Friendship in the Help

                                                The Helps

        Friendship is at the heart of the story of The Colour of Feelings, and it is also friendship that played a decisive role in the birth of the film. Tate Taylor, the director and writer, and Kathryn Stockett, the author (whose first novel this is), are indeed childhood friends and both grew up in the 1970s in the town of Jackson. And it is in Greenwood, a small town also in Mississippi, that they decided to put their cameras down, in order to represent the time (the 1960s) in the most authentic way possible, which was not possible in a studio shoot.

The story takes place in one of the most important and culturally and socially disruptive periods in the history of the United States. The three main characters are played by actresses Emma Stone as Skeeter, Viola Davis as Aibileen and Octavia Spencer as Minnie. Over the course of their encounters, a true friendship will be forged between these three women.
However, long before being friends with the maids, Skeeter is friends with a totally different group of women.
I would therefore describe and compare what these friendships are made in this particular context.


Miss Skeeter was raised by a maid with whom she developed a strong friendship. However, when she returned from university she did not find her at home and asked her family what had happened to her, without any answer. Already different from the others and after her studies, she found a job at the Jackson newspaper. She writes Miss Myrna's household column. But as she knows nothing at all about it, she approached the famous Elizabeth, one of her friends, so that she would allow her to question Aibileen, her maid. Eugenia (Miss Skeeter) is so different from her friends that she always finds a kind word to say to both of them, white or black, which is why she is reproved by all.

Another friend of Skeeter's is the president of the League and the city's bridge club, Hilly Holbrook. She's the spoiled girl type.
However, Miss Skeeter being of the same social class has grown up around these women and shares with her a friendship with very strict implicit rules. Which no longer suit Miss Skeeter, as can be seen when she overrides Elizabeth's prohibition against speaking to her maid.
In the course of history, we can see their friendship thinning out so that in the end there is nothing left. Eugenia decides little by little who she wants to be really friends with and not impose these relationships by the social rigour of the time.

At the same time, Miss Skeeter creates a friendship based on much healthier foundations with two maids, Aibileen and Minny. They are going to write a book to gather as much history as possible about Eugenia's "friends". And it is through this that their friendships will be woven. These three women, who had to be opposed to each other, will first trust each other and then find themselves linked by an incredible friendship.  The scene that I find most characteristic of their friendships is when they are together, in Aibileen's house, telling their stories and laughing.

Their friendships will be strengthened because they are bound by the secrets of the stories they tell. This will culminate in Miss Skeeter's first literary success. Who gives her share to each contributor of the novel entitled: The Help.  And Aibileen and Minny are paid, standing ovation.


To conclude we can say that friendship has always been a way of life, despite the "social rules", and that it allows us to get through the most difficult moments.

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