Gender Issues In To Kill A Mockingbird

Women should be caring, humble, quiet, intelligent. These are some of the generic characteristics of a stereotypical "women". If you opened a newspaper from the 1950s you would be bombarded with advertisements about women being the perfect housewives and men being strong leaders. A survey taken in the mid-1980s by British Social Attitudes showed that close to half (43 percent in 1984 and 48 percent in 1987) of people supported a gendered separation of roles, where the female was a caring mother and the male the masculine handyman. If you were to go to any social media site these days, you would see women that are changing the game with twenty-first-century texts posted everywhere that significantly challenging gender stereotypes for women.

“The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of a women begins when the doctor says, ‘It's a girl!’” Women are forced to conform to a set place in society, and the pressure they feel to conform starts when they are born.

In To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, the women in the novel feel like they don’t fit in because of the gender stereotypes that have been placed in their lives. Scout is a young girl who lives with her Dad and brother because her mother has passed away. In the novel she misses opportunities to play with her best friend, Dill, and brother Jem, because of the gender stereotypes that are in place. Scout doesn’t understand why being a girl is so bad “[Scout] was not so sure, but Jem told [her] [she] was being a girl, that girls always imagined things, that’s why other people hated them so, and if [Scout] [starts] [to] [behave] like one [she] could just go off and find some to play with.” (54) Scout doesn't realize what being a girl actually means because her information is coming from the opposite gender. She is taking everything that Jem says word for word and doesn't talk to anybody else about it, because she is surrounded by boys. Jem has his own opinions of what a girl means and Scout does not want to meet those standards, because when Jem says these hurtful things to her, she feels like she is being insulted. Consequently Scout thinks that in order to play with the boys she needs to act like one which is changing her overall personality to fit in. Lee uses Scout and Jem to show the differences in the opinion of genders and how gender stereotypes are ruining the relationships between the opposite genders.

“To Kill A Mockingbird” is a book based in the town of Maycomb, Alabama and is narrated by a young girl named Scout. As Scout grows up in the book she is surrounded by mostly men for her mother had died at a young age and her family's maid was usually not being very involved in the games Scout and her brother - Jem - played. Over the summers Jem and Scout have spent in Maycomb, many of the ones described were shared with their friend Dill, who stayed with his Aunt every summer. As the summers go by, Dill and Jem start to exclude Scout because she is a girl. In “To Kill A Mockingbird” Scout faces an endless amount of mistreatment and exclusion all because she is a girl.

“I was not so sure, but Jem told me I was being a girl, that girls always imagined things, that’s why other people hated them so, and if I started behaving like one I could just go off and find some to play with.”(Chapter5) In 1930s, United States of America, gender prejudice of women was serious. Women have been seem as the symbol of weakness. Many people think women are fragile. Women are not as strong as men. Women should wear dress instead of pants. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee is making a point about gender prejudice of women, the specific point she is making is that not all women love gossiping, they should have the right to choose their costume and should be respected.

When the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, was written by Harper Lee, the Southern United States was still clinging tightly to traditional values. Southern societies pressured men to behave as gentlemen, and women were expected to be polite and wear dresses. These stringent gender roles were adhered to in small southern towns because they were isolated from the more progressive attitudes in other areas of the United States. Harper Lee documents the life of one young girl growing up in the small town of Maycomb, Alabama. Jean Louise Finch, also known as "Scout," is a young girl searching for her identity. Scout, a young tomboy, is pressured by adults who insist she should conform to the

Why do people want to change the way we live our life? I don’t fit in, so what? In the book “To Kill a Mockingbird”, Lee uses characterization and tone in order to convey the idea that in society every gender has to follow their code of conduct, consequently it restricts people from being themselves in order to fit in.

When you first think of the law legal system here you think justice. But in Maycomb County’s legal system many innocent lives are taken because of close-minded judges and racist juries.In this award-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, we learn a lot about this poor town. In this novel, a very smart white lawyer named Atticus defends an innocent black man but unfortunately, he got wrongly accused. In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, The legal system is very unjust because it takes away innocent lives this is strongly demonstrated in the Tom Robinson’s trial.

