uses 's gender
to counter-attack when he believes she challenges his manhood. For example, when Jem pushes
Scout in the tire and it rolls onto the Radley's front yard, Scout comes back without it. Jem
tells her to go get the tire, and because of a dare he had with Dill, she tells him to go get it
himself. After he returns with the tire, he says the following:
"'See there?' Jem was scowling triumphantly. 'Nothin' to it. I swear, Scout,
sometimes you act so much like a girl it's mortifyin'.'"There was more
to it than he knew, but I decided not to tell him" (38).
Jem, in an effort to save face and further prove he isn't a coward, suggests that they
playas a game. Scout didn't buy his smokescreen for a second and says the following:
"Jem's head at times was transparent: he had thought that up to
make me understand he wasn't afraid of Radleys in any shape or form, to contrast his own
fearless heroism with my cowardice" (38).
If Scout
is picking up on this battle of the sexes at a young age, she's sure to be influenced by it. For
one thing, she threatens and beats up boys like Walter Cunningham, Jr. and Cecil Jacobs when she
is challenged. She may not consciously know it, but it's what boys do, so she does it. She also
runs around in coveralls in the summer rather than wearing dresses. And, if all she has are boys
to play with in the neighborhood, then she will want to act like them so she isn't rejected from
games.
Another time that Scout shows self-awareness for her gender is when
she hears Reverend Sykes say that bootlegging was bad, but women were worse. She thinks to
herself the following:
"Again, as I had often met it
in my own church, I was confronted with the Impurity of Women doctrine that seemed to preoccupy
all clergymen" (122).
At this point Scout must
recognize that men of all races view women as something less than men. She never says she wishes
she were a boy, though, which suggests that she, along with many other girls, is simply trying
to find her niche in life as a girl in a boy's world.
Aunt Alexandra doesn't
help by moving in with them and doing her darnedest to get Scout to act and look more like a
girl. Scout resists her Aunt Alexandra mostly because she doesn't like her--not because she
doesn't want to continue to be a girl. Jem eventually gets involved and tries to influence Scout
by saying the following:
"You know she's not used to
girls, . . . leastways, not girls like you. She's trying to make you a lady. Can't you take up
sewin' or something'?" (225).
It's bad enough to
have to wear dresses, now Jem is asking her to start sewing? This is a definite gender
stereotype to which Scout says, "Hell no" (225). But again, her arguments after Jem
says this go along the lines of her not wanting to act like a girl simply to satisfy his or Aunt
Alexandra's desires--not because she doesn't like her own gender.
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