Gender Stereotypes In Atonement

"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view--... until you climb into his skin and walk around in it” (Lee, 56) We are all guilty of judging others too quickly based on our own assumptions whether it is true or not. People are often judged unfairly because of their skin colour, how much money they make, what gender they are, and other things. Our judgements of others are solely based on stereotypes. In the novel Atonement by Ian McEwan, Briony Tallis is the protagonist who falsely makes the accusation that Robbie Turner is the rapist of Lola Quincey. Her accusations were based on her understanding of the male gender and others were able to believe her based because of the stereotypes of men and lower-class.

There are many negative beliefs towards the male gender because of the stereotypes society believes in. When people hear about a news of a rape incident between both genders, they automatically assume the female is the victim and the male is the offender. They make this assumption based on real statistics - since 99% of sex offenders are male and over 80% of the victims are female (sapac.umich.edu). For this reason, parents with daughters feel skeptical when their daughters is around a male since they believe she might be forced into sexual conducts. Society believe when males have a high tendency to feel sexual pleasure, they can not control themselves and will force another individual into sexual conducts in order to satisfy their urge. This common belief was believed by many in the novel Atonement. For instance, when Briony made the accusation with zero evidence that Robbie had raped a young teenager named Lola, inspectors concluded that he did indeed rape Lola based on this belief. Surprisingly, she had no actual evidence to prove it in her testimony. The family and inspectors were able to believe

There is a higher poverty percentage rate among black people than any other race, which is why they are more likely to be accused of a crime (kff.org). They believe that those who are poor are more likely to commit crimes because of the fact poverty hurts our ability to make decisions on school, finances and life (Thompson, 2013). There were other men outside searching for the twins, but it never occurred to them that one of the men could have been the culprit except for Robbie, as he was the only one accused. While Robbie was in prison, Cecilia wrote to him that “I’m beginning to understand the snobbery that lay behind their stupidity” (McEwan, 117) She believed that her parents were to believed he raped Lola because of his social status. Since Robbie is part of the lower-class, it makes sense for inspectors to think that he would commit a crime because of the belief that lower-class make bad decisions. In contrast, Paul Marshall was one of the men who went searching for the twins, but he had not crossed anybody’s mind that he could have been the culprit. Paul Marshall is a wealthy businessman who was well-respected by the Tallis family. If he was accused of rape, no one would believe it because of the belief that those who are in the upper-class are successful because they make