The Only Use of
ordeal
in
To Kill a Mockingbird
- They put the women out in huts when their time came, whatever that was; they had no sense of family—I knew that'd distress Aunty—they subjected children to terrible ordeals when they were thirteen; they were crawling with yaws and earworms, they chewed up and spat out the bark of a tree into a communal pot and then got drunk on it.
p. 261.0ordeals = very difficult experiences
Definition:
a very difficult or painful experience