Your class, gender, and race could determine your entire future in Maycomb Alabama in the 1930s. Mayella Ewell, for the first time in her life, was talked about around her whole town in a way that was not as bad as usual. The trail of Tom Robinson was not anything big, but everyone wanted to know every detail. With the situation, people asked themselves if Mayella was powerful. You would base this off of a person's class, gender, and race. Mayella has little to no power when it comes to her gender and class. She is of the lowest class in all of Maycomb and she is a female. Her race is basically her only advantage to any power. Mayella is white and being white was power, but it is because of where she stands and because she is a female that it was challenging to even say she had any power at all. Out of class race, and gender, Mayella has the strongest advantage is her race. She is white which is all she needed to get Tom Robinson put in jail. He is a black man and blacks were considered property, not people. African-Americans were thought of as lesser beings and whites had all the power and control at the time. Mayella’s actions were unpredictable because white women were not supposed to make any advances on black men. She says Tom was …show more content…
Everyone is poor because of the Great Depression just taking place, but Mayella was the poorest in her whole town. This made her class the weakest spot on her power scale. All that had ever been said about her was rude and insulting. No one wanted absolutely anything to do with her or her family. She had no acquaintances, much less any friends to express any type of emotion too. Her class and where she stood compared to everyone else, was what made the most impact on the negative side of her circumstances. She basically had nothing, so no one cared for her. As for the power Mayella holds for her class, there is not any. She is powerless where she stands on her social
In the first paragraph I will explain why and how I believe Mayella Ewell is not powerful, with the use of the class.First off I would like to show you one of my biggest reasons for believing Mayella is not powerful “Maycomb's Ewells lived behind the town garbage dump in what used to be a Negro cabin”.(DBQ:Is mayella Ewell powerful?13)The second reason I believe Mayella Ewell is not powerful while using class for my examples is that “longs as he keeps on callin’
In the book, To Kill a Mockingbird, Mayella possibly demonstrates a woman who is powerful because of her race. Mayella (white), goes to court against Tom Robinson (African American), where Mayella is accusing Tom Robinson of rape. When Atticus is asking Mayella
It is Mayella's deceit that brings Tom Robinson to trial. Though she may not be forgiven for this lie, Atticus and Scout feel sympathy for her because of the terrible poverty in which she lives. Whenever Scout feels sorry for Mayella we do as well as we are viewing the trial from her point of view.
Class, gender and race give power over others, Mayella was a poor white female who took the job to care for her siblings, took the evident abuse from her own father for others not herself. Mayella does not have power over her own, because she used manipulation to gain control but lose control after the trial as she went back home to her everyday life again she only had power over others using class, gender and race but not the power to manipulate to her own
Mayella does have power in “To kill A Mockingbird.” Here’s why she does not have power, we are using class,race,and gender. Women did not have a lot of power in the nineteen-thirties. So who is Mayella? Mayella is a white female that accused Tom Robinson of rape in Maycomb,Alabama during the nineteen-thirties.
I believe Mayella is not powerful because she does not have control over her situation, Having power is having complete power or control over a situation. She may have been able to manipulate the people of Maycomb into believing that she was raped. But throughout the trial you realize that Mayella does not have control due to certain factors.
Therefore Mayella is powerless because she is poor, a woman and she is seen to have no authority. Although she is powerful in a way because she is white and the whites are seen to have the most power over all. Which leads to her having more power against Tom Robinson because they don’t want to make a white person guilty so they guilty the
...uth to fully understand that it is typical to act superior to those with colored skin. All Dill sees is a man being rude to another, just because of his skin color. While Atticus clearly shows everyone in the court that it was almost impossible for Tom Robinson to have beat Mayella, he still loses the case just because he was a black man against a white woman. Lee includes, “Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed.” (Lee 323) This enforces how it didn’t matter what Tom was really doing or why Mayella was screaming, but just by the way Tom looked they were able to essentially pin the rape and the beatings on Tom. Of course this was not true and he did not receive the justice he deserved, but that didn’t matter to Maycomb. All that mattered was the color of his skin and what the teenage white girl named Mayella Ewell said about him.
