Conscience of the Court | Literary Criticism & Book Review

Conscience of the Court Critical Overview

Much of Hurston's writing is overshadowed by Their Eyes Were Watching God, especially her drama and short stories. As a result, there is little critical commentary specifically about "Conscience of the Court." It was published in 1950 in the Saturday Evening Post but was not published in a collection during Hurston's lifetime. In fact, it was the last work of fiction she had published, and it seems to bring to light the complex race issues she had witnessed in the 1940s.

In The Columbia Companion to the Twentieth-Century American Short Story, Blanche H. Gelfant and Lawrence Graver consider "Conscience of the Court" in the context of Hurston's other fiction. They observe, "If outcomes are not necessarily happy, it is important in Hurston's stories that innocence triumph over corruption," explaining that Laura is the "beleaguered innocent" in the story, who is released by the court. Ultimately, however, they find the...
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