The Appeals Of The Southern Belle Code: A Look Into The Past

Isaac Ober
Mr. Petrich
Honors English, 9
22 December 2022
The Appeals of the Southern Belle code: a Look into the Past Through her primal imagery and employment of substories in To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee conveys that the institution of racism is perpetuated by the Southern Belle code; this code yields even more power to the already immensely powerful patriarchy by degrading women to pure beings that need protection from the outside world, reducing women to only their opinions and making it impossible for them to take action, thereby increasing the prominence of racism in the south.
Through her clever word choice, Lee expresses that young girls are pressured to conform to the Southern Belle code through female role models, who heavily

Ms. Merriweather is a prime example of this idea when later in the meeting she reignites the topic of a man named J. Grimes Everett and the Mrunas : “‘I said to him, ‘Mr.Everett,’ I said, ‘the ladies of the Maycomb Alabama Methodist Episcopal Church South are behind you one hundred per cent.’ That’s what I said to him’” (Lee 264). In this passage, Lee repeats the phrase “I said”, she incorporates this language in order to emphasize the reluctance of women to take action and instead, say rather than do. Lee later isolates “‘the ladies” that are standing “behind” J. Grimes Everett hinting at the fact that the women are reluctant in helping but are willing to cheer him on from where it is safe. Meanwhile, their stance “behind” him implies this feeling of inferiority feeding this belief that men are the only ones with enough strength to take the action, while women have to cheer them on from behind in order to be protected. Through her repetition, Lee conveys that women are constantly being bombarded by outside stimuli with pictures and ideas of men carrying out all the work in order to preserve the Southern

This is first seen when men gather around the Finch house in an attempt convince Atticus not to move Tom Robinson to the Maycomb jail, they had just finished making their proposition and “There was a murmur among the group of men made more ominous when Atticus moved back to the bottom front step and the men drew nearer to him”(Lee 167). In this passage, Lee employs the phrase “the men drew nearer to him”. This imagery is used to relate these men’s endeavors to ambush or hunt from predator to prey. Lee lays out this primal scene to display intention amongst the group of hostile men, something that is unseen in the group of women. Additionally, she employs this primitive scene as a callback to human’s early days in hunting and gathering. The men were primarily hunters (taking actions) and women would stay home and take care of their children (ray of sunshine). Lee uses this to communicate to the reader that this form of community is not progression rather regression back to the early days of human kind. Later in the book, Lee displays a more systematic way of carrying out this same process when Scout is questioning the outcome of the trial and challenging every aspect of the case, Scout asks a question and Atticus’ response is unexpected: “‘For one thing, Miss Maudie can’t serve on a jury because she’s a woman –’ ‘You mean women in