Stereotypes In The Help By Kathryn Stockett

Stereotypes- The thought that comes into our minds when we think about individuals or plainly, just groups of people. Throughout the decades, women have been expected to be smart homemakers, nurturing mothers, and obedient wives above anything else. In the novel, The Help by Kathryn Stockett, women strived to fit the 1960’s stereotype, the hairdo and all. However, Skeeter, the main character, plays an educated, unmarried, and aspiring writer. And by writing a book based on secret interviews, she tries to understand the lives and relationships between black maids and white housewives, during the Civil Rights Movement. Celia Foot is also an important character; she is the new “white trash” woman in town who is childless and rejected by the other women because of her immodesties. Indeed, both of these women have strived to overcome the stereotypes of their time by refusing to conform to the traditional gender role of women in

Her maid, Minny, describes her as a risqué and different woman. She claims, “She might be built like Marilyn…her yellow hairdo…her green glue-on eyelashes…her tacky pink pant suit” (Stockett 57). All of the other housewives in town felt threatened and appalled by Celia, because of the way that she dressed and acted around men, and as a result, she had few friends besides Minny. Nevertheless, little did they know that she aimed to become more of a “normal” woman as she wanted to learn how to cook and run the household. Mrs. Foot even goes as far to say, “Oh, we’re gonna have kids…kids is the only thing worth living for” (Stockett 40). Women back then were more highly valued as mothers; therefore, Celia becomes extremely heartbroken when she realizes that she cannot have any kids. However, she fails to realize until the end of the plot, that her husband is one of the few good men of his time who loved his wife