What Is Mayella's Power In To Kill A Mockingbird

How would one define power? A better question would be, what factors come into play when defining power? For Mayella Ewell, a poor white female living in 1930’s Alabama, these factors are class, race, and gender. In To Kill A Mockingbird, Mayella made claims that Tom Robinson, an innocent black man, raped her in a desperate attempt to get away from her abusive father. Although these claims were false, the jury convicted Tom because Mayella has power over him. Mayella has power sourced from class, race, and gender. The first factor in determining Mayella’s power is her gender, female. Although men were always in charge at this time, women had the power to influence men emotionally. In the southern United States, respecting women has always been a large part of culture. Men would likely feel the need to “defend” her from black men, who were believed to be “...immoral beings…not to be trusted around our …show more content…
She is white in a racist Alabama community in the 1930’s, so she obviously has an advantage. Almost the entire white community of Maycomb would choose any white person over any black person, no matter who they are. This helps Mayella’s odds of winning the trial, and Reverend Sykes said he “...ain’t never seen any jury decide in favor of a colored man over a white man…”(Chapter 21). An example of Mayella receiving more respect than Tom due to race is that during the trial, Mayella was referred to as “ma’am”(Chapter 18) while Tom is disrespectfully called “boy”(Chapter 19). As Atticus puts it into words, the “evil assumption” is that “...all Negroes lie, that all Negroes are basically immoral beings, that all Negro men are not to be trusted around our women…”, and most of Maycomb likely sides with this assumption. No matter how good Atticus’s argument for defending Tom could have been, the jury would almost certainly convict him because he was a black man going against a white

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What Is Mayella's Power In To Kill A Mockingbird