Women In The 1930s To Kill A Mockingbird

In Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight, M.E. Thomas said, “When you grow up as a girl, it is like there are faint chalk lines traced approximately three inches around your entire body at all times, drawn by society and often religion and family and particularly other women, who somehow feel invested in how you behave, as if your actions reflect directly on all womanhood.” The feeling described in the quote if a perfect representation of how most women felt in the 1930s. Some women living in the 1930s felt pressured to act ladylike, however, over time the expectations and roles of women improved. In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, roles and treatment of the female characters, who were women in the 1930s

Deborah Sampson dressed as a soldier during the American Revolution and called herself Robert Shurtleff because women could not fight in the war. Eventually, the army officials discovered that she was a woman, they yelled at her and claimed that she should dress up and act like a normal woman (Zeinert). While Sampson acted as a man, she fought as well as any soldier in the war, however, when it became clear she was a woman she was no longer allowed to fight regardless of her skills. During the 1930s women were scolded for not doing as expected, women who wished to act differently struggled to become accepted into a society of high expectations. In the novel, Scout is excluded from many games that Jem and Dill play, although she tries to prove she is as good as the boys similar to Deborah Sampson dressing as a man. By not being able to play some of the games, she learns that being a girl is harder than what she has seen. “As Jem and Dill exclude her from their games, Scout gradually learns more about the alien world of being a female through sitting on the porch with Miss Maudie and observing Calpurnia work in the kitchen” (Shackelford). Jem and Dill exclude Scout from their games because she was a girl and they thought that she could not participate. The boys seemed to think that since she was a girl, she was incapable of doing what they did to play the games. However, some women work alongside men in labor jobs in modern society. “Women are working in the labor industry side by side with man by doing hard work. Women are the most important members of the family who keeps it together” (Winslow). Most women do the same job as men, not limited to labor work, most jobs that you find men doing at least one woman who does the same job as well as men. While working, women still keep their families together and care for their kids. Women have proven to work as well