The act of prejudice is one that everyone experiences. Whether it be, a person who is distributing hate, or a person who is receiving hate, everyone has contact with it. Although it is present all over the globe, it is prominent in the United States. Both in the present and the past, endless acts of discrimination have taken place and left a monumental impact on the country. The effect that it leaves can be seen in the novel “To Kill A Mockingbird” by Harper Lee. In this story, sexism, racism, and isolation, are demonstrated in the small Southern town of Maycomb, Alabama during the 1930’s. As the story progresses, Lee compares these concepts to one another and uses them to make a statement about the problematic nature in America.

Martin Luther King Jr. once said “our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” However, I will not be silent. Sexism is a thing of the past, present, and future. Women have never been seen as equal to men. This idea and concept affect how women carry out their lives. Women may act different or speak different just based on society's thoughts about their gender. In To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and in today’s society it is clear that because of women’s perceived “weakness”, men now dominate women legally, physically and financially.

Throughout the book To Kill A Mockingbird Lee discusses the effects of ignorance and the toll it takes on people such as Tom Robinson, Boo Radley, Scout herself, and many more. Through her examples of sexism, prejudice, and racism, from the populist of poverty stricken Southerners, she shows the readers the injustice of many. The victims of ignorance are the ‘mockingbirds’ of the story. A good example of this injustice is the trial of Tom Robinson, who is falsely accused of raping a white girl and is found guilty. The book is from the point of view Scout, a child, who has an advantage over most kids due to her having a lawyer as a dad, to see the other side of the story. Her father tells her in the story, “you never really know a man until

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, is an ideal display of feminism that takes place during the period of depression in the south. It portrayed the two kinds of women found in the south during this time, the women who were pro the feminist movement, and the average Southern women. Sadly some women mistakenly rebelled against the ideals of society, by just being themselves. Men and women were to conduct themselves as ladies and gentlemen, were men were expected to dress in suit and ties and women were expected to wear dresses and be courteous. Since southern towns were so sheltered from the liberal views of the rest of the world they had no chose but to abide by these gender roles.

The first homosexual to speak out publicly in defense of homosexuality was a writer named Karl Heinrich Ulrichs on August 29, 1867. So while most people say the gay rights movement is something that's fairly recent, that is untrue. People have been judged for being homosexual for a very long time. Prejudice is something that can cause people to be violent, hateful, and act differently towards certain people to fit in, as shown in To Kill A Mockingbird and in society today towards supporters of gay and trans rights.

In To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee, there are many examples of how women are limited in society. One example of how women are limited in society is when Aunt Alexandra says "We decided that it would be best for you to have some feminine influence" (170). This shows that women are treated differently by the way that they say she needs to act. They really believe that Scout needs to act more like a women which is not fair that women must act different. The novel also states "when I said I could do nothing in a dress, she told me I wasn't supposed to be doing things that require pants." This means that Scouts aunt disagrees with a girl wearing pants. This is because the women in society all wear dresses. This shows that women are limited

How would you like it if someone walked up to you and insulted you based on the color of your skin? A characteristic like that isn’t even something you can control, so . Discrimination is inevitable in any culture, throughout history, in modern times, and even in ancient times. For example, the oppression and murder of 6 million Jewish people during the Holocaust, the African Slave Trade which occurred for multiple centuries, and more recently, the “ethnic cleansing” of Rohingya people in Myanmar, brought on by the government of the Asian nation, all of which are tragedies doomed to happen when history repeats itself and people do not learn from their mistakes. Not even the rural Alabama town of Maycomb in To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee was safe from discrimination. Throughout the book, examples of racism and sexism run rampant throughout the pages, against African Americans and women, all due to the simple yet untrue reality that one group is favored over another. Often, these skewed perceptions of another group often cause a group to be negatively affected, causing emotional pain, physical abuse, or even judicial turmoil. In the novel To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, there are many examples of discrimination towards a specific group, most prominently racism and sexism.