Why doesn't Mayella confess the truth in chapter 18 of To Kill a Mockingbird?
She's protecting her father. Even in abusive situations, there is often a co-dependent relationship between a father and a daughter. Here it seems there might be even more of a relationship with a missing mother and the father's need for a female in the home (in more than one way possibly).
If she struggles with her father, she may indeed be a character who would want to remain in that abusive situation just to protect the other children from him. They are younger and need some kind of a care-taker.
Think about the racial dynamics of those days and think about what her father is like...
One of the reasons that Tom is in so much trouble is that black men and white women are not supposed to have anything to do with each other in that time and place. So if Mayella has been voluntarily doing something even a...
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bit physical with a black man, she will be totally scorned and shunned by other whites.
In addition, her dad is a pretty violent man. If he feels like she has humiliated him, he will surely beat her.
As Atticus pointed out in his summation to the jury, Mayella committed the offense of tempting a Negro. According to Tom's testimony, she kissed Tom, threw her arms around his waist, and begged him to kiss her, which he refused to do. When her father, Bob, saw them together, he called her a "goddam whore," and threatened to kill her.
"She was white, and she tempted a Negro. She did something that in our society is unspeakable: she kissed a black man. Not an old Uncle, but a strong young Negro man. No code mattered to her before she broke it, but it came crashing down on her afterwards."
This was not something that she, or Bob, was willing to admit in public, so the two of them concocted the story that Tom had raped her, knowing that their word, as white citizens, would be believed over that of a black man. Mayella was probably intimidated by her father, who must have threatened her with further violence if she did not go along with his story. It was probably not the first time that her father had beaten her, and she was afraid to defy him. Although Bob and his family were already "the disgrace of Maycomb County," he knew that admitting the truth would further reduce his stature in the community (if that was possible). Bob hated blacks, and seeing his daughter admit her crime in public was not something he would allow.
Why doesn't Mayella in To Kill a Mockingbird confess the truth?
On the evening of November 21st, Mayella Ewell lured and kissed Tom Robinson in(to) her home. Unfortunately, Mayella's father witnessed her kissing Tom Robinson and proceeded to ruthlessly beat her after Tom fled the scene. During Tom Robinson's trial, Mayella lies on the witness stand by testifying that Tom Robinson assaulted and raped her.
There are several reasons as to why Mayella does not tell the truth and falsely accuses Tom of assaulting and raping her. The first reason Mayella lies on the witness stand is to protect her reputation and avoid public scrutiny. Mayella had broken a time-honored social code by tempting a black man, which is considered taboo behavior in her racially-prejudiced community, where interracial relationships are frowned upon.
In addition to avoiding public scrutiny for tempting a black man, Mayella does not want to incur her father's wrath by confessing that her father himself has assaulted her. Mayella fears her intimidating father and Bob more than likely threatened her to lie on the witness stand and corroborate his story.