In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, written by Harper Lee, Mayella Ewell is one of the drives the story when she accuses a black man of rape. The accusations of rape make her powerful in the three aspects of class, race, and gender, because she is a white women living in the segregated south. Even though Tom, the black man accused of rape, was innocent, he was convicted because Mayella’s race and gender gave her power over him. Most of Mayella's power comes from the color of her skin. Living in the south in the 1930s whites were granted power over any colored people, because the Jim Crow laws were in place. The Jim Crow laws were put in place to limit the rights of colored people living in the south. The evidence to support this is when Reverend
