Women’s rights and their social status, one of the most controversial yet concerned topics that keeps raising the society’s attention. Ever since the existence of inequality between male and female had been discovered, people had never stopped reflecting on it. In Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird, gender bias, along with racial discrimination, are tied together to serve as the major themes of the story. By using the perspective of a misfitting tomboy Scout, Lee vividly painted out the reality of women’s role of life in a typical Southern town during the early 1900s. Through the struggles Scout faced growing up as a girl, one can see, from the eyes of an innocent kid, how “being a lady” was defined as and judged for back in the day.
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An evident example would be the narrator of the story, Scout. As a little tomboy who has always done things out of her own free will and saw nothing wrong with it, when her big brother/role model Jem suddenly demanded her to start behaving like a girl, she was both confused and humiliated by that request. To her, the way she behaved was decent enough, she felt comfortable with it, and failed to see the need for changing it to fit men’s standards of being a “normal girl”, although it was clearly not her choice to make. The same happened to Ms. Maudie with the man who cursed her and her beloved flowers to hell just because from his point of view, a widow like her should not be having any sort of recreation. Even Atticus, who appeared to be perfectly sensible and impartial all the time, made this comment on the matter of women serving in jury, “I doubt if we'd ever get a complete case tried - the ladies'd be interrupting the questions.” Though he claimed this was for the protection of the “frail ladies” from sordid cases like the Robinson’s, but there was certainly an element of prejudice in the statement hinting that women could not cope with rational, judiciary affairs like men could. Yet since Atticus was known for being equitably respectful toward any race, gender, and social rank, the only logical assumption would have to be that he was obviously affected by the stereotypical characteristics of women that …show more content…
The obvious example would have to be that women were not yet allowed to sit in juries, at least not in Alabama, not in the 1930s. But no one saw any wrong with it (at least none mentioned in the novel), people thought it was fairly reasonable, the idea of women serving in jury and/or even appear in court amused them, from the mature adults to innocent children, none saw even a slight unfairness with the obviously partial law (Chapter 23). Another less apparent but still noticeable example would be the sermon Reverend Sykes preached when Calpurnia took the Finch kids to her nigger church. He exhorted the crowd on the evil of women, which was even worse than bootleggers and gamblers and that they never cease to cause troubles. Surprisingly though, was the connection drawn by Scout from Reverend Sykes warnings to the sermons she was clearly familiar with, “Again, as I had often met it in my own church, I was confronted with the Impurity of Women doctrine that seemed to preoccupy all clergymen.” Thus gave the outcome that unlike racism, gender discrimination was universal, it thrived within every race, every religion, and everywhere in the so called civilized
An evident example would be the narrator of the story, Scout. As a little tomboy who has always done things out of her own free will and saw nothing wrong with it, when her big brother/role model Jem suddenly demanded her to start behaving like a girl, she was both confused and humiliated by that request. To her, the way she behaved was decent enough, she felt comfortable with it, and failed to see the need for changing it to fit men’s standards of being a “normal girl”, although it was clearly not her choice to make. The same happened to Ms. Maudie with the man who cursed her and her beloved flowers to hell just because from his point of view, a widow like her should not be having any sort of recreation. Even Atticus, who appeared to be perfectly sensible and impartial all the time, made this comment on the matter of women serving in jury, “I doubt if we'd ever get a complete case tried - the ladies'd be interrupting the questions.” Though he claimed this was for the protection of the “frail ladies” from sordid cases like the Robinson’s, but there was certainly an element of prejudice in the statement hinting that women could not cope with rational, judiciary affairs like men could. Yet since Atticus was known for being equitably respectful toward any race, gender, and social rank, the only logical assumption would have to be that he was obviously affected by the stereotypical characteristics of women that …show more content…
The obvious example would have to be that women were not yet allowed to sit in juries, at least not in Alabama, not in the 1930s. But no one saw any wrong with it (at least none mentioned in the novel), people thought it was fairly reasonable, the idea of women serving in jury and/or even appear in court amused them, from the mature adults to innocent children, none saw even a slight unfairness with the obviously partial law (Chapter 23). Another less apparent but still noticeable example would be the sermon Reverend Sykes preached when Calpurnia took the Finch kids to her nigger church. He exhorted the crowd on the evil of women, which was even worse than bootleggers and gamblers and that they never cease to cause troubles. Surprisingly though, was the connection drawn by Scout from Reverend Sykes warnings to the sermons she was clearly familiar with, “Again, as I had often met it in my own church, I was confronted with the Impurity of Women doctrine that seemed to preoccupy all clergymen.” Thus gave the outcome that unlike racism, gender discrimination was universal, it thrived within every race, every religion, and everywhere in the so called civilized