TL;DR: Bob Ewell's eldest daughter, nineteen years old, the State's accuser at Tom Robinson's trial. Raises six younger siblings in a shack by the dump, tends a row of red geraniums in cracked slop jars — the only beautiful thing the Ewell yard contains. Her false testimony, in service of the lie her father demands, is the trial's central tragedy.

Spoiler level: medium. Discusses her testimony and Atticus's cross-examination, which are the chapter the book turns on.

Snapshot

Mayella Violet Ewell is nineteen years old and looks, Scout notes, "as if she tried to keep clean" — a single line that, against the squalor she comes from, carries the whole weight of who she is. She is the only Ewell who can read. She is the oldest child in a household with no mother and a father who drinks the relief check. She has six younger siblings she effectively raises.

Role in the story

Mayella is the accuser at the center of the trial. In Chapter 18 she takes the stand and tells the courtroom that Tom Robinson came onto their property to bust up a chiffarobe, that she stepped inside to fetch him a nickel, that he grabbed her and beat her and raped her on the floor. Atticus's cross-examination is gentle in tone and surgical in content: he establishes that her father drinks, that no one in the family except her ever shows her affection, and that the right-side bruising on her face cannot have been made by a man with a dead left arm. She balks at the question of whether her father ever beats her — and refuses to answer further after.

Personality in plain English

Lonely. Hungry for any kindness. Painfully ashamed of where she comes from. Untaught — she cannot read above a basic level. Defensive. Frightened of her father in a way that quietly shapes everything she says and does not say. She mistakes Atticus's courteous "Miss Mayella" for mockery and resents him for it; the small detail tells you most of what you need to know about how often anyone has called her Miss anything. The book treats her without contempt — she is the human face of the book's hardest argument about what poverty does to a person.

What she wants

To not be alone. The book is rare in giving an antagonist's accomplice this much interiority — the chiffarobe was a pretext; the kiss she tried to give Tom Robinson, by his account, was the only deliberate thing she has done for herself in years. Mostly: to not be hit.

What she fears

Her father. The book leaves the specific abuse off-page but unmistakable. Her own testimony — every word of it — is in service of the story Bob has insisted she tell, and her balk under cross-examination is the closest she ever comes to refusing him.

Key relationships

• Bob Ewell — her father; the source of the testimony she gives and, the trial implies, the source of the bruises she attributes to Tom.
• Tom Robinson — the man she falsely accuses; the only person in her life, by Tom's account, who has shown her steady, unpaid kindness.
• Atticus Finch — her cross-examiner; the first adult in the trial to call her Miss, and the one who quietly dismantles her account without raising his voice.
• Her six younger siblings — whom she effectively raises and whose absence from the witness stand is its own form of testimony.

Visual identity

Nineteen years old, white. Broad almost-square face — a heavy-cheeked young face that has not been allowed to become a young woman's face. Strawberry-blonde / pale-ginger hair, lighter than her father's, pulled back into a low bun for court, frizz escaping at the temples. Thin ginger brows. Small slightly turned-up nose, pale freckles across the bridge. Broad ruddy cheekbones, faintly sunburned. Square jaw, small chin, a defensive set to the lower lip. Medium mouth downturned at the corners; lower lip slightly split from chewing. Small pale blue-green eyes, deep-set, red-rimmed from crying; pale lashes. Pale skin beneath the sunburn. A yellow-purple bruise blooming on the right side of her face from cheekbone to jaw, and faint fingertip bruises on the front of her throat — the forensic evidence Atticus uses to set the geometry of the trial. Chapped red hands from washing in the slop yard; chipped dirty nails despite the scrubbed face. Court outfit: a clean but cheap blue cotton dress, plain collar, no jewelry, white socks, lace-up shoes that don't quite fit, a stained handkerchief twisted in her hands.

Aliases

The following names and references in the book all point to this character. Use any of these as link anchors back to this page.

• Mayella Ewell (canonical — the most common form)
• Mayella Violet Ewell
• Mayella
• Miss Mayella (Atticus's address in court)

Discussion questions

• Atticus calls Mayella "Miss" on the stand and she snaps at him for it. The detail is small. What does it tell us about her life that we cannot get from any other line in the book?
• Lee gives Mayella six red geraniums in cracked white slop jars in front of the shack — the only beautiful thing the Ewell yard contains. Why is that detail in the book?
• Mayella's testimony is false and her father is implicitly her abuser. Is the book asking us to feel pity for her, contempt, or some specific blend of the two?
• "She has 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." That is Atticus's framing in his closing. Does the book ultimately agree with him about Mayella?
• Mayella refuses to answer further questions after Atticus asks whether her father has ever beaten her. What does the book gain by ending her testimony there, rather than letting her continue?