Filthy, poor, an outcast to the white society, how would you feel if you obtained all those qualities in the 1930s? Harper Lee’s novel introduces a story between the Finches’ fight for what’s right in the community. When Tom Robinson was wrongly accused of raping Mayella Ewell, Atticus tries his very best to unveil the obvious truth. However, the people of Maycomb were too blind by the social status to realize what’s wrong and write. The white people supported Mayella only because she’s white, they simply didn’t want a colored man to be right. Therefore, Mayella is not powerful, she is instead a weak girl looking for pity and attention.
Mayella is not powerful when it comes to gender. In the 1930s women were not treated with respect. They were expected to stay home, take cares or the kids, and do most of the household work, while the
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The skin of her color later on caused Tom Robinson’s death. She might be low on the white social scale, however, she is still indeed, white. Due to the fact that she is white, the people of Maycomb joins her side because they’re afraid to accept the reality of a colored man being innocent. The support of the people in Maycomb increased Mayella’s power. During the trial, the people of Maycomb gasp at the moment when Tom revealed that he, “felt sorry”, for Mayella, the people were astonished to see a colored man pitying a white women. That was then, Mayella gained power and support from the white people because for once she was similar to them. Additionally, Mayella’s race gives off more trust to the white people since their minds have been so accustomed to think that all, “Negroes lie”, and are basically, “immoral (human) beings” (D). Clearly, Mayella only had power in the category of race because she was white and the people of Maycomb didn’t want to see colored people having justice or victory against somebody their own