Gender Issues In To Kill A Mockingbird

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.

The main issue of the section we are acting out of Chapter 11 in “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee is the prejudice that Ms. Dubose holds. She is both sexist and racist, both forms of prejudice that were common back in her generation, but were finally starting to change at that time. Aunt Alexandra and Ms. Dubose, most likely having been raised in the same time period, were both offended by Scout wearing pants. Ms. Dubose specifically asked ‘What are you doing in those overalls? You should be in a dress and camisole, young lady!’ (Lee, 101), which is greatly reminiscent of what Alexandra said at Christmas. Obviously, they were both raised with the same morals about having to wear dresses, causing them to be unintentionally sexist and myopic.

Navigating Traditional Female Gender Roles in To Kill a Mockingbird In To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee explores how forcing traditional gender roles onto young children can cause rebellion, while not forcing those roles gives them the freedom to choose to follow traditional gender roles when they wish to. Through the characterization of Scout’s relationships with three important adults in her life--Aunt Alexandra, Atticus and Boo Radley--we see how a young girl responds to the pressures of traditional gender roles. Aunt Alexandra insists that Scout follows traditional female gender roles, which causes her to rebel. Aunt Alexandra is a very traditional middle aged women who feels Scout needs some guidance, especially about Scout’s appearance and what she wears.

In Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, various characters are often forced into silence because of their race and where they stand in Maycomb County. Characters like Tom, Calpurnia, Dolphus Raymond, and even Miss Maudie are not given a proper voice in the novel but still demonstrate subtle heroic traits. Marginalized characters display as many heroic traits as voiced characters do, but are portrayed differently because of social class and race.

In the morning of his first day in the Uncharted Forest, Equality 7-2521, realizes that he has woken up on his own for the first time in his life. The daily bell of the morning did not ring, and no one sought to wake him up. Then and there, Equality discovers himself as an individual, and not part of a whole. In that moment, he senses his past troubles, and worries are far behind him. He, for the first time in forever, is on his own.

The “other” is someone(s) who are different than me and my group. Some of the “others” in Maycomb include: Boo Radley, Miss Caroline Fisher and Walter Cunningham. Race, class, and gender play a role in establishing the “other”. Gossip and superstition play a role in figuring out who society believes are the “other”. Stereotypes also play a role in determining who is an “other” because stereotypes are undefinable attitudes that people have about other people. Fear plays a role in “otherness” because fear causes people to say and do things that they normally wouldn’t do. A quote to support this is from chapter two: “The class murmured apprehensively, should she prove to harbor her share of peculiarities indigenous to that region.”

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.

Throughout the book, you can often see sexist beliefs. Written in the 1950s, based in the 1930s, Harper Lee wrote To Kill A Mockingbird to challenge and expose many injustices occurring in society in those time periods. One of those injustices is Sexism. Sexism is the discrimination of someone based on their gender. In the 1930s, the sexism was usually towards women. Sexism often promote discrimination in jobs, discrimination from men to women through comments, and discrimination from every one through actions.

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.

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.

According to the United Nations Foundation, 62 million girls around the world are refused education and mentorship programs, such as Step Up, helps to maintain girls in school to get them closer to achieve their dreams. The novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, focuses on the lives of Jem and Scout, as Scout retells three years of her childhood in the span of 372 pages. The story is about growing up in Alabama during the 1930s, after the Great Depression. During this era, there happened to be rampant discrimination, as such, there was also the same level of discrimination in the small fictional location of Maycomb County. Through the eyes of Scout, readers see how her father, Atticus, is very passionate and dedicated to his

The clip from Claudine displayed stereotypes that welfare is for single black women who have multiple kids and no husband. Also, in Cinderella Man, if you were a white person receiving welfare it was a disgrace and you were looked down upon or disowned. Holly wood reflects public assistant recipients by making people feel ‘unworthy, undeserving, or like a charity case’. For instance in Cinderella Man, he literally had to beg the ‘worthy’ or rich people for money to help cover the rest of his bills. Recipients may feel dependent on a system that cares nothing for their safety and security. Welfare can reflect recipient view of work. They may feel if they work too hard, they were be forced to be independent and provide everything (food, shelter, affordable home) on own, therefore no longer receiving

In today’s world power is everything. Power is having control over one’s life, and sometimes even controlling the lives of others. In Harper Lee’s “To Kill A Mockingbird” power is one huge factor in the story. You see when Tom Robinson, an African-American male, is wrongfully accused and later convicted of “raping” Mayella Ewell, a poor white woman, both his and her’s power is put to the test. This leads to two questions. Does gender, class, and race determine how powerful you are? And if it does; is Mayella powerful? In my opinion, she is both powerless and powerful. She is powerless when it comes to class and gender. Yet she’s powerful when it comes to race.

“Men are taught to apologize for the weaknesses, women for their strengths.” (Lois Wyse) Gender roles are apart of life whether we like it or not, but in the 30s they were extremely prominent. Women were meant to look pretty and proper while men strong and masculine. In To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee writes from the perspective of an eight year old girl, Scout, about her life in Maycomb Alabama. She lives with her brother, Jem, and her father, Atticus. Atticus is assigned a case to represent a black man, named Tom Robinson, against a rape charge which angers a lot of people. Many of the chapters consist of the trial and in the end Tom is killed. Alongside dealing with the trial, Lee writes about

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.