How Does Jem Marginalize In To Kill A Mockingbird

With in the story of To Kill a Mockingbird, author Harper Lee illistraights the plight and struggle of the marginalized groups of the time in the 1930s highlighting that of the gender role one was expected to carry and live up to in his or her life. In this time period females are looked down on as something less than males: “I swear, Scout, sometimes you act so much like a girl it’s mortifyin’”(42). Scout's older brother Jem is saying here that she is acting like girl and the way he phases it, that he says it is mortifying, the readers of the book can tell this is something someone does not want to be or that it does not have a good connotation. Jem then goes on to say the following to Scout, “‘Now you’re in it and you can’t get out of it, you’ll just stay in it, Miss Priss!’ ‘Okay, okay, but I don’t wanta watch.

This passage indicates that females were to be subservient to males and listen to what they were told. When Scout tries to retaliate against her brother to tell him she doesn’t want to what he’s saying and she feels uncomfortable he does not listen and takes to his gender role of being the authoritative male. Finally out of all the occurences in the novel that shows the gender roles that were in play at this time the quote, “Marked me as his property, said I was the only girl he would love, then he neglected me,” from Lee (46). The way Scout describes what Dill did and the words she used makes one pause. She says that he marked her as his property and this wording makes it feel that during this time women were looked on as something to gain and not someone with thoughts and feelings. For the time this novel was set in it seems to correctly portray the gender roles of the