Gender Discrimination In To Kill A Mockingbird

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Racial and Gender Discrimination: A Plague Then and Now Discrimination is a cancer upon society. Discrimination seeps its roots into society’s greatest successes, poisons society's nonpareil triumphs, and toples the moral pillars on which Lady Justice stands. Discrimination today is just as prevalent as it was in the 1930’s, and there is no better epitome of 1930’s-era-discrimination than To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. To Kill a Mockingbird, or TKAM, is a classic that depicts a period of a young girl’s life, Scout Finch, that spans several years and revolves around Scout’s conflict with herself and with society's promotion of discrimination. The principle conflict of this coming of age novel is the trial of Tom Robinson, an African American
Keeping this in mind, Lee does illustrate one character in TKAM as extraordinarily anti-women’s equality, Aunt Alexandra. Alexandra has a strict interpretation of southern society and wholeheartedly believes that a good woman is a housewife who fulfills her duties to her husband. However, Scout is generally impervious to her aunt’s views and retains the personality seen throughout the novel, a tomboy. Consequently instead of viewing both gender’s as respectable, which Scout would not have done under Alexandra’s instruction either, young Scout views femininity as a weakness. This ill view of her own biological identity is further strengthened by Jem, another evil male in Lee’s mind, who convinces Scout, “that girls ... hated them…” ( Lee 54). Two rhetorical devices within this passage are irony and a statement that professes a stereotype, and the rhetorical devices are used to express female superiority and male misogynistic tendencies. Firstly and ironically, Scout, the supposed representation of Lee as a young girl, envisions herself as a boy, whereas Lee believes that girls are inherently preferable to boys. Lee purposely has Scout represent these feelings, so that Lee could make the claim that the naivety of youth and a poor, most likely masculine, setting results in the hampering of a girl’s brilliance. Secondly, “other people” is a broad term that grants Lee the ability to stereotype men as haters of strong women who “always imagined things.” Through her analysis of naivety, setting, and misogynistic tendencies, Lee demonstrates how society naturally and unintentionally creates an environment for gender

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