ipl-logo

Mayella Social Control

1331 Words6 Pages

Mayella Thoughts of having an affair with a black man is exciting in a dangerous sort of way, but more importantly, making advances toward Tom gives Mayella power. This completely powerless woman has total control over Tom.Something that she has never had as the part of the ewell family the lowest of the white people, only them making their family respectable is the fact that they are white.But dangerous in that she is toying with social norms and if caught can become even lower in society for doing something unthinkable in the time period this novel takes place in trying to seduce a black man.

Mayella throughout the novel only feels loneliness she belongs to The Ewells family, they are the lowest of the low amongst the whites in Maycomb. …show more content…

Mayella tries to have sex with Tom Robinson and because she is so lonely and when she gets caught she tries to cover up the fact that she attempted to say tom by saying it was rape. Mayella's actions were first influenced by the her feelings which was loneliness turned into lust but when caught and put under trial Mayella denies and even accuses the very man she tried to sway of rape because she knows the crime that she committed, Even trying to be with a black man. Her actions swayed by her emotion then later by society is what eventually lead to tom to take his life into his own hand and end up shot dead not liking the odds of white men against …show more content…

Draw a picture of the characters appearance. Underneath the picture, write down 3 quotes that helped you see the character this way. (Cite the page numbers!!)

Character and Theme (Choose ONE of the two options) (P.S. 2.0 - style and organization)
Purpose: Through the mind of your character, consider a main theme of the book.
Choose one of the following topics: coming of age, segregation/racism, poverty, justice
After reading most of To Kill a Mockingbird…

Write a one-page response about your character's experience with the theme. Your essay should have 2 solid paragraphs, a thesis statement (first sentence of first paragraph), topic sentence (first sentence of second paragraph), details from the text (with page numbers), and a conclusion sentence (in each paragraph)
How the character experiences-
Racism
Poverty
injustice

Show More
Related
481 Words | 2 Pages

Mayella Ewell chose to lie under oath and accuse Tom of raping her. By telling this false statement and lying under oath, Mayella changed Tom’s life forever. Tom ended up getting sent to prison for this lie she told. He knew that he was not going to have a chance and won this case, which for him meant the electric chair. Tom tried to make it over the fence but ended up

Read More
293 Words | 2 Pages

" This is trying to say that no matter what they will always belief Mayella. “Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed. ”(pg.241)This is an example of injustice and racism as well then Tom was scared he would have to go through the consequences of something

Read More
498 Words | 2 Pages

Mayella is not a sympathetic character because she lied under oath, “tempts” a married black man, and was the reason Tom died. During the trial Atticus asks Mayella if her dad ever has beaten her, or abused her in anyway.

Read More
601 Words | 3 Pages

Mayella had asked Tom to help her get the box down since she could not do it on her own. Tom agreed to help her, so he walked over to her. Once Tom had gotten the box down for Mayella, she had told him to fall onto the ground and kiss her. After this occurred, Tom had been wrongly accused of beating and raping her while Mayella knew the truth. The scene also had a witness who was Mr. Finch, but he still let the town believe that he was the one who had raped Mayella.

Read More
442 Words | 2 Pages

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.

Read More
885 Words | 4 Pages

Then some people thought that Tom was innocent but the judge decided to make Tom go to prison. In the book it said that Mayella hugged and kissed Tom on the cheek. From this I can infer that Mayella is desperate and can get away with this because Tom Robinson is a black person. This reminds me of a couple southern movies I’ve watched where black people are always the first to suspect because of their color. Tom Robinson on trial for his life said Bob Ewell yelled “whore I’ll kill you” when he saw Mayella kiss Tom from the window.

Read More
1247 Words | 5 Pages

The name of the novel being explored is 'To Kill a Mockingbird' by Harper Lee. To Kill a Mockingbird is set in the 1950's in Alabama Maycomb during the racist times towards the blacks. Throughout this topic the focus is on the main character/narrator Scout (Jan Louise Finch). This essay will explore Scout's character and the negative and or positive influence she has on other characters at the start, throughout and at the end of the text. At the beginning of the novel 'To kill a Mockingbird' Scout is a naïve, has a very tomboy like personality, is a judgmental five year-old girl who was oblivious to the cruelty's of the outside world.

