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Breaking Cycles In Kathryn Stockett's The Help

406 Words2 Pages

Breaking a cycle is like breaking a bad habit, it’s hard and requires a lot of work. Kathryn Stockett makes this clear when Skeeter writes the book about the colored Help. In the novel, The Help, by Kathryn Stockett, the characters break cycles. In particular, the character Skeeter (Eugenia) Phelan goes against society’s expectations for women to drop out of college and get married.
Skeeter went against society's expectations by finishing college and not getting married, unlike her friends that dropped out when they got married. Skeeter and her mom quarrel a lot about how she isn't married at her age. The also argue about how she should have come home with a husband and not a diploma. “We’ve had this conversation so many times. “Four years my daughter goes off to college and what …show more content…

“It’s all about putting yourself in a man-meeting situation where you can⎯⎯” “Mama,” “I say, just wanting to end this conversation,” “would it really be so terrible if I never met a husband?” “ Don’t. Don’t say that, Eugenia. Why, every week I see another man in town over six feet and I think, If Eugenia would just try…” (Stockett 66) Skeeter goes against her mother’s wishes and society’s expectations to get married in college, even when everybody is pressuring her to go out on dates and eventually get married. Skeeter does not get married and she actually finishes college, which is very rare and something that white women don’t do in Jackson, Mississippi. She isn’t like her friends that dropped out of college to get married, even though that’s what her mother wanted her to do.
Skeeter ignored society’s expectations by getting a job and writing a book that goes against the idea of segregation. She got a job at the Jackson Journal after Elaine Stein suggested that she got some experience in writing before she could accept Skeeters job

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