Editing To Kill a Mockingbird (section)

=== Gender roles ===
Just as Lee explores Jem's development in coming to grips with a racist and unjust society, Scout realizes what being female means, and several female characters influence her development.  Scout's primary identification with her father and older brother allows her to describe the variety and depth of female characters in the novel both as one of them and as an outsider.<ref name="ware">Ware, Michele "'Just a Lady': Gender and Power in Harper Lee's ''To Kill a Mockingbird''" in ''Women in Literature: Reading Through the Lens of Gender'' Jerilyn Fisher and Ellen S. Silber (eds.), Greenwood Press (2003). {{ISBN|978-0-313-31346-2}}.</ref>  Scout's primary female models are Calpurnia and her neighbor Miss Maudie, both of whom are strong-willed, independent, and protective.  Mayella Ewell also has an influence; Scout watches her destroy an innocent man in order to hide her desire for him.  The female characters who comment the most on Scout's lack of willingness to adhere to a more feminine role are also those who promote the most racist and classist points of view.<ref name="shackelford">Shackelford, Dean (Winter 1996–1997). "The Female Voice in To Kill a Mockingbird: Narrative Strategies in Film and Novel", ''Mississippi Quarterly: The Journal of Southern Cultures'', '''50''' (1), pp. 101–113.</ref>  For example, Mrs. Dubose chastises Scout for not wearing a dress and [[camisole]], and indicates she is ruining the family name by not doing so, in addition to insulting Atticus' intentions to defend Tom Robinson.  By balancing the masculine influences of Atticus and Jem with the feminine influences of Calpurnia and Miss Maudie, one scholar writes, "Lee gradually demonstrates that Scout is becoming a feminist in the South, for with the use of first-person narration, she indicates that Scout/Jean Louise still maintains the ambivalence about being a Southern lady she possessed as a child."<ref name="shackelford"/>

Absent mothers and abusive fathers are another theme in the novel. Scout and Jem's mother died before Scout could remember her, Mayella's mother is dead, and Mrs. Radley is silent about Boo's confinement to the house. Apart from Atticus, the fathers described are abusers.<ref name="finegender">Fine, Laura (Summer 1998). "Gender Conflicts and Their 'Dark' Projections in Coming of Age White Female Southern Novels", ''Southern Quarterly: A Journal of the Arts in the South'' '''36''' (4), pp. 121–129</ref> Bob Ewell, it is hinted, molested his daughter,<ref name="baecker"/> and Mr. Radley imprisons his son in his house to the extent that Boo is remembered only as a phantom. Bob Ewell and Mr. Radley represent a form of masculinity that Atticus does not, and the novel suggests that such men, as well as the traditionally feminine hypocrites at the Missionary Society, can lead society astray. Atticus stands apart as a unique model of masculinity; as one scholar explains: "It is the job of real men who embody the traditional masculine qualities of heroic individualism, bravery, and an unshrinking knowledge of and dedication to social justice and morality, to set the society straight."<ref name="finegender"/>