Maycomb was a small fictional town in the Southern States of America in the 1930’s, that like many other towns had a disease. That is prejudice. In the 1930’s they were faced with many challenges such as The Great Depression, womens roles in society and Jim Crow Laws. They were all based around prejudice which influenced Harper Lee’s writing of the setting in To Kill a Mockingbird. The setting showed the prejudice that the town was build on and we could see with the class prejudice in the school yard, sexism in the Finch Household and racism in the court.

The school yard shows the class prejudice the adults feel which is passed on to their children. We are introduced to the school on Scouts first day and see it’s a reflection of the towns social hierarchy. “Miss Caroline, he’s a Cunningham”, is showing the prejudice that the town has on people with a lower class, impacted by the Great Depression. Farmers were hit hardest by the Great Depression, and like many other families in America at the time were struggling to make ends meet. Scout adds on to this, “Walter hasn’t got a quarter home to bring you, and you can’t use any stovewood”, which goes to show how crucial this social knowledge is in their society of social statuses. Families lost everything in The Great Depression. After losing all their money people become more creative in how they paid people, offering practical items that they had as payment to others. Like today with the COVID-19 pandemic where the stock market’s falling and people are losing jobs and homes, so some families could be in similar situations to them. “they were looking at me in the innocent assurance that familiarity breeds understanding”, townspeople weren’t as affected as farmers during the Great Depression. They couldn’t explain from experience their situation to those without the social knowledge of their community. The school yard acted as a miniature world for Scout, as Maycomb is her world, where she learnt how people acted to different circumstances based on what they learnt. We’re able to see class prejudice taught at a young age as we are seeing it at school where children are supposed to have open minds, not blinded by their parents prejudice. Harper Lee was showing us that prejudice is taught young until it festers into this untameable monster that can’t be controlled. She shows that to understand someone’s life and their views that you have to look at it through their eyes.

The Finch Household is where Scout lives and due to her choices is faced with sexism. Scout is introduced to sexism at a crucial point in her life when she’s about to hit puberty, showing her what a womens role in society is like in the 1930’s. “Aunt Alexandra was fanatical on the subject of my attire. “I could not possibly hope to be a lady if I wore breeches” when I said I could do nothing in a dress, she said I wasn’t supposed to be doing things that required pants,” women were confined into a life of parties and dresses, and to be considered a tom-boy was frowned upon. This quote shows how being a lady is defined by what you wear not one who you are as a person. So because of how society was set in their way and confined about how women should be, anyone who went outside of these boundaries was immediately frowned upon and looked as if they’d done something wrong by being themselves. “”shut your trap or go home – I declare to the Lord you’re gettin’ more like a girl every day!” With that, I had no option but to join them”, is a reflection of the ideal that society wants women to be silent mindless bystanders, because in the 1930’s women weren’t considered equal to men or able to be heard. They were seen as weak and inferior to males who needed their support to survive. Society failed young girls in making them think that being a women is one of the worst things to happen to you and that you should avoid it for as long as possible. “”Where are your britches today?””Under my dress.” I hadn’t meant to be funny but the ladies laughed”, this is pressure from other women, not men, to fit societies expectations to be the perfect women. We learn from this setting that society prejudice are taught young and in environments that are supposed to be safe and encourage individuality. Instead of allowing family member to have their own opinions and views, they are forced to share the families prejudices. Because sometimes the hardest place to make changes is within your own family, and you have to start the changes their before sparking change outside in the world. Today being a women isn’t related to what you dress like but for them in their time it was crucial for them. Lee might’ve faced these comments as she didn’t want to be the “perfect woman” and instead wanted to be whoever she was, and brace the world as a person rather than a woman. We see though that some women are happy fitting society’s expectations, but learn that the role isn’t for everyone and some want to break the chain and get high powered jobs and wear and act how they like without criticism. Now women have more opportunities to be themselves, not how society sees them. There are still people who don’t see women as equals which is noticeable through the pay gap and significantly less women in positions of power.

The courthouse is an ironic symbol of racial unjustness between races. “If you had been on that jury, son, with eleven other boys just like you, Tom would be a free man, so far nothing in your life has interfered with your reasoning process.” where we’re exposed to the knowledge that children watching the unfair trial are able to distinguish what’s right and what’s wrong, but aren’t able to comprehend why it’s happening. No one’s born racist. They might notice something is different in their skin colour, but they are taught to be racist when their parents act differently around coloured people and the comments they make. Lee was raised in a racist time and picked up on the racist tendencies too, which we see through a child’s perspective. A jury isn’t meant to be biased and already have an opinion on what they think the outcome will be. But as soon as they saw who the accused was, his fate was sealed. “In our courts, when it’s a white man’s word against a black man’s, the white man always wins. They’re ugly but those are the facts of life.”, the Jim Crow laws motto was “separate but equal”, but we are able to see that nothing about the racism made it equal as not even their opinions were held with equal respect. Society deemed anyone with darker skin can’t be trusted and is wrong, so it didn’t matter what the facts said as society decided who was guilty. After all, courts only held fair trials for the fair skinned. “They’ve done it before and they did it tonight and they’ll do it again and when they do it – seems only the children weep.”. Children are aware of the adults wrong doings but due to their age their voice doesn’t make a difference and end up growing up with their parents views. This continues the racist cycle. In New Zealands justice system, 50% of our prison population is made up of Maori, and of that 18% of Maori convicted will receive a prison sentence compared to 11% of Pakeha. The court was supposed to bring forward the facts and answers, but all they saw was colour. Instead of seeing the truth they saw white as right and were blind to it. Jim Crow Laws reminded them that the white race was superior and that nothing will change how the coloured community is viewed in their eyes as being inferior. With the 1930’s there was change in the coloured community taking action with the freedom riders and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks taking the stage, giving power to those who felt its absence for so long. Racism surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic towards people of asian descent proves that there is still a racial divide in our society today, we still have a long way to go to overcome racism today as we haven’t progressed that far from the 1930’s.

Harper Lee when writing Maycomb in To Kill a Mockingbird, was influenced by what was happening in the 1930’s which can also be related to what issues we have in society today. The class prejudice present in the school yard was more evident due to the Great Depression, the sexism in the Finch Household sparked from the lack of womens role in society, and racism in the courthouse correlates with the Jim Crow Laws.