Lee’s presentation of Mayella Ewell

To Kill A Mocking Bird: Mayella Ewell is presented as a kind of prisoner, trapped in both a literal and figurative sense. She is imprisoned within her home environment; Lee describes the jars containing her red geraniums as being ‘against the fence’, which implies that she craves freedom but cannot break free, due to the social boundaries set by Maycomb society
and her father. Furthermore, her geraniums are kept in ‘chipped enamel slop jars’, creating the impression that however hard she tries to flourish and break free, she is still a Ewell and cannot escape the family’s tainted and broken reputation, like the chips in the jars. The jars
also symbolize the idea that she doesn’t have the capacity to fix her shattered life. In contrast to the dirty, squalid conditions of the Ewell’s
yard, the ‘brilliant red geraniums’ are an expression of her desire and hope to break free from her monochrome world. Through the image of Mayella’s flowers, Lee encourages the reader to pity Mayella Ewell for her impotence and destitution; perhaps even more than this, though, we yearn for her to escape from her imprisonment and gain a taste of
freedom.
Explore Lee’s presentation of Mayella Ewell in relation to the freedom and entrapment