Essay On Stereotypes In To Kill A Mockingbird

In Maycomb, two children named Jem and Scout experience a lot of, now resolved, issues. These two kids grew up in the 1930s during the Great Depression, in Alabama. Jem and Scout grew up with a father who is a lawyer who tries to raise his kids as well as he can, with the help of their cook Calpurnia and Aunt Alexandra who eventually moves in. Growing up with a father who is a lawyer, they experience the following: gender, the Maycomb disease of racism, and wealth. Throughout To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee described the life of two kids who grew up in the 30s with stereotypes like the following: gender, racism, and wealth. Women were expected to be classy and ladylike, but this is not always true. When Calpurnia first seems to come into character as just the cook, she seems to speak her mind more than others. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Calpurnia says, “...when you take off the fact that men can’t remember as well women,” (Lee 141). Calpurnia made this assumption because before this she explains that she is older than Atticus. They tried remembering how old Calpurnia was and she can remember a few years more than Atticus can. Another …show more content…
Gender was considered a stereotype because if one was a boy or a girl then they were considered to be a certain way like boys never cry or girls throw tantrums. Race was a big deal because no matter what everyone was racist either to mostly blacks or to whites. White people were above black people, they were separated from each other, and white people were treated better than black people. Wealth was a big issue because people were based on how wealthy one was and whom one could and couldn’t hang out with and who one couldn’t. If one was wealthy, one would not associate with someone that was not as wealthy as another. In the 1930s, Harper Lee uses gender, racism, and wealth to inform readers of these issues in many ways throughout the