The Help Eugenia Feminist Analysis

During the 1960s, each member of society had a mould, a niche in which she was expected to fit. For white women it was that of a wife and child-bearer, for African American women it was that of a maid paid 95 cents an hour while being expected to put food on the table for two families, and for those born in lower social class is was that of proverbial white trash, society’s backwater. While some at this time relented to the pressure exerted upon them by social standards and expectation, social upheaval was brewing; women were beginning to discover that the role in which society had demanded they fill was not the only role they had the potential to fill. In Tate Taylor’s film The Help, Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan, Aibileen Clark and Minny Jackson are these people. As they find themselves at the confluence of …show more content…
While all of the other women had dropped out of university, married their husbands and begun having children Skeeter seems wary about the idea of abandoning her aspirations in order to become a socialite, obsessed with the next club meeting or social gathering. Her mother, who, like the others, does not share Skeeter’s bohemian attitudes, believes the metric by which success for women is measured is in the husband she marries, she like Skeeter’s peers Hilly Holbrook and Elizabeth Leefolt believes that Skeeter is spending too much time with her career, even questioning if Skeeter “find[s] men attractive”. In The Help Skeeter serves as a symbol of feminism at that time. During the 1960s the second wave of feminism was occurring across America. Women everywhere were challenging their place as homemakers and wives and were beginning to question whether they could follow their aspirations or if they had to sacrifice them to save face in the eyes of social pressure. While the first wave of feminism was focused on women ’s