an American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman. After escaping from slavery, he became a leader of the abolitionist movement, gaining note for his dazzling oratory and incisive antislavery writing...
, Booker T. Washington
Booker T. Washington
Booker Taliaferro Washington was an American educator, author, orator, and political leader. He was the dominant figure in the African-American community in the United States from 1890 to 1915...
, Jackie Robinson
Jackie Robinson
Jack Roosevelt "Jackie" Robinson was the first black Major League Baseball player of the modern era. Robinson broke the baseball color line when he debuted with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947...
, Fred Shuttlesworth
Fred Shuttlesworth
Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, born Freddie Lee Robinson, was a U.S. civil rights activist who led the fight against segregation and other forms of racism as a minister in Birmingham, Alabama...
, Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks
Rosa Louise McCauley Parks was an African-American civil rights activist, whom the U.S. Congress called "the first lady of civil rights", and "the mother of the freedom movement"....
, and others. Miss Jane’s voice give these historical meditations a kind of "setting the record straight" mood to the storytelling presented in this novel. For instance, an entire section is dedicated to Huey P. Long in which Miss Jane explains "Oh, they got all kinds of stories about him now .... When I hear them talk like that I think, 'Ha. You ought to been here twenty-five, thirty years ago. You ought to been here when poor people had nothing.'" Because of the historical content, some readers thought the book was non-fiction. Gaines commented:
Some people have asked me whether or not The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman is fiction or nonfiction. It is fiction. When Dial PressDial PressThe Dial Press was a publishing house founded in 1923 by Lincoln MacVeagh.Dial Press shared a building with The Dial and Scofield Thayer worked with both. The first imprint was issued in 1924. Authors included Elizabeth Bowen, W.R...
first sent it out, they did not put "a novel" on the galleysGalley proofIn printing and publishing, proofs are the preliminary versions of publications meant for review by authors, editors, and proofreaders, often with extra wide margins. Galley proofs may be uncut and unbound, or in some cases electronic...
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 WPAWorks Progress AdministrationThe Works Progress Administration was the largest and most ambitious New Deal agency, employing millions of unskilled workers to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads, and operated large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects...
during the thirties and I got their rhythm and how they said certain things. But I never interviewed anybody.
Gaines and the protagonist
Book four of the novel, "The Quarters" is entirely the story of young Jimmy. Jimmy as a character bears many similarities to Gaines. Gaines was born in January 1933. Though it is not explicitly stated, markers in the book suggest that Jimmy was born circa 1938. Like Jimmy, Gaines’ parents worked as sharecroppers on a plantation. After an intermittent education on the plantation school, Gaines eventually moved to California where he attended school full time. Gaines quickly took to reading and writing, just as Jimmy does in the novel. Additionally, Gaines also returned to his childhood communities both physically as a professor and homeowner in Louisiana but also in his work, as Louisiana is a familiar setting in his writing.Slavery again
The novel, which begins with a protagonist in slavery being freed and leaving the plantation only to return to another plantation as a sharecropperSharecropping
Sharecropping is a system of agriculture in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a share of the crop produced on the land . This should not be confused with a crop fixed rent contract, in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a fixed amount of...
, stresses the similarities between the conditions of African Americans in slavery and African Americans in the sharecropping plantation. The novel shows how formerly enslaved people lived after freedom. It shows how the patrollers and other vigilante groups through violence and terror curtailed the physical and educational mobility of African Americans in the south. Access to schools and political participation was shut down by plantation owners. Between physical limitations, not having money, and having to deal with ambivalent and hostile figures, Jane and Ned’s travel don’t take them very far physically (they do not leave Louisiana) nor in lifestyle. At the end of the chapter "A Flicker of Light; And Again Darkness", Miss Jane remarks of Colonel Dye’s plantation, "It was slavery again, all right". In the depiction of Miss Jane’s telling of the story, Jim, the child of sharecroppers parallels if not resoundingly echoes the earlier story of Ned, the child born on a slave plantation. Through these stories the novel further highlights the conditions of Louisiana sharecropping in relationship to the conditions of slavery.
Fighting back
Fighting back is a key motif in the novel. Characters including Miss Jane start off initially leaving home only to return home with a resolve to stay and take care of the people around them. Ned goes away to KansasKansas
Kansas is a US state located in the Midwestern United States. It is named after the Kansas River which flows through it, which in turn was named after the Kansa Native American tribe, which inhabited the area. The tribe's name is often said to mean "people of the wind" or "people of the south...
, fights in the war, but eventually returns with a family. When his life is threatened for teaching the children, instead of running away, he preaches harder, urging the people to remember that "This earth is yours and don’t let that man out there take it from you", even though he knows that he will be killed for saying so. His death brings the community together. Similarly Jimmy goes away to school in New Orleans; when he returns, he begins organizing the people to help bring Civil Rights movement demonstrations to the Louisiana area. Like Ned he is also shot, but even in his death his efforts help bring the people together when as the novel’s concludes, Miss Jane and other residents of Samson go onto Bayonne to protest even without Jimmy.
Film adaptation
The book was made into an award-winning television movie, broadcast on CBSCBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
in 1974. The film holds importance as one of the first made-for-TV movies to deal with African-American characters with depth and sympathy. It preceded the ground-breaking television miniseries Roots
Roots (TV miniseries)
Roots is a 1977 American television miniseries based on Alex Haley's fictional novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family. Roots received 36 Emmy Award nominations, winning nine. It also won a Golden Globe and a Peabody Award. It received unprecedented Nielsen ratings with the finale still...
by three years. The film culminates with Miss Pittman joining the American civil rights movement in 1962 at age 110.
