Hilly fights to keep up power throughout the story. As a wealthy white woman in the South, she enjoys a position of great influence, but because her status is often maintained through bullying and threats, friends, such as Skeeter, turn on her. Hilly represents an old world order destined to be destroyed. The Civil Rights Movement is sweeping through the South while Hilly desperately tries to maintain the social division between blacks and whites in Jackson. Her power is eventually diffused as the women she tries to control question whether she has their best intentions at heart or is simply grabbing at more power