Mayella represents a violated white female and a victim of poverty and
narrow-mindedness. She can't really make advances in her life due to her father's lazy
and drunken demeanour. I deduce that Bob is abusive towards her and as a result, her
self-esteem must be very low and she mustn't be able to maintain a high level of self
respect when her father is constantly knocking it down. She feels imprisoned like Boo
Radley and her father puts to an end all of her attempts to socialise.
When she seduces Tom Robinson and her father finds out, he makes her feel
so ashamed that she helps Bob, her father, to get away with his perjury. The
likelihood that the jury would acquit Tom is almost imaginary.
The reason for Mayella's outburst during Atticus' cross-examination, is that
she wishes to put an end to the audience's and jury's conclusions of what really
happened, by pointing out to them that Tom Robinson is a black man, and that black
men are not to be trusted around white women. She comes out with this outburst, also,
because there are evident cracks in her story which threaten to expose the truth. She
feels that the prejudice of the community is a 'get out of jail free' card for her and in
her opinion, this is more important than the life of an innocent, respectable black man,
who has done nothing other than be kind and helpful to her in contrast with her father's
neglect and abusive ways. In a way, she is inadvertently integrating the community and
throwing aside her prejudices when she seduces Tom Robinson.
Tom is a kind decent man. He has values that Bob doesn't conform to and is a
sharp contrast to the Ewells. He walks past the Ewell place and more often than not,
he sees Mayella struggling to do her daily chores and all Tom wants to do is give her
a helping hand. He doesn't want anything in return and he does these favours with
certainly no intention of raping her.
When Mr. Gilmer questioned Tom about why he felt so inclined to do jobs for
Mayella, he replies, ‘I felt right sorry for her, she seemed to try more’n rest of ‘em’.
This statement shocks the crowd and Mr. Gilmer because if you feel sorry for
someone, you are implying that you are superior to that person, and with Tom being a
black man; according to the community, he is not allowed to possess these feelings as
blacks are inferior to whites in all circumstances.
Also, when his testimony contradicts that of what Mayella said, Tom is
indirectly accusing her of lying. Mr. Gilmer questions him about his side of things but
Tom just can't bring himself to say that Mayella is a liar; instead he says that she is
'mistaken in her mind'. This shows that if a white person's word is up against a
black's, a suggestion that the white person is lying is unacceptable in this bigoted
community.
In the end, Tom's decency in telling the truth is helping to convict him and by
making out to the court that he is even slightly superior to Mayella, he makes them
feel that he needs to be taught a lesson. Tom's decency and honesty is ineffective in
such a community plagued by immutable, prejudiced views of blacks, whereas the
blacks don't adhere to racist stereotypes and intolerance of whites.
Tom is the 'mockingbird' in this trial. He is spreading kindness and
compassion and yet he is punished by a narrow-minded community, which seems
only interested in sticking to its 'time-honoured' code. The punishment of Tom is, as
the title suggests, a sin.
Atticus believes that the courts are great levellers and that if there is a decision
to be reached, it can be attained fairly through the judicial system. He believes in
civilised values and is untouched by the town's racial intolerance that unfortunately
has taken a vice-like grip in the community and even in the jury - a supposedly non-
biased collection of people.
When the jury delivers its verdict of 'GUILTY' to the court, Atticus knows
that the prejudices of the jury were bound to influence the decision of the jury and
eventually did. Furthermore he condemns the jury's prejudice and tells Jem that in this situation – a black man’s word against a white’s – the white man always wins. He says, ‘They’re ugly, but those are the facts of life’. He also says that the people of the community couldn’t be fair even if they tried, and that the community’s prejudices exist in all levels of society and that no matter how respectable a white person is, when he cheats a black man, he is ‘White Trash’.
Atticus’ view of juries is that you normally get the jury that you are worthy of. He knows that the verdict is a reflection of the society’s bigotry and ultimately that the jury will adopt an unfair approach to the decision and if the jury isn’t fair then the verdict won’t be just.
However, Atticus’ defence of Tom Robinson was not in vain, and the very fact that Atticus kept the jury out for such a prolonged amount of time, Miss Maudie says is a ‘baby-step’, and she means that Atticus is getting at the jury’s conscience. He is appealing to their better, non-prejudice side and opening their eyes to a new view of blacks.
Atticus also makes a similar comment about the length of the jury’s absence, he says, ‘That was the one think that made me think, well, this maybe the shadow of a beginning’. By saying this he means that it isn’t a big advance, but it is still one step closer to an integrated community, free of prejudices and rigid stereotypes.
Mr Cunningham was the man on the jury who was willing to cast aside his prejudices, in light of his experience at the jailhouse, and challenge the jury’s almost certainly immediate verdict of guilty. Although he was eventually persuaded to unite with the others in their guilty verdict, he still made them think.
There is no doubt that the staging of this trial has certainly made a lot of people stop and question their prejudices in Maycomb and whether they are valid views of the black community. But the sectarian opinions of whites towards blacks aren’t going to be relinquished overnight and it will be a slow process and as Atticus says, the trial may only be ‘the shadow of a beginning’.
