Merope Gaunt and Mayella Ewell

[ericoppen]

No: HPFGUIDX 136815

When reading HBP, I was struck by how much the Gaunt household 
reminded me of a book I know very well---_To Kill a Mockingbird,_ and 
specifically the way the Ewells are described.  (For those not 
familiar with the book, the Ewells are the evil white-trash family 
who precipitate much of the book's action---Bob Ewell's oldest 
daughter, Mayella, accuses a black man, Tom Robinson, of raping 
her.)  

Like the Ewells, the Gaunts have no mother, and their family is very 
poor and extremely dysfunctional.  Like Mayella Ewell, Merope Gaunt 
wants something better than her horrible family (she's described 
as "trying to keep clean," unusually for an Ewell, and she keeps 
flowers in emulation of the respectable ladies of the town) and, like 
Mayella, Merope takes drastic action to get what she wants.  (The 
rape accusation comes after Bob sees Mayella kissing a horrified Tom 
Robinson, and immediately claims that he was trying to rape her, even 
though she had precipitated the kiss against Tom's wishes.)  

If Mayella Ewell had been able to lay her hands on a love potion and 
get some "respectable" man in the community to ingest it, I'd bet US 
to Confederate dollars that she'd have done it in a heartbeat.  This 
would have led to a serious scandal---people like the Ewells are 
absolutely at the bottom of the social scale in the Southern US; 
someone like Jem Finch (brother of _TKAM_'s narrator) could maybe 
marry a member of the "cracker" class without too much friction, but 
having anything at all to do with Mayella Ewell would outrage his 
family.

Both women---Mayella Ewell and Merope Gaunt---are greatly to be 
pitied, the victims of their horribly dysfunctional, mentally-tweaked 
(at least) fathers.  At the same time, the things they do are 
undeniably evil.  If some woman I'd normally never touch fed me a 
love potion, and had her way with me, I'd be extremely upset when/if 
the potion wore off---it would be a form of rape, even though no 
violence was used.  

Does anybody else who's read _Mockingbird_ care to comment---or am I 
the only one who sees this parallel?  *donning Howlerproof armour*

Eric Oppen (www.livejournal.com/users/ravenclaw_eric)