A Study Guide for Zora Neale Hurston's "Conscience of the Court"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Zora Neale Hurston's "Conscience of the Court," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Jul 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535821001

Book preview

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Conscience of the Court

Zora Neale Hurston

1950

Introduction

Zora Neale Hurston is best remembered as the Harlem Renaissance novelist who contributed Their Eyes Were Watching God to the American canon. Like so many novelists, Hurston also produced a fair amount of short fiction over the course of her career. Toward the end of her life, she continued to write but was unable to support herself doing it full time. In fact, when Conscience of the Court was published in the March 18, 1950, issue of the Saturday Evening Post, she was working as a maid. It would be her last original short story published.

Conscience of the Court is a relatively simple story of devotion and justice. A black maid is on trial for assaulting a white man. As the details of the story come to light, the maid is exonerated and even commended for her behavior and the devotion that motivated it. The story reveals Hurston's affinity for themes of genuine love and devotion and her belief that these themes are relevant to the human experience, whether crossing racial lines or not.

Author Biography

Although census reports indicate that Zora Neale Hurston was born on January 7, 1891, she claimed to be born in 1901 or 1903. The actual date remains a mystery, as does her exact burial site. In 1973, prominent African American feminist and novelist Alice Walker was determined to find Hurston's unmarked grave and provide a suitable marker. After much effort, she found the spot she believed to be Hurston's grave and mounted a headstone that reads, A Genius of the South (a phrase from one of Jean Toomer's