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Notes -
Not the greatest example, because the reason Mayella comes onto Tom Robinson is because she's lonely, neglected and abused by her family, her father in particular. It's heavily implied that the reason she throws him under the bus is because of severe social pressure she's under, particularly from her abuse father. You're meant to have at least some sympathy for the position Mayella is in. At the end of the day, it's still meant to be her father Bob Ewell, as the major villain, thematically representing the evil patriarchal white supremacy that is being criticized in To Kill a Mockingbird.
You're not wrong about Mayella. She is clearly forced into the position of power; her situation is tragic rather than villainous. But a sympathetic portrayal is non necessarily uncritical.
OP's suggestion was that white women don't get portrayed as holding the kind of power that preempts consent. Here we have a sympathetic, abused white woman who is clearly doing just that. She gets to decide if Tom lives or dies, and the novel is unambiguous that she chooses wrong. I think that's a decent counterexample.
My interpretation is that what is implied is that she really doesn't have that power. Maybe she does in the literal sense, but in the social context she's just victim of her abusive father (who really has the power) and the social environment more generally. We can easily imagine that if Mayella had defended Tom on the stand, she would have been badly beaten if not much worse. She is essentially coerced and doesn't have that power.
Yeah, I wanted to work a sentence in about how she's effectively a conduit for the racist culture, a tool, but still guilty. The fact that she was coerced is a parallel to the jurors who know something isn't right but are too afraid/entrenched to admit it. Social pressure doesn't exonerate them from the fact that in the end, they live and Tom dies.
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