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The Struggle In Kathryn Stockett's The Help

629 Words3 Pages

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 …show more content…

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

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Which in the film it shows us that. This is shown by the maid Yule May Davis because she asks for some extra money to send her twin boys to college and then tries to say that she would work for free. Hilly does not like what Yule said at all. Hilly viewed herself as top notched and Yule as a maid with diseases. Skeeter thought it was wrong to treat people differently.

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When Ablieen asked Minny to put her story in the book, she didn’t feel comfortable talking to Miss Skeeter and she was trying to set them up. Minny refused to talk to Miss Skeeter no matter what Ablieen said. She told Miss Skeeter that white people like her aren’t supposed to talk to the help. But Minny really showed her boldness when it came to Miss Hilly. Minny told Miss Hilly that she didn’t want to work for her because that would be putting her friend out of a job and Minny doesn’t want to do her friend like that.

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Hilly was also very degrading towards others, and manipulative. “‘Like I’d even consider beating my friend Yule May Crookle out a her job. Miss Hilly think everbody just as two-faced as she is (Stockett 398).’” According to this quote, it is clear to see that Ms. Hilly does not have a good reputation in the black community. In the novel, Ms. Hilly is shown to be cruel to those who oppose her.

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The Help By Kathryn Stockett

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What is most concerning about the text is the empathy that we are supposed to have for Miss Skeeter. Skeeter recent graduated from Ole Miss, who is a lonely person and returns home after college, overwhelmed that her maid is gone and that she is trapped with her parents. She comments, “I had to accept that Constantine, my one true ally, had left me to fend for myself with these people.” (The Help, p.81) Constantine was a black maid who worked for Miss Skeeter and it is quite clear that Stockett is writing about her own personality. It is written in the novel’s epilogue, “Too Little, Too Late: Kathryn Stockett,

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