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What Is Mayella's Power In To Kill A Mockingbird

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Power is defined as the ability to control one’s own life or the lives of others. If one person holds the power, they can control everyone else. Your gender, race, and where you stand in your society play a big role on how much power you hold. The novel To Kill A Mockingbird, written by Harper Lee, is based around who holds the most power. One of the characters, Mayella Ewell, is a 19 year old while teenage who accused a colored man, Tom Robinson, of rape. Since she was a white female, many people believed her over Tom. Within class, race, and gender, Mayella has some areas of power and some areas of disempowerment, but in the end, she does have more power. Within her class, Mayella has a small amount of power because she is poor but, her race and gender power dominate that. Mayella comes from a society where not many people are wealthy. Since she lived in that society, she didn’t have much power. Since Mayella and her …show more content…

In the time period of the 1930’s, almost all people chose white people over colored. While Mayella was in court for allegedly being raped, many people in the courthouse believed her over Tom because she was white. As the Finch’s believed Tom, one of the spectors told them that he “ain’t ever seen any jury decide in favor of a colored man over a white man” (Document D). Since Mayella was white, she had the power to persuade everyone that a colored man had raped her. After Mayella accused a colored man of raping her, he felt sorry for her. When Tom was at her house, he began to do her chores because it “looked like she didn’t have nobody to help her” (Document E). Tom was going to jail because of Mayella’s lies and he still felt sorry for her. In this time period, even the colored people favored the whites. Mayella does have a lot of power in the race category because she is white. Because of her race, people favored her more than colored

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