Mayella Ewell Quotes In To Kill A Mockingbird

In Harper Lee’s, To Kill a Mockingbird, Mayella Ewell is powerful and gains power as the story goes on. Mayella Ewell is a poor white woman who lives in a dump, her mom left her family when she was young. Mayella has stepped into the mother role in her family. In the story Mayella is abused mentally and physically by her father Bob Ewell. Mayella Ewell is a woman no one wants to associate with, she is white so on African-American man will talk to her and she is poor so no white man will. Characters that are a higher class are treated with more respect especially if they are a white male. In Maycomb it is very segregated and many characters are placed into harsh stereotypes.

When deciding if Mayella Ewell is powerful, the reader must first break down the story, in this case we can start with Mayella Ewell’s gender and how it

Race is part of the story that ties everything together. The Tom Robinson trial had a negative outcome because of race. As Atticus was defending Tom the jury would still lean towards Bob and Mayella Ewell’s side of the story, because Bob was a strong, white man and Tom is a poor, black man. Atticus Finch received a lot of hate while he was defending Tom. The people of Maycomb did not agree with a white man defending a black man. Bob was a abusive father towards Mayella and everyone in Maycomb knew that, but because he was going up against Tom Robinson everyone believed Bob. During this time in Maycomb the people believed that every black person was a liar. In the trial Mayella had the advantage of being white. Mayella had a plan and she executed it. When Mayella invited Tom into her house she had her own intentions. The goal to Mayella’s plan was to get her father kicked out of the house so her and her siblings could be free from him, instead she got Tom Robinson in a lot of trouble and her father back in the house. (“DBQ Is Mayella powerful?