Atticus certainly believes that Mayella is lying when she
claims that Tom beat and raped her, and he spells out her reasons plainly in his
summation to the jury (in Chapter 20). According to Tom's testimony, Mayella asked him
to come into the Ewell house and, once inside, she kissed him and hugged him. He said
that she told him it was planned in advance, since she had saved nickels for a whole
year so she could send the other Ewell kids to buy ice cream. She told Tom that since
she'd never been kissed before,
"... she might as well kiss a nigger. She says
what her papa do to her don't count. She says, 'Kiss me back, nigger.' I say Miss
Mayella lemme outta
here..."
An important point
here is her statement that what "papa do to her don't count," which suggests an
underlying possibility that an incestuous relationship was going on between Mayella and
Bob. Since Bob probably beat her afterward, this would also help to explain why they
chose to blame Tom to cover up Bob's own attack.
In his
summation, Atticus declared that
"She knew
full well the enormity of her offense... she tried to put the evidence of her offense
away from her... she struck out at her victim... She must destroy the evidence of her
offense.
"She was white, and she tempted a Negro. She did something that
in our society is unspeakable: She kissed a black man."
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