Aunt Alexandra is very traditional and her view of gender roles is also. Scout does not behave like a typical girl, and this is alarming to Aunt Alexandra because she is worried that she will be ill-prepared as she grows up and has to take on the duties and roles that women do.
Scout is far more interested in playing with her brother, Jem, and her best friend, Dill. She is a tomboy through and...
Aunt Alexandra is very traditional and her view of gender roles is also. Scout does not behave like a typical girl, and this is alarming to Aunt Alexandra because she is worried that she will be ill-prepared as she grows up and has to take on the duties and roles that women do.
Scout is far more interested in playing with her brother, Jem, and her best friend, Dill. She is a tomboy through and through.
"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. Aunt Alexandra's vision of my deportment involved playing with small stoves, tea sets, and wearing the Add-A-Pearl necklace she gave me when I was born" (Ch.9)
Note the type of behavior Alexandra is hoping for relates to female domesticity.
"During the years in which Lee grew up and set her novel, America advocated the home as a woman’s domain" (Scouting for a Tomboy: Gender-Bending Behaviors in Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird).
Aunt Alexandra feels that the lack of a mother figure in the Finch home has caused Scout to be more masculine than feminine and she is trying to help "right the ship," so to speak, before it is too late and Scout grows up set in her ways. She is, in her own way, trying to exert a positive, feminine influence on Scout.
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