The white female characters form a moral spectrum. At one extreme is (Bryce Dallas Howard), the film’s unambiguous villain. Hilly is efficient, charismatic, and ruthless. She wields social power as a weapon, threatening maids with false accusations of theft and white women with social excommunication. Hilly represents what historian Elizabeth McRae calls the “female enforcer” of Jim Crow—the woman who, through lunch menus, bathroom policies, and charitable committees, maintained racial boundaries in the private sphere. Importantly, Hilly is not a caricature of poverty or ignorance; she is educated, wealthy, and articulate. Her evil is banal, Arendtian—the evil of procedure and social pressure.
: Aibileen is a character of immense dignity and sorrow. Having raised seventeen white children while grieving the tragic death of her own son, she represents the "quiet strength" of the movement. Her nurturing relationship with young Mae Mobley Leefolt—whom she tells, "You is kind, you is smart, you is important"—is a heartbreaking contrast to the systemic racism that will eventually teach the child to view Aibileen as an inferior. Historias Cruzadas