Mayella Ewell Quotes

“…what’s rape, Cal?”
“It’s somethin’ you’ll have to ask Mr. Finch about,” she said. “He can explain it better than I can.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 12. Scout’s question to Calpurnia is in reference to Tom Robinson being accused of raping Mayella Ewell. Calpurnia feels it is more appropriate for a parent to discuss a matter such as the violent crime of rape. Scout does in fact ask her father later on and he gives her a straight-forward explanation, another example of Atticus’s honest parenting in action.

“Well, Mayella was raisin’ this holy racket so I dropped m’load and run as fast as I could but I run into th’ fence, but when I got distangled I run up to th’ window and I seen – ” Mr. Ewell’s face grew scarlet. He stood up and pointed his finger at Tom Robinson. “– I seen that black n***** yonder ruttin’ on my Mayella!”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 17. Bob Ewell says this at Tom Robinson’s trial, condemning him to prison and ultimate death with his deadly lies. Ewell uses racist and dehumanizing language, doesn’t speak Tom’s name, emphasises his color and compares him to an animal – “ruttin.”

Mr. Ewell wrote on the back of the envelope and looked up complacently to see Judge Taylor looking at him as if he were some fragrant gardenia in full bloom on the witness stand, to see Mr. Gilmer half-sitting, half standing at his table. The jury was watching him, one man leaning over with his hands over the railing.
“What’s so intrestin’?” he asked.
“You’re left handed Mr. Ewell,” said Judge Taylor.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 17. Atticus intelligently asks Bob Ewell, who has little control of his lies in the witness box, to write his name on an envelope. Judge Taylor observes Ewell uses his left hand. Atticus believes Ewell beat his daughter Mayella, not Tom Robinson. Ewell’s left-handedness and Tom’s disabled left arm lend weight to this because Mayella was hit on her right side by someone who led with their left hand.

“Miss Mayella,” said Atticus, in spite of himself, “a nineteen-year-old girl like you must have friends. Who are your friends?”
The witness frowned as if puzzled. “Friends?”
“Yes, don’t you know anyone near your age, or older, or younger? Boys and girls? Just ordinary friends?”
Mayella’s hostility, which had subsided to grudging neutrality flared again. “You makin’ fun o’ me agin Mr. Finch?”
Atticus let her question answer his.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 18. Atticus questions Mayella Ewell about her lack of friends to show that she is lonely.

“It’s not an easy question Miss Mayella, so I’ll try again. Do you remember him beating you about the face?” Atticus’s voice had lost its comfortableness; he was speaking in his arid, detached professional voice. “Do you remember him beating you about the face?”
“I don’t recollect if he hit me. I mean yes I do, he hit me.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 18. When Atticus asks Mayella Ewell during cross-examination if she remembers Tom Robinson beating her, she stumbles with her answers, contradicting herself. This calls her account into question.

“Scout,” breathed Jem. “Scout, look! Reverend, he’s crippled!”
Reverend Sykes leaned across me and whispered to Jem. “He got it caught in a cotton gin, caught it in Mr. Dolphus Raymond’s cotton gin when he was a boy…like to bled to death…tore all the muscles loose from his bones – “

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 18. When Atticus asks Tom Robinson to stand up so his accuser Mayella Ewell can get a good look at him, we discover there is no way Tom is guilty. His left arm is twelve inches shorter than his right, it hangs dead at his side and ends in a small shriveled hand. And Mayella had two hand prints around her neck and was beaten by a strong, left-handed man. This suggests the Mayella Ewell is lying.

Suddenly Mayella became articulate. “I got somethin’ to say,” she said.
Atticus raised his head. “Do you want to tell us what happened?” But she did not hear the compassion in his invitation. “I got somethin’ to say an’ then I ain’t gonna say no more. That n***** yonder took advantage of me an’ if you fine fancy gentlemen don’t wanta do nothin’ about it then you’re all yellow stinkin’ cowards, stinkin’ cowards, the lot of you. Your fancy airs don’t come to nothin – your ma’amin’ and Miss Mayellerin’ don’t come to nothin’, Mr. Finch – ”
Then she burst into real tears. Her shoulders shook with angry sobs. She was as good as her word.

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 18. Mayella, who is never treated with politeness, does not recognize Atticus’s politeness or compassion in the court. Her world is so completely different to his. A product of poverty and her father’s abuse and a victim herself she falsely accuses a black man of raping her.

“She reached up an’ kissed me ‘side of th’ face. She says she never kissed a grown man before an’ she might as well kiss a n*****. She says what her papa do to her don’t count. She says, ‘Kiss me back, n*****.’ I say Miss Mayella lemme outa here an’ tried to run but she got her back to the door an’ I’da had to push her. I didn’t wanta harm her, Mr. Finch, an’ I say lemme pass, but just when I say it Mr. Ewell yonder hollered through th’ window.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 19. Tom Robinson giving evidence at his trial describes how Mayella Ewell tried to hug him and kiss him. There is an inference in what Mayella told him – “what her father do to her don’t count” – that she may have been sexually abused by her father.

“She has committed no crime, she has merely broken a rigid and time-honored code of our society, a code so severe that whoever breaks it is hounded from our midst as unfit to live with. She is the victim of cruel poverty and ignorance, but I cannot pity her: she is white. She knew full well the enormity of her offense, but because her desires were stronger than the code she was breaking, she persisted in breaking it.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 20. Atticus tells the jury that Mayella Ewell is also a victim in the Tom Robinson case, poor, kept ignorant, abused by her father and prevented from having a relationship with the single person who was nice to her – black man Tom Robinson. She violated the code by making advances to a black man.

“She was white, and she tempted a Negro. She did something that in our society is unspeakable: she kissed a black man. Not an old Uncle, but a strong young Negro man. No code mattered to her before she broke it, but it came crashing down on her afterwards.”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 20. Atticus to the jury. Mayella Ewell broke Maycomb’s rigid social code, which says that a white woman must not kiss a black man. But rather than accept this some prefer to believe that the black man raped the white woman.

“Jem, see if you can stand in Bob Ewell’s shoes a minute. I destroyed his last shred of credibility at that trial, if he had any to begin with. The man had to have some kind of comeback, his kind always does. So if spitting in my face and threatening me saved Mayella Ewell one extra beating, that’s something I’ll gladly take. He had to take it out on somebody and I’d rather it be me than that houseful of children out there. You understand?”

– Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 23. Atticus is such a good and selfless human being that he can even feel compassion for a man as bad as Bob Ewell. After exposing Ewell’s lying in the witness box in court, Atticus says he would rather Ewell direct his fury at him rather than take it out on Mayella Ewell.
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