Where does the idiom "not cold in her grave" appear in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird? When was the idiom "not cold in her/his grave" first...

In Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout the narrator uses the idiom "not cold in her grave" to refer to Mrs. Dubose. In Chapter 12, Scout notes that Jem changed significantly after Mrs. Dubose's death, and Scout says, "Mrs. Dubose was not cold in her grave," to indicate that his changes happened very soon after her death.Upon Mrs. Dubose's death, Atticus had explained to Jem that Mrs. Dubose had actually been...

In Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout the narrator uses the idiom "not cold in her grave" to refer to Mrs. Dubose. In Chapter 12, Scout notes that Jem changed significantly after Mrs. Dubose's death, and Scout says, "Mrs. Dubose was not cold in her grave," to indicate that his changes happened very soon after her death.

Upon Mrs. Dubose's death, Atticus had explained to Jem that Mrs. Dubose had actually been a very "great lady," mostly due to her remarkable bravery (Ch. 11). She was brave enough to let go of her morphine addiction before her death, despite how much pain she was in and despite her imminent death. Atticus's explanations of what Mrs. Dubose was really like as a person were real eyeopeners for Jem. Whereas before he saw Mrs. Dubose as simply evil, he now sees the same goodness that his father saw in her. His revelation that being a "great lady" is associated with being brave makes him very critical of his sister, and he one day shouts at Scout, saying, "It's time you started bein' a girl and acting right!" (Ch. 11). Though Scout later reaches the same conclusion that being a lady is being brave, Jem saying this to her makes her cry since it is so different from anything he has said to her before.

Many English idioms associated with the grave stem from the Middle Ages. In the Middles Ages, there were fewer distinctions between life and death, and there was a dominant belief in communications between the living and the dead. There was also a minimal understanding of death at the time, since there was little scientific knowledge of corpses or how they grow cold because blood stops flowing when the heart stops. As a result, one might associate growing cold as a consequence of being in a grave and not as a consequence of death itself. Similar grave idioms have their origins in the Middle Ages, such as, "Someone is walking over my grave" (see references).