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How Does Mayella Get Power In To Kill A Mockingbird

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When you read To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, you meet Mayella, a white woman that lives with her dad and her siblings who gains power throughout the story. Mayella gets this power using her race, gender, and class in the society in the story. Mayella uses her power from being poor and by everyone feeling sorry for her and making people help her out. Mayella is white so she has power over the black people in the story, Mayella is a woman so she gets respect from the people in the society. Now you know more about Mayella and her lifestyle more, is Mayella powerful? Mayella's Race is the most important when it comes to power. In the story, To Kill a Mockingbird, little over halfway in the book you read about the trial of Tom Robinson, an innocent man who supposedly raped Mayella Ewell. Tom Robinson is black and can't use his left arm, and all of Mayella's bruises were on her right …show more content…

Mayella is a woman so she gets respect from people and . Mayella was also powerful by having everyone trust her over a black male who was innocent, but Mayella won the case because she is a woman and she is trusted over Tom Robinson. In document

Mayella uses her class as a way of being powerful and using it in the trial scene of Tom Robinson. Mayella lives in a “fix”, she is poor and she uses that as an advantage to make people feel sorry for her. In document E when Tom says “I felt right sorry for her suh” he felt how Mayella was treated and wanted to help her. Mayella knew that it was a law for Tom to be near a white woman, so Mayella was smart and made Tom feel sorry for her that he helps her out. Mayella was smart by using her class because Tom, a black male cannot be with a white woman it was a law at the time.
(TKAM:Is Mayella Powerful: Throughout the book, To Kill a Mockingbird, Mayella gains power using race, gender and class to win the case against Tom

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One day in Maycomb, Alabama during the great depression a young girl named Mayella Ewell was raped. This shows Mayella is one powerful young girl in the story To Kill A Mockingbird. It will show how she is power through class, race, and gender. First Mayella is powerful through her class ranking. In the story it said that the “Maycomb’s Ewells lived behind the town garbage dump in what was once a Negro cabin…”.

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Her gender further makes her powerless when Tom was explaining that Mr. Ewell said, “He says you goddamn whore, I’ll kill ya.” (Document B). Mr. Ewell would only refer to a woman like that because the word is mainly used against women. Mayella’s gender negatively impacts her power by causing her to be more vulnerable and regarded

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One would say she is not powerful because she is enclosed from the world, beaten by her father, and not very respected. For example, as Atticus asked Mayella to see if her father is good and tolerable to her, but she says “He does tollable, ‘cept when-”, ‘Except when he’s drinking?’ asked Atticus so gently that Mayella nodded. ”(Lee, Chapter 18) This would prove that Mayella has less power than usual when her father is drunk because, his gender as a male has the power over her and gets violent when drunk.

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Mayella was was just a poor girl who had never been to school a day in her life and suffered so much abuse from her father, she didn’t give herself the opportunity to be powerful. In a time of oppression and depression Mayella standing up would have been a monumental change but she never seized it and took advantage, she let everyone else take advantage of

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In Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, Lee took the minor character of Mayella Ewell and made her into a sympathetic role to her readers in a latent way. Mayella's life at home is told through the story's background and foreshadowing references. This is how Lee made Mayella memorable enough to the reader to know who she is and her family situation without needing her point of view of her side of the story. Once Mayella enters the storyline, her actions will become understandable to the reader and generate sympathy. One way Lee makes Mayella a sympathetic character is how before entering her into the story, one of Mayella's younger siblings was introduced.

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