t, not a husband. So, Stuart s phrase can be applied to the majority of the white women, as we see it in the movie.for the «black» society - it was characterized by gender discrimination: from the movie we learn that Minny is abused by her husband Leroy, because he was fired after what Minny had done to Hilly. Also he made their daughter quit the school to help him pay the bills. So, obviously, he was dominating in the family, in spite of the fact that Minny seemed to be strong both emotionally and physically., Right in the 1960s there emerged a second upsurge of feminism and we can see some influence of it on the « white »society. Women begin participating in the social life, for example Hilly promotes new projects concerning segregation. They drive cars and smoke, which had always been men s characteristics.character of Celia Foote is at the same time purely feminine, as I have already said, but at some moments she strikes with her masculinity. Without any confusion or hesitation she kills a cock for diner by herself. Even for Minny, who was not that soft and delicate, it was not so easy to look at that scene. Besides, Celia, after several miscarriages, had to bury her children by herself, concealing it from everybody. It is very unusual even nowadays for a woman to bear something on her own, without sharing her emotions and feelings with anyone., It is the character of Eugenia Skeeter who represents an embodiment of all the characteristics of a feminist.action of Skeeter shows her as a non-conformist in everything.of all, she is not striving for having a rich husband and giving birth to children. She wants to be a professional journalist or writer. But nobody understands her ambitions - moreover, nobody even pays attention to them. For example, when she shared the news of her getting a job with her mother, Hilly and her friends, nobody showed any interest in it and all of them unanimously started talking about men and marriage. They did not consider having a career a serious thing; finding a wealthy man for Eugenia - that was purpose number one. It is interesting that even if Skeeter was not striving for a marriage, she was not against dating someone. The matter was that she was too strong, independent and straight-forward to find a man who would appreciate these qualities in that patriarchal society. The reaction of Stuart on her behavior was different throughout the movie. At first, he was surprised to face a woman who was not interested in the «professional husband hunting» and who could put him down for his insulting words. Then he got interested in her, because he «had never met a woman saying exactly what she was thinking». By these words he actually means that other women were pretentious and cunning, while Eugenia was honest and often even blunt, which made her different from others. But by the end of the movie he was tired of her character, because he was not used to being with a woman who would not obey and admire him, that s why he calls her «selfish». Fact that she decided to write a book with the stories of the help, also shows her as a person who swam against the stream, and it required courage and ability to be an independent individuality, a free-thinker. These characteristics were also peculiar mostly to men, as the women of the 1960s were dependent on men and kept themselves from expressing their own opinion.more traditionally masculine feature that both Skeeter and the black women possesse...
