Mayella Ewell from TKAM
One thing that’s stuck with me from to kill a mockingbird is Mayella Ewell and her case. The one who accuses Tom Robinson. The girl that was so obviously abused and groomed by her father and forced to do this. What she says about kissing a grown man and how what her father does to her doesn’t count won’t leave my brain after reading it. Their racism didn’t just obviously cause innocent men to die for sins they never committed, but for young girls who were supposed to be one of them- “clean” or “pure”. WHITE, belonging to them, to be overlooked and continued to be abused. Someone’s teacher said all those kids weren’t just Mayella’s siblings, they were probably her children. Mayella is a terrifying, tragic character to me. We never hear about her again. We don’t hear what happens after they go back home. We don’t know if he’s taking it out on the people involved only, or also taking it out on Mayella. The way she forces herself on Tom Robinson is absolutely disgusting. And what’s even more disturbing is she definitely learned it from her father. Like a lot of young isolated victims, they copy what’s being done to them. Mayella is older and so she was not just mindlessly copying but also probably trying to feel some control for once. She was isolated, abused, left at the mercy of her father’s hands. What she did to that man didn’t even make people think for even a second about how it must’ve affected him, how she even learned to do that, etc- all that was said to be wrong about it was the fact she kissed a black man. All that was wrong was that he was black. And that was all they were focused on. And the entire neighborhood knew what was going on in that house and they all turned a blind eye to it, too focused on a man’s skin color. The hypocrisy of all of this is enough to get my blood boiling.
I don’t understand how to kill a mockingbird is THE book about racism and all hype for it after all these years. I very much would have preferred a book about a black person’s perspective, like Helen Robinson or Calpurnia. I guess it was ahead of its time, but the way it’s being talked about even in recent years had me a bit disappointed when i finally read it and realized it isn’t what it was talked up to be. But it’s still a pretty good book.