The movie was directed by John Korty
John Korty
John Korty is an American film director and animator, best known for the television film The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman and the documentary Who Are the DeBolts? And Where Did They Get Nineteen Kids?, as well as the theatrical animated feature Twice Upon a Time...
; the screenplay was written by Tracy Keenan Wynn and executive produced by Roger Gimbel
Roger Gimbel
Roger Gimbel was an American television producer who specialized in television movies. Many of Gimbel's television films dealt with real-life events, including Chernobyl: The Final Warning, S.O.S. Titanic, The Amazing Howard Hughes and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman...
. It starred Cicely Tyson
Cicely Tyson
Cicely Tyson is an American actress. A successful stage actress, Tyson is also known for her Oscar-nominated role in the film Sounder and the television movies The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman and Roots....
in the lead role, as well as Michael Murphy
Michael Murphy (actor)
Michael George Murphy is an American film and television actor.-Career:Murphy played Woody Allen's duplicitous friend Yale in the film Manhattan...
, Richard Dysart
Richard Dysart
Richard A. Dysart is an American actor, perhaps best known for his role as Leland McKenzie on the NBC legal drama L.A. Law....
, Katherine Helmond
Katherine Helmond
Katherine Marie Helmond is an American film, theater and television actress, who played Emily Dickinson on Meeting of Minds, as well as such fictional characters as Jessica Tate on Soap, Mona Robinson on Who's the Boss?, Doris Sherman on Coach, and Lois Whelan on Everybody Loves...
and Odetta
Odetta
Odetta Holmes, known as Odetta, was an American singer, actress, guitarist, songwriter, and a human rights activist, often referred to as "The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement". Her musical repertoire consisted largely of American folk music, blues, jazz, and spirituals...
. The film was shot in Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Baton Rouge is the capital of the U.S. state of Louisiana. It is located in East Baton Rouge Parish and is the second-largest city in the state.Baton Rouge is a major industrial, petrochemical, medical, and research center of the American South...
and was notable for its use of very realistic special effects makeup by Stan Winston
Stan Winston
Stanley Winston was an American visual effects supervisor, makeup artist, and film director. He was best known for his work in the Terminator series, the Jurassic Park series, Aliens, the Predator series, Iron Man, Edward Scissorhands, and Avatar...
and Rick Baker for the lead character, who is shown from ages 23 to 110. The television movie is currently distributed through Classic Media
Classic Media
Classic Media, LLC, is an American production company and distributor of family programming. It was founded in 2000 by former Marvel Entertainment CEO Eric Ellenbogen and former Broadway Video executive John Engelman in hopes of acquiring mismanaged classic properties and giving exposure to...
.
Differences between the novel and film
Preceding Alex HaleyAlex Haley
Alexander Murray Palmer Haley was an African-American writer. He is best known as the author of Roots: The Saga of an American Family and the coauthor of The Autobiography of Malcolm X.-Early life:...
’s miniseries Roots, the film was one of the first films to take seriously depictions of African Americans in the plantation south. The film, like the book, also suggests a comparison between the contemporary moment of the Civil Rights Movement and the plight of African Americans at various points in history. The film, however, has some noticeable divergences from the novel. In the film the person who interviews Miss Jane is white. There is no indication of the interviewer’s race in the novel. In fact after the first couple of pages the interviewer completely falls out of the frame of the story though he continues to appear between flashbacks in the film.
The film also opens with the book’s final story about Jimmy coming to an almost 110 years old Miss Jane to ask for her participation in a Civil Rights demonstration. The film appears to be a series of flashbacks that happen during this time of Jimmy’s Civil Rights organizing.
In the novel, Corporal Brown gives Jane her name. Originally she had been called Ticey. The Corporal exclaims that "Ticey" is a slave name but then also ironically declares "I’ll call you Jane" after his own girl back in Ohio. In the film however, Corporal Brown only suggests the name "Jane" as one option in a list of potential names, so that it is Jane who says “I like ‘Jane’”. The film is littered with such discrepancies between it and Gaines’ novel.
Awards
- Directors Guild of America Award
- Nine Emmy Awards
- Actress of the Year (Cicely TysonCicely TysonCicely Tyson is an American actress. A successful stage actress, Tyson is also known for her Oscar-nominated role in the film Sounder and the television movies The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman and Roots....
) - Best Directing in Drama
- Best Lead Actress in a Drama
- Best Music Composition for a Special Program (Fred KarlinFred KarlinFred Karlin was an American composer of more than one hundred scores for feature films and television movies. He also was an accomplished trumpeter adept at playing jazz, blues, classical, rock, and medieval music....
) - Best Writing in Drama (Tracy Keenan Wynn)
- Outstanding Achievement in Costume Design (Bruce WalkupBruce WalkupBruce Walkup is a retired American racecar driver.Walkup raced in the USAC Championship Car series in the 1967-1971 seasons, with 35 career starts, including the 1969 and 1970 Indianapolis 500 races. He finished in the top ten 11 times, with his best finish in 4th position in 1969 at...
and Sandra Stewart) - Outstanding Achievement in Makeup (Stan WinstonStan WinstonStanley Winston was an American visual effects supervisor, makeup artist, and film director. He was best known for his work in the Terminator series, the Jurassic Park series, Aliens, the Predator series, Iron Man, Edward Scissorhands, and Avatar...
and Rick Baker) - Outstanding Special - Comedy or Drama
- Actress of the Year (Cicely Tyson
- Nominated for a BAFTA awardBritish Academy of Film and Television ArtsThe British Academy of Film and Television Arts is a charity in the United Kingdom that hosts annual awards shows for excellence in film, television, television craft, video games and forms of animation.-Introduction:...