MovieChat Forums > The Help (2011) Discussion > Nice to see a supportive husband

Nice to see a supportive husband


I feel like most men are more judgemental of their wives back in they day, I'm glad Celia's was different.

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Johnny was a sweetheart. No wonder he and Hilly didn't work out.

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[deleted]

Not really because Hilly and her husband have a reciprocal relationship. She married him because he's good looking and had a promising career and he married her because she's hot and will stay home and manage the house. It is a marriage of convenience where is secondary or not in the picture at all.

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[deleted]

I don't think it was a that reciprocate relationship. Hilly wears the pants and orders her husband around as much as everyone else and he doesn't stand up to her to avoid her nagging (and he's content of a having a good looking wife taking care of things in the house, regardless of her personality). And of course, that all comes from Hilly's frustration of having to settle for second best, not being able to marry Johnny.
(Plus the guy she married wasn't that handsome, IMO, at least nowhere near as Johnny or even Stuart.)

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I agree with the previous poster. Celia hadn't been married to Johnny for long, and we know he married her not long after he broke up with Hilly. That means that Hilly didn't wait long to marry either. I suspect that Hilly was expecting a proposal from Johnny, and when he broke up with her, she hurriedly accepted the proposal of the first wealthy and eligible man who asked her, regardless of whether or not she liked him.

Several factors would have been at play. She was hurt by Johnny's rejection, but more pressingly, humiliated. She went into damage control so that she wouldn't get labelled a poor jilted spinster and lose her social position. She probably wanted to make Johnny jealous, perhaps in an effort to get him to change his mind. Him marrying Celia was the straw that broke the camel's back. Hilly probably set her wedding date the second she heard that Johnny and Celia's was set, and she probably set it to fall earlier than theirs.




The mirror... it's broken.
Yes, I know. I like it that way. Makes me look the way I feel.

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Hilly had not completed her college education so she had very little to fall back on...even back then.

Being schoolteacher required @ least a college degree. And she was not interested in working retail (requiring only high school degree). Being married off was the only 'decent' thing to do.

Johnny may (by marrying Celia) initially support traditional gender roles--but he is gradually realizing through her drinking that she is 'bored' and not really cut out for "this kind of life" (as Celia herself laments). Because of his apparent discomfort with racism he would be maybe open to the emergent feminist movement's critique of 'the feminine mystique' vs writing it off as a womans problem

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In a sequel Celia might obtain resources needed (again building on 'the help theme) to become an effective independent and happy equal whether going to school, working somewhere or perhaps even both.

Johnny himself is not completely happy right now even with Celia who is not racist. She is trying to be a 'nice housewife' but laments that she is not cut out for that kind of life. Not every woman is supposed to be a housewife. And not every woman has to be one either.

He would perhaps be happier if Celia had more opportunities because he does not have to worry about her being hurt/sick/depressed. She has something to do all day vs getting drunk and miscarrying from the drinking. She would not be chasing after women who did not really want to hang out with her.

He had confided to Minny that he was worried about his wife. Stress impacts him too. Not every woman IS cut out to stay at home and only have babies. She's happy when SHE is helping people herself. She is not idling around.

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Hilly's husband was not good looking at all.

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and he gave her something on her lip!!

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LOL ...
I was under the impression the pie did that as I never noticed it until then.

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