Read More
951 Words | 4 Pages

Everybody in their town knows that the Ewell family is like, they are dirty, poor, raunchy, and unkempt. They live by a dump and in the book it was talking about their house and it said, “four tiny rooms opening onto a shotgun hall, the cabin rested uneasily upon four irregular lumps of limestone… merely open spaces in the walls… greasy strips of cheesecloth to keep out the varmints that feasted on Maycomb’s refuse. " This is an example of how bad of a life Mayella has had. The majority of the people in this time period were poor but the Ewells were at the very bottom of this system. All of these reasons show why Mayella would be so desperate for attention that she would kiss and try to get Tom to like her and then accuse him of

Read More
887 Words | 4 Pages

This starts when Mayella claims that Tom Robinson raped her. Mayella was lonely and friendless, so approached Tom Robinson. After meeting up several times, she kissed him. When he did not return the kiss, she accused him of rape. This was not true, but Mayella was outraged.

Read More
1291 Words | 6 Pages

She wants a better life for herself. She found herself a mother for her siblings, she didn’t go to school, and when she liked a black man and seduced him. He is the one that she can control and everything else she is just powerless. She was devastated when he refuses her; she wanted to remove him from her way, instead of telling the truth she accused him of raping her fact that making advance towards Tom Robinson (the black man) gives Mayella power. Her feeling of guilt motivated her, the society want accept that a white women seduced a black man a trying to take advantage of him, she is a victim

Read More
875 Words | 4 Pages

Mayella has worked to be a respectable woman, but many things hold her back: her dad, her looks, and her personality. Being a woman and living the way she does, Mayella’s life is ignoble, but the way she treats people makes her deserve the life she has been given. For example, Mayella forces a man to lie, which results in her flaws come around to hurt her, and her to not qualify for a chance to be respected. During Tom’s trial, Tom said, “...scared I’d hafta face up to what I didn’t do.” (page 265), and that’s because Mayella indirectly took an innocent man’s life, which makes her personality even more unattractive.

Read More
732 Words | 3 Pages

But she said he took advantage of her, and when she stood up she looked at him as if he were dirt beneath her feet.” Mayella’s loneliness and powerlessness drove her to have an affair with a black man, breaking a societal code. She is a victim of poverty because of the hatred and discrimination occurring in Maycomb. Although some might view Mayella Ewell as a victim, others might view her as a villain because she broke a societal code by attempting to have an affair with a Negro.

Read More
658 Words | 3 Pages

Mayella was a lonely woman whose father abused her. She wanted to have intimacy with Tom Robinson, which “brings shame to her family”. When her father finds

Read More
1088 Words | 5 Pages

Final Essay Outline: Thesis Statement/opening paragraph: In the story To Kill A Mockingbird, discrimination and the act of being prejudice is common among the main characters, on both the receiving and serving end. Certain characters, like Scout and Jeremy Finch, Bob Ewell, and the town folk truly create the main problem and set the theme of the story. For example, when Bob Ewell accuses Atticus Finch of being an african-american lover, because he is defending Tom Robinson. Tom Robinson was accused of raping Mayella Ewell, according to Bob. Boo Radley is accused of being dead by Scout, Jem and Dill.

Read More
730 Words | 3 Pages

First, she had to make up a story about Tom Robinson because she had kissed a black man, which was frowned upon for a white woman to do. “She was white and she tempted a Negro. She did something that in our society in unspeakable: she kissed a black man”(272). Mayella is also used as an example when she convinces the jury to convict an innocent black man because of Southern Womanhood. “That n***** took advantage of me, an’ if you fine fancy gentlemen don’t wanna do nothin’ about it then you’re all yellow stinkin’ cowards, stinkin’ cowards, the lot of you”(251).

Read More

More about Mayella Social Control

Related Topics

Open Document