Pages 249 - 279
Chapters 17 - 18
Minny's tolerance with Miss Celia's strange behavior finally come to it's boiling point during these chapters. At first Minny think Miss Celia is an alcoholic, which hurts her worse than anything. Minny sees Miss Celia as just another person who has disappointed her by turning to alcohol, like her father and husband. The fact that Miss Celia seems to be on the same level as Minny's father and husband shows that Minny really does care for Miss Celia.
It is then learned that Miss Celia isn't an alcoholic, but a pregnant woman who has had 3 pervious miscarriages. Minny learns this when Miss Celia experiences her 4th miscarriage. It explains why Miss Celia is so lazy, she's afraid if she moves too much, she'll lose the baby. After losing the baby, Miss Celia breaks down wondering why a child wouldn't want her as a mother. I see this as not only pain from the miscarriage, but pain rom being rejected from society. Miss Celia feels as if no one wants her, not as a friend, or a mother. Maybe Minny's job is to show her that people do care about her and want her in their life, and that's the significance of Minny's role to Miss Celia.
Minny wonders "how [Miss Celia got] this far in life without knowing where lines are drawn." Basically she doesn't understand how Miss Celia is where she is, when she doesn't seem to understand the basic rules in society, like you can't eat at the same table with the black help. I wonder if this shows the relevance of class to racism people are exposed to. Miss Celia is from a very poor part of Mississippi and I wonder if there, racism isn't that big of an issue. When you're so poor that you struggle just to eat everyday, who you're eating beside can seem like a trivial issue. Maybe the bigger the class, the more entitled you feel to mandatory segregation. That would explain why Miss Celia doesn't care what Minny does, but Miss Hilly is uptight about where her help puts their food. Miss Skeeter would be the only exception to this logic, but I think that's because she never fit into her society and always felt like an outcast, therefore related to the help better than she did her mother.
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I would think they would. While poor white people and poor black people are of different races, they are from the same level of society. That means they have more in common. It's almost of if the high class white people are of their own race, because of the way they put themselves off as. Even in today's society, some upper class people think of themselves as being above lower classes, which make middle and lower class people relate to one another more easily.
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