Advantages And Disadvantages Of Power In To Kill A Mockingbird

In the story To Kill a Mockingbird, class, gender, and race determines power. Being set in a racist, backwater town, where the whites and blacks are separated, these are what factors must be looked at when determining the power of Mayella Ewell. Mayella Ewell has power, although it may not always be easy to at first glance, she does have power despite her disadvantages. Mayella is poor, white and a woman, but nothing about those facts makes her any less powerful, even being poor, she still gets treated like a lady. A way of showing this is during the trial, Atticus refers to Mayella as “Ma’am”, where as Tom Robinson is called, “boy” by his cross examiner(DBQ Mayella 17), in this case being a woman gives her some power. In the 1930’s, being a woman was considered a bad thing, no matter if you were rich or poor, black or white you were not really respected, in lieu of that fact Mayella takes many of her misfortunes and turns them into power. Although this may be true, it must be remembered that Mayella and her family are the poorest of the poor in Maycomb, they are even poorer than many of the black people in the town. Mayella

Being a woman can have many perks, men hold doors open for you, you're treated better in some cases, but in Mayella’s time, a woman can accuse a man of raping her without much evidence to support it. Even though the accusation may have been towards a black man, it most likely would have had the same outcome for a white man, the outcome of death that Mayella caused but wasn’t even convicted for it. Getting away with murder is one of the many advantages that Mayella gets to being a woman; however, there are many downsides to being a woman. Some people may call you many names based solely on something you did or didn’t do, and to add many women in this time period in the 1930’s were treated like second class