essay for my love mayella ewell ❤❤❤❤❤❤

ESSAY

Innocence, the lack of guile or corruption and to be innocent means to almost be pure. To kill a mockingbird and one of the overarching themes surrounding the book is innocence. To be a mockingbird simply means to be innocent. Harper Lee's take on this concept is quite wide, with many characters being considered "mockingbirds" but a character that deserves this title that gets overlooked quite often because of her antagonist role would be Mayella Ewell. Mayella Ewell is an interesting character because she's only been really introduced to us, the readers, around the time frame the trial is around, but in that such little time, we get to learn what kind of person she really is.

While from an outside perspective, she is an antagonist, yes but if we dive deeper into what she's really like, we can really tell that she's just an innocent person caught up in a terrible situation due to her family's circumstances. The Ewell family is dirt-poor. This is common knowledge. When we first meet Burris Ewell in chapter 3, the teacher shrieks because of his headlice and his rude behaviour so it wouldn't be a stretch to say most of the kids are like this. From the book itself, her father is just a drunken abuser who spends his checks on booze and himself. I wouldn't really call him a father figure in the family. Bob Ewell, the father, being an alcoholic practically forces the eldest child, Mayella, to take full responsibility for the safety of her siblings and the siblings themselves. We rarely see Bob Ewell acting as a father figure towards the siblings in the entire book, so that could be a point as well. Now all of this would put Mayella in a very awkward position in the social hierarchy. It also doesn't help that the story heavily implies that Mayella has been abused sexually and non-sexually by Bob Ewell in some sort of incestuous relationship. Evidence of this would be Atticus's analogy in the courthouse when it came to Mayella's bruises while Bob was left-handed and what Tom Robinson says during the case when he was on testimony. Tom mentioned something Mayella said while she was on top of him, kissing him, basically saying what her papa do don't count." More evidence would be looking at the Ewell family tree, with kids popping up even after the actual mother's death. She only blames Tom Robinson for sexually assaulting her because of what Bob was gonna do with her. Think about it, wouldn't you kind of snap if you were in Mayella's situation for so long? The story doesn't tell us how long Bob has been doing these things to Mayella, but considering she's only 19, we could probably infer that Bob has been sexually assaulting Mayella for far longer. And during the time frame they were in, which was around the great depression when the Jim crow laws were in place, it would've been far easier to blame someone rather than take the blame for yourself because all that Bob was really concerned with was his already tarnished reputation being even more tarnished. If you think of it, Bob really did force Mayella to lie about Tom sexually abusing her just to save his own reputation.

Now Mayella, despite being a mockingbird does have some fault in this. Even though she's somewhat guilty, I wouldn't really see what she did hinder her from being a mockingbird. It was totally unjustified what she did to Tom initially, but looking at it from her perspective, she was extremely lonely. Looking at the evidence, being significantly older than the other children, being dirt poor, and having a drunkard as a father, it would be extremely hard to fit in with other people around her age. It also doesn't help that the town seems to be super judgemental in terms of class. Like how Ms. Stephanie Crawford was basically the gossip girl of the town and how Scout made fun of Walter Cunningham initially because he himself is a Cunningham. There was an analogy Scout made about comparing Mayella Ewell to a mixed child because no one would want to associate with her because of her class and her race, henceforth more evidence of her being extremely lonely. Even during the trial, she mistook Atticus's mannerisms as insults and thought he was making fun of her. Imagine being so void of interaction with other people throughout your whole life that you mistake friendly mannerisms for making fun of her. Isn't that wild? But as I said, she's in the wrong for forcibly kissing Tom, but if you do look at it, I feel as if it's instead a product of being so isolated and lonely for almost all her life. Humans are naturally social creatures, this is pretty common knowledge. It would explain why most, if not all of us live in groups such as towns, cities or villages. Even during evolution, when our ape-like ancestors were alive, they lived in groups for safety. You could argue that not all humans want to be in these said "groups" but that goes against my main point because it's very obvious that Mayella didn't want to be alone throughout the story. It goes back to her kissing Tom because he was the only other person relatively around her age that she would interact with regularly, despite being black. Her intentions weren't malicious, they were only a product of disparity and loneliness.

No sane person can be isolated for almost 19 years without anyone close to them. Also, keep in mind that there wasn't a motherly figure for Mayella as well.

And now for my final point, we can expand on her mother's death and her becoming a surrogate "wife" for her father and "mother" to all of her younger siblings. She said she had "seb'm" siblings during the chapters of the trial, and we can probably assume she meant 7. But of these kids, it's common knowledge that she is the eldest daughter of Bob Ewell and her unknown mother. Earlier in the story, it mentions how the Ewell family children almost fend for themselves like wild animals because of the lack of parenthood from the actual father, until Mayella presumably stepped up. As I said, being the oldest of the siblings, there wasn't really anything stopping her from running away from all of this mess apart from one man, and that would be the father himself, but she instead took care of all her siblings instinctually. In later chapters, she even saved up for a year to get 7 nickels for all of her siblings to go to town to get some ice cream. Sure the main intent wasn't really for the children, it was for Mayella and Tom to be alone in the house, but the thought still counts and this could loop back to my 2nd point. She also could've just honestly told all of them to leave, but alas, she did not.

So to reinstate, I went over how she was practically forced into accusing Tom of sexually assaulting her by her father in order to increase his own reputation and possibly not get his reputation tarnished even more, how most, if not all her intentions were pure, and how she somewhat voluntarily acted as a surrogate mother in order to take care of all her siblings, even if some were a product of incest. I still stand by my point on why Mayella Ewell is a mockingbird. She often gets overlooked and viewed as the killer of a mockingbird because of her accusations against one of the obvious mockingbirds in the story as I said. People really do need to take a closer look at what's happening from the inside. She's a young woman caught up in a terrible situation that could possibly mean life or death for her. Why is it that most readers blame the victim instead of the actual offender that's very much comprehendible even to the untrained eye?