The Struggle In Kathryn Stockett's The Help

In the midst of the Civil Rights Movement and the prejudice south, three brave women set out to make people aware of the mistreatment of the ‘help’ of Jackson, Mississippi. In Kathryn Stockett’s The Help, the struggles of the colored community of Jackson are going through to get help and equality for their people like many other colored communities in the south were inequality booms. The main antagonist Hilly Holbrook enforces every oppressing social standard she believes in. Hilly uses her power any many ways to aid her political agenda such as using the local news and using her position as President in the Women’s Junior League as a form of intimidation over others. Since Hilly had a friend, Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan, who was not only working for the Jackson Journal but was also editor of the League, she had some control of what she could

As Skeeter, Aibileen, and Minny get closer finishing their book, Hilly gets more aggressive and serious with her threats. After Skeeter posted Hilly’s newsletter with a ‘typo’ that gave Skeeter a motive to place 32 toilets in Hilly’s yard, Hilly finally decided to remove her as editor of the League’s newsletter to save her and the League’s reputation (Stockett 412-3). Toward the end of the novel, Hilly has figured out the novel Skeeter has wrote is about the maids of Jackson, Mississippi, but she cannot tell anyone because of a story Minny put in there. However, it does not stop her from having people fire their maids even if she has no reasoning behind it. This leads to her convincing Miss Leefolt, Aibileen’s employer, to fire Aibileen as a maid for ‘theft’ of Hilly’s silver which was a cover up to Hilly’s real motive for firing her (Stockett 518-22). This is a really devastating moment for Aibileen, but it was all because Hilly had such a powerful hold on what her friend Elizabeth Leefolt did or did not