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Revenge In Hilly Holbrook's The Help

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Hilly Holbrook’s manipulative and condescending personality shapes her into the main villain of the novel, The Help. Her elite status in the town of Jackson, Mississippi, forces people to conform to her wants, and she punishes anyone who tries to challenge her. Due to her lack of concern for anyone other than herself, she becomes a brutal force against nearly every person she comes approaches. As mentioned in the book, Hilly is the epitome of the white woman stereotype. Aibileen’s analysis of the white women’s form of revenge accurately represents the character of Hilly. Hilly “likes to keep her hands clean” and “takes her time with revenge”; depicting such revenge in her way of punishing Aibileen for participating in writing Help. Cunningly, she waited and plotted for days after initially reading the book on attacking Aibileen. Hilly plots and schemes until she can use her silver service as blackmail and use Elizabeth to intimidatingly confront her. Moreover, revenge also showcases her racism towards African Americans. The relentless nature of her revenge stems from her ideology that black people are unworthy. Hilly feels as though Aibileen was disrespectful to have provoked her since she and her people are so, in her mind, less than and “they carry different kinds of diseases than she does". …show more content…

When it comes to revenge, she has no boundaries. Accordingly, Hilly sent a woman desperately working to send her children to college to jail for years over a worthless ruby ring. While she was aware of how essential Aibileen was to Elizabeth and her children, she put her best friend out of a maid after forcing her to fire Aibileen anyway. Whether it be a stranger or a family member, she is willing to betray anyone. Fully aware of her actions, Hilly disregards the consequences of her actions, harmful or not, due to her lack of

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