the help

Plot:

Aibileen Clark (Viola Davis) is a middle-aged black maid who has spent her life raising white children and has recently lost her only son. Minny Jackson (Octavia Spencer) is another black maid whose outspokenness has gotten her fired many times and built up a reputation for being a difficult employee, but she makes up for this with her phenomenal cooking skills.

Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan (Emma Stone) is a young white woman who has recently moved back home to her family's plantation after graduating from the University of Mississippi[4] to find that her beloved childhood maid, Constantine, has quit while she was away. Skeeter is skeptical because she believes Constantine would have written to her.

Unlike her friends, who have all married and are having children, Skeeter is interested in a career as a writer. Her first job is as a "homemaker hints" columnist in the local paper, and she asks Aibileen, the maid to her good friend Elizabeth, for her help in answering domestic questions. Skeeter becomes uncomfortable with the attitude her friends have towards their "help," especially Hilly Holbrook (Bryce Dallas Howard) and her "Home Help Sanitation Initiative," a proposed bill to provide for separate bathrooms for black help because she believes that 'they' [black people] carry different diseases to 'us' [white people]. Amidst the era of discrimination based on color, Skeeter is one of the few who believe otherwise, and she decides to write a book, Help, based on the lives of the maids who have spent their entire lives taking care of white children.

The maids are at first reluctant to talk to Skeeter, because they are afraid that they will lose their jobs or worse. Aibileen is the first to share her stories after she overhears Hilly's initiative and realizes that the children whom she has been raising are growing up to be just like their parents. Her friend, Minny, has just been fired as Hilly's maid (for something she refers to as "the terrible awful") and has gone to work for a wealthy social outcast, Celia Foote. Minny initially declines to participate but later agrees to share her stories as well.

Skeeter writes a draft of the story with Minny and Aibileen's stories in it and sends it to Miss Stein, an editor for Harper Row, in New York, who thinks there may be some interest in it, but requires at least a dozen more maids' contributions before it can become a viable book. Believing that the book will only be publishable during the Civil Rights movement, which she likewise believes is a passing fad, Stein advises Skeeter to finish the book soon. No one comes forward until after Medgar Evers is assassinated in Jackson, Mississippi, and until after having witnessed Hilly's latest maid's brutal arrest (for pawning one of Hilly's rings to pay for her twins' college tuition, after Hilly had refused to give her a loan) – with racial tensions running high, the maids realize that Skeeter's book will give them an opportunity for their voices to be heard, and Skeeter suddenly has numerous stories to include. Minny shares one last story with Skeeter and Aibileen, which she calls the "Terrible Awful," to ensure that no one will think that the book was written about Jackson, Mississippi. As revenge for firing her and accusing her of stealing, Minny bakes a chocolate pie and delivers it to Hilly. After Hilly has finished two slices, Minny informs her that she has baked her own feces into the pie. Minny tells Aibilene and Skeeter that by adding that part into the book, Hilly will try to prevent anyone from figuring out that she made her eat human feces and will convince the town that the book is not about Jackson.

The book is accepted for publication and is a success, much to the delight of Skeeter and the maids. She shares her royalties with each of the maids who contributed, and is offered a job with a publishing company in New York. Later in the afternoon, Hilly hatches a plan to get rid of Aibileen as her help, by falsely accusing her of stealing silver while arranging it for meetings. As Aibileen tries to convince Hilly and Elizabeth of her innocence, Elizabeth's daughter, Mae Mobley, arrives and jumps on top of her, watching Aibileen being fired. Aibileen renounces Hilly as a godless woman and tells her that she will never have peace if she continues her vindictive ways and leaves her in limbo. Elizabeth is forced to accept the unacceptable firing of Aibileen, and Mae Mobley cries by the window shouting for Aibileen, as the maid leaves to start her own life.