Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Help, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Racism
Gender and the Home
Social Class
Help vs. Hypocrisy
Writing, Storytelling, and Freedom
Summary
Analysis
Minny watches the same news program and starts worrying what Miss Hilly will think when she gets to the last chapter – the one about her and the pie. When Minny arrives at work the next day, Mister Johnny and Celia are in the kitchen waiting for her. Celia reveals that she told him about all the miscarriages. Johnny thanks Minny for saving his wife’s life the day of the most recent miscarriage.
This is the first time we’ve seen Celia since she cut down the mimosa tree. With that symbolic act of destroying societal expectations, she gains the confidence to tell Johnny the truth about her inability to have children. Given Johnny’s disregard for societal conventions in the past, it’s unsurprising that love prevails.
Themes
Mister Johnny says that Minny will always have a job at their home. Minny looks at her own pregnant stomach and wonders how she can have so much and they have so little. They all hug and start crying together.
Though Johnny and Celia are wealthy, live in a big house, and have the advantages of being white in a white supremacist society, Minny thinks that she is the one who is metaphorically “rich” because she has five children with another on the way. The schmaltzy group hug signifies that Celia and Minny have learned to truly respect and care for each other as people.
Themes
