Mayella Ewell\'s Actions in Harper

¶ … Mayella Ewell's Actions in Harper Lee's to Kill a Mockingbird

In order to understand the motivating forces behind the character of Mayella Ewell we must first examine the dynamics of her family life. Mayella, 19, is the oldest of the eight children of Bob Ewell. Her mother had been dead "a long time." (Lee 182). The Ewell's live in abject poverty in the town of Maycomb.

The Ewell's house, located behind the town dump, is depicted as having plank walls supplemented with corrugated iron, its roof shingled with tin cans hammered flat. The house is square, with four tiny rooms and a shotgun hall. There are no windows, just openings in the walls that are covered with greasy strips of cheese cloth in the summer to keep the varmints out. The fence is manufactured from discarded broomsticks, tool shafts and tree limbs, held in place with barbed wire. The yard around the house resembles the "playground of an insane child." (Lee 170-171). The sense the author invokes in the reader is that the family is considered poor white trash by the rest of the town.

Significantly, the only feature of the house that is framed in positive terms is the six red geranium plants in one corner of the yard. The incongruous feature was said to be the work of Mayella, who tenderly cared for the "brilliant red" plants (Lee 171).

A brief look at the Incident between Tom and Mayella

Mayella and her father accuse Tom Robinson, a black man, of raping her. According to Mayella, Tom was walking by the house and she told him to come into the yard to break up a piece of furniture to use as firewood. When she went into the house to get a nickel to pay him, he followed her into the house and assaulted her (Lee 180).

Tom testified that he was walking by the house and Mayella asked him to come in under the pretext of fixing a door. When he got inside he discovered the door wasn't broken and started to leave, but Mayella asked him to get a box down form on top of the chiffarobe. Tom got up on a chair to get the box and Mayella grabbed his legs startling him. He jumped down and she hugged and kissed him and ordered him to kiss her. It was then that Bob Ewell saw them through the window. Tom got scared and ran off (Lee 193-194).

The sheriff is called and arrives to find Mayella has been beaten and she claims that Tom has raped her. It is established at the trial that Tom could not have done this since the marks are on the right side of her face; hence she was beaten by a left handed man. Tom's left arm is crippled, however Bob is left handed. It is suggested that Mayella was beaten by her father. Despite this Mayella insists that Tom is responsible and he is convicted of the crime.

Discussion

The Ewell family lives on relief checks, which Bob "drank up anyway," and the home has no running water. The younger children are perpetually sick and dirty. They made their shoes out of strips of old tires salvaged from the dump. She does not stay in school because "with two members of the family reading and writing, there was no need for the rest of them to learn -- Papa needed them at home" (Lee 183).

Mayella is a lonely girl with has low self-esteem. This is demonstrated when she believes Atticus, the defense attorney is mocking her when he addresses her as Miss Mayella, and is offended when Atticus asks if she has any friends, believing that he is making fun of her. "White people wouldn't have anything to do with her because she lived among pigs; Negroes wouldn't have anything to do with her because she was white" (Lee 192). She doesn't believe she is worthy of friendship.

It is intimated that the relationship between Bob and his daughter is incestuous. Tom testifies that Mayella told him "She never kissed a grown man before an' she might as well kiss a nigger. She says what her father papa did to her don't count" (Lee 194).

It is easy to understand why Mayella would accuse Tom of rape when she was caught kissing him by her father. She had broken a "rigid and time honored code" by initiating a liaison with a black man. This transgression was viewed as so reprehensible that one who broke this code would be "hounded from our midst as unfit to live with" (Lee 203).