In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee uses the protagonist to draw parallels to her personal experiences. Like Jean-Louise Finch, Harper Lee also did not follow society’s gender expectations. During the 1930’s, the time period in which the story takes place, the culture of Maycomb was that women were expected to be a certain way and were not treated as if they were equal to men. Scout’s personality breaks away from traditional gender roles as a result of her upbringing and role models. Scout does not follow the expectations of a traditional southern lady. Throughout the novel, Scout is portrayed to be very playful and somewhat troublesome which is not the typical behaviour of a girl. One instance would be where Scout almost gets into a physical fight with Cecil Jacobs, a boy in her class, over him saying that her father, Atticus Finch, defends niggers as he was defending a black man in court, Tom Robinson who was accused of raping a white woman.”It was the first time I ever walked away from a fight” (Lee,85) Scout has never walked away from a physical altercation with a person, this shows Scout’s fearlessness for a girl or a southern belle. A southern belle is the term used to describe the white Southern American woman who was expected to have a certain class level and practice typical female decency.. Further into Scout’s character, she dresses differently from most girls her age as she wears overalls and pants while girls her age would wear dresses. “When I said I could do nothing in a dress, she said I wasn’t supposed to be doing things that required pants” (90). This refers to a conversation between Scout and Aunt Alexandra where Aunt Alexandra basically states that since Scout is a girl, she should not be spending her time doing boyish activities that require her to wear pants, this blatantly shows Aunt’s Alexandra’s expectations for Scout in terms of Scout to be more like a girl but Scout continues to contradict southern belle expectations as she does her own thing and dresses as she wants. Following up on this, it is not considered lady like for a girl to swear but Scout does it anyway because she rebels against the norm of expressing herself in a proper manner for a girl.”[...] F