How Did Harper Lee Use Sexism In To Kill A Mockingbird

Prejudice in Race and Sexism in To Kill a Mockingbird

In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, a drastic division within the local community was immediately evident to the reader. Whites and blacks knew their place with whites dominating blacks. Harper Lee stressed feelings of superiority amongst males and females throughout the novel ( Haynes). Thus, racism and sexism were a recurring theme throughout the novel. Additionally, they both played major roles in the people’s lives in the novel. Having read about slavery in the early 1900’s, an individual might find the happenings within To Kill a Mockingbird to resemble something out of a history book. In the late 1800’s through the early 1960’s, there were many economical battles with the decision on slavery. From the end of the Civil War until the 1950’s, the Jim Crow Laws are in effect. The Jim Crow Laws were meant to keep equal peace between races but turned by white people to use against the black man. In the novel’s case, a man named Tom Robinson is falsely accused of rape due to the color of his skin. He was persecuted by a white man named Bob Ewell. Atticus Finch, the attorney that was in Tom’s defense, made claims that

Sexism is the discrimination of someone based on their gender (Trzaskalski). Women in the novel were portrayed to wear only dresses with stocking underneath. They were supposed to act ladylike manner and stay proper. Unfortunately, Scout was not ladylike. She was often confused with a boy because she dressed like one. She was rough with her friends and did not play well with her smart mouth attitude. She did perhaps wear a dress to school once because of her aunt’s influence. Scout never had a mother to show her to be a lady. At school people called her names for acting like a tom boy. As so, her aunt criticized her to make her turn more