Scout's Journey to Womanhood

As girls grow in life, they mature and change into women. In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, Scout, the main character, begins to mature into a woman. In the beginning of the book, she is a tomboy who cannot wait to pick a fistfight with anyone, but at the end, she lowers her fists because her father, Atticus, tells her not to fight. Scout's views of womanhood, influenced by how Aunt Alexandra, Miss Maudie, and Calpurnia act, make her think more about becoming a woman and less of a tomboy. In the beginning of the book, Scout is a tomboy. She acts, dresses, and walks like a boy because when she was little her mom died, leaving her in a house with two men, Jem and Atticus. Scout has a lot of masculine influence but no feminine influence. Scout also has a raging temper, a manly trait, which she develops by hanging around boys too much. For example, one day at school, she punches Walter Cunningham for embarrassing her in front of the new teacher, and when she gets home, Atticus lectures her and tells her to control her temper and never to punch anyone ever again. Instead of acting like a girl, she goes hunting, swimming, and running around with boys, in boys clothes. Scout does not want to be a woman. Jem tells Scout, "It's time you started bein' a girl and acting right" (115) as opposed to earlier when he told Scout to stop acting like a girl. Scout gets all offended when he says both of these because she had always wanted to be exactly like Jem, which is why she always acts like a boy and never like a girl. Later in the book she says, "Ladies seem to live in faint horror of men . . . But I liked them. There was something about them, no matter how much they cussed and drank and gambled and chew. No matter how delectable they were, there was something about them that I instinctively like" (234). Now she likes men because in her opinion they are better and more fun, as opposed to her liking them just because of Jem. Her views on