The relationship between Celia and Johnny shows us the narrowly defined roles of white men and women in the South. On the most basic level, men work, hunt, and drink while women get their hair done, have babies, manage the help, and gossip. Ironically, only black women work outside their home and only by necessity. Celia is an outsider. She was raised in the back woods of Sugar Ditch, Mississippi, and married Johnny because, as the story develops, she was pregnant. She does not fit into Jackson society, and the women will not even return her phone calls. Celia's alienation is by the exact community she should be a part of; that is, as a wealthy white woman her place is in the Junior League, but because she is a newcomer and the wife of Johnny, who was once Hilly's boyfriend, she is rejected. She represents the outsider in the circle of women. Because of her loneliness and confusion, she clings to Minny as her only friend, even though a true friendship between them seems impossible.