Society shaped Mayella and Ruby as victims. Both families of Mayella and Ruby were considered poor and low class. The only reason Mayella went through with the trial against Tom Robinson because she wanted to protect her father so the only reason there was even a trial was to keep her father out of trouble and Tom was right there so she thought she would just frame him to keep the eyes off of their family even though she loved the attention. Though Mayella
Due to her racial ethnicity, Mayella is held at a higher standing point than Tom Robinson to the court, as racial prejudice would play in Mayella’s favor over Tom’s. During the cross examination, Tom’s treatment was quite harsh as Mr. Glimmer consistently shames Tom by calling him boy as stated in the text, “Are you being impudent to me, boy?” (Lee Document C). It was common during those time to look down upon those colored such as Tom and pay respect towards people who were of white ethnicity. And although Mayella has her racial ethnicity backing her up in power, due to her low social class and gender, the power that comes from her racial ethnicity is insignificant as she takes Atticus words as sass as she complained to Judge Taylor that “Longs’s he keep calling me ma’am and sayin’ Miss Mayella. I don’t hafta take his sass, I ain’t called upon it” (Lee Document C). Due to her insufficient amount of education caused by her low social class, Mayella is unfamiliar with proper etiquette and impairs her only source of power. Overall, while Mayella holds how within her racial ethnicity, she does not hold enough power to truly be considered powerful due to her gender and low social
I agree and disagree with the statement, “Mayella Ewell is a mockingbird.” Mockingbirds symbolize innocence, and the novel’s title, To Kill A Mockingbird, means to destroy innocence. Two of the most prominent mockingbirds in the novel are Boo Radley and Tom Robinson. They are like mockingbirds in the sense that they cause no harm. These two individuals are corrupted by evil, in other words, victimized by the prejudice of Maycomb throughout the course of the novel. Taking this into consideration, I believe Mayella Ewell is a mockingbird but also isn’t. What I mean by this is, she can be seen being harmed and causing harm.
When Jem is talking to Scout he talks about how he identified some of the main groups set by Macomb: “There’s the ordinary kind like us and the neighbors, there’s the kind like the Cunninghams out in the woods, the kind like the Ewells down at the dump, and the Negroes” (302). Jem talks about groups that are very prominent in Macomb. All these groups are looked upon differently depending on what group is looking at them. for example, the “ordinary” people look at the Negroes at almost the same or the same level as themselves while people like the Ewells think themselves are far more superior. In this passage Scout thinks, “ white people wouldn 't have anything to do with her because she lived among pigs; Negroes wouldn’t have anything to do with her since she was white” (256). This does not have to do with Mayella only, this explanation goes with all the Ewells. White people in Maycomb thought that the Ewells were trashy and they lived in an extremely contrasting way than most people. Black people will not do anything with them because the Ewells hate Negroes and they are white. Everyone in maycomb fits into one of these certain classes and are expected to follow those classes’
Social classes have been prominent in societies since the commencement of civilizations. These classes are shaped by the distribution of unequal opportunities amongst each division. Social classes result from varying factors such as race, gender and wealth. The classes consist of inequalities that are propitious to people only at the top of the social hierarchy. For those at the bottom, these inequalities have the opposite effect since they struggle with everyday aspects while those at the top prosper. Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird strongly portrays the social inequalities in a society. The novel is set in Maycomb during the 1930s and highlights the different social classes. Lee utilizes the Finches, Cunninghams, Ewells and Blacks
Mayella, the woman defending against Robinson, comes from a low income and low educated family, making them a poor family. Yet Mayella’s word is still favored against Tom because she still holds a higher social status than Tom just because she is white. In fact, in the novel, Atticus has an important quote regarding the court system that is still true today, “In our courts, when it’s a white man’s word against a black man’s, the white man always wins.” (Lee, H. (1960). To kill a mockingbird. Philadelphia: Lippincott. pg. 251-252).
Whether you like it or not there is a hierarchy in Maycomb, it's true, I know exactly who the most/ least powerful person in Maycomb is. You may think that I am wrong but I can prove it to you. Alexandra Finch is the most powerful person and Tom Robinson is the least , I mean how can you possibly not agree. Anyways, Aunt Alexandra is a wealthy woman who has “boarding school manners” and isn't afraid to correct or judge someone. On the other hand, Tom Robinson is a black man who has been accused of rape by a white man in the 1930s which were years that overflowed with discrimination. Within the hierarchy of Maycomb, Alexandra Finch has the most power because she is very wealthy and has alot of education and Tom Robinson has the least power because he is a poor African American in the 1920’s who has not one say in any situation.