Character Analysis Of Mayella Ewell In 'To Kill A Mockingbird'

Using the context from the DBQ I believe Mayella Ewell is not powerful in categories such as gender, and class but, I also believe catagories such as race give her a little amount of power over others. Mayella is a very mischievous woman who never takes responsibility for her actions. She has very little power but she gets her way by blaming others for her actions. Her background is the main reason she is like this. As you read through these paragraphs you will obtain knowledge about Mayella and you will start to understand why she is a manipulative, mischevious, lier, and why she blames others for her actions.

Class is a major reason Mayella has no power. She has little to no education, lives in an abandoned negro shack behind the dump, and is very poor. She does not know right from wrong and she has never been treated with respect. Think back to the trail of Tom Robinson, when Atticus is questioning Mayella he calls her Miss Mayella. She takes this as disrespect and tells Atticus to stop making fun of her. She has never been treated with this kind of courtesy. All she knows is disrespect and abuse. This is why she is the woman she is.

Another reason Mayella has no power is gender. During the time period of TKAM men were

considered more useful than women because the everyday task needed more strength and stamina than a woman could muster. So they mostly stayed at home, cooked, and took care of the babies. This plays a part in TKAM during the trial of Tom. Finding a woman that was savagely beaten automatically makes you assume a man did this because a man has more strength than a woman can fend off. This works in Mayella’s favor but it also shows why Mayella faces her problems differently than men. She has to lie and manipulate others to make them believe her because she is not the superior gender of the time period.
Race on the other gives Mayella power. During the 1930’s whites were the superior race. No matter how much evidence Atticus had the jury would never choose a black man over a white woman. It was unheard of during this time period. Jim Crow laws made this matter even worse. It segregated blacks and whites and encouraged others to believe white was the superior race over any other. This proves that even though the jury knew Mayella was lying they still chose to convict Tom of raping her.
After reading this I hope you have realized that if the jury would not have been racially prejudiced Tom Robinson would have won the court trial.

On the other hand Mayella and Bob would have been in deep trouble. I also hope you now understand why Mayella is who she is. You should now have some reasons why she is a manipulative liar and should realize why she chose to do some of the things she did, like blame a black male for raping her. But the most important thing I hope you learned is that Mayella has no power. If people were not racially prejudiced a man would not have lost his life and others would not have not worried so much about the outcome of the case, and the little town of Maycomb would still have their beloved Tom

Robinson.
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