How Is Mayella Powerful

Class, Gender, Race in To Kill A Mockingbird: Is Mayella Powerful?
Power is control over one’s own life as well as others. This story is about a rape trial against Mayella Ewell and Tom Robinson and the verdict of the trail is that Tom is found guilty. Is Mayella powerful because of class, gender or race? All though Mayella is powerless when it comes to class and gender her race ultimately makes her powerful.
Due to Mayella’s class, she is less powerful because she does not have opulence. Mayella’s class makes her less powerful because “Maycomb’s Ewells lived behind the town garbage dump in what was once a Negro cabin.”(Doc A) Also she is less powerful because she thinks that if she is called Ma’am or Miss that someone is sassing her, like when she said “Long’s he keeps on callin’ me Ma’am and sayin’ Miss Mayella. I don’t hafta take his sass, I ain’t called upon to take it.”(Doc C) Because of her class she is also less powerful because “White people wouldn’t have anything to do with her because she lived among pigs.”(Doc E) So Mayella has very little power because of her class status that she could not choose.

Mayella has gotten verbally abused because Atticus asked her “except when he’s drinking? Asked Atticus so gently that Mayella nodded.”(Doc B) Mayella has also been physically abused because Atticus said “What did her father do? We don’t know, but there is circumstantial evidence to indicate that Mayella Ewell was beaten savagely by someone who led almost exclusively with his left.”(Doc B) She also was sexually abused because Tom Robinson said that “She says she has never kissed a grown man before… She says what her papa do to her don’t count.”(Doc B) So Mayella’s gender makes her less powerful because she is a