Skeeter’s mother, Charlotte is an old-fashioned Southern woman who tries to persuade her daughter to conform to gender norms. Though dying of cancer, Charlotte is a fighter and is still alive at the end of the novel. Charlotte also harbors racist beliefs that she never renounces. Even though Constantine had been like a mother to Skeeter, she fires her just because her daughter Lulabelle pretended to be white and mingled with her white friends.
Charlotte Phelan Quotes in The Help
The The Help quotes below are all either spoken by Charlotte Phelan or refer to Charlotte Phelan. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 5
Quotes
“Now you look a here, Eugenia”—because Constantine was the only one who’d occasionally follow Mama’s rule. “Ugly live up on the inside. Ugly be a hurtful, mean person.”
Related Characters:
Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan (speaker), Constantine Bates (speaker), Charlotte Phelan
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Help LitChart as a printable PDF.
Charlotte Phelan Character Timeline in The Help
The timeline below shows where the character Charlotte Phelan appears in The Help. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 5
...field waiting for the cotton to bloom so they can begin the harvest. Skeeter’s mother, Charlotte Phelan, tells her to use her college education to get a job in a “man-meeting...
(full context)
Chapter 6
Upset about the news that Constantine was fired, Skeeter returns home and asks Charlotte if she fired Constantine. At first, her mother denies it, but when Skeeter says she...
(full context)
...wrong that she doesn’t know the truth about why Constantine left. Aibileen says her mother, Charlotte Phelan, fired Constantine because of something to do with Constantine’s daughter coming to find her....
(full context)
Chapter 8
At home, Charlotte helps Skeeter apply a hair care product that she bought to straighten her hair. While...
(full context)
Chapter 12
...spends four days straight organizing Aibileen’s stories into a twenty-seven page manuscript. Whenever her mother Charlotte asks what Skeeter is up to all day, Skeeter lies and says she’s writing down...
(full context)
Chapter 13
Skeeter is in her room typing up some of Minny’s day-to-day experiences when Charlotte knocks on her door and tells her that Stuart Whitworth is downstairs. Dressed nicely, he...
(full context)
...with her now. Terrified that Hilly will snoop through the bag, Skeeter asks her mother Charlotte to drive her to Hilly’s. Charlotte agrees, saying she’ll drop Skeeter off on the way...
(full context)
Chapter 20
In mid-July, Skeeter, Charlotte, and her father Carleton arrive at Stuart’s house for dinner with his parents, Francine and...
(full context)
Chapter 21
...on the book in order to distract herself from the pain of thinking about Stuart. Charlotte’s ulcers are also getting worse. Skeeter notices that every day her mother looks just a...
(full context)
Chapter 27
The next day Skeeter tells Charlotte she knows about everything that happened with Constantine, but that she wants to hear her...
(full context)
Charlotte says that Lulabelle walked straight passed her and started mingling with the other women who...
(full context)
Chapter 28
At the home that Skeeter shares with her parents, the family doctor informs her that Charlotte has cancer in her stomach lining. The doctor says her mother has two months to...
(full context)
Chapter 33
At a drugstore, Skeeter picks up medicine for Charlotte, who is still alive and battling cancer. There, she runs into a woman named Lou...
(full context)
...a letter accusing Skeeter of writing the book. She plans to give the letter to Charlotte, which worries Skeeter because this info will be a shock to her ailing mother. Hilly...
(full context)
