The Benefit should be a celebration for the Junior League, but its disastrous turn of events serve to reveal the community's many dysfunctions. Hilly loses her composure and rages against Celia. Celia's drunken mess is the exact opposite of how a wealthy white woman should behave. The help in the back seem to be having a better time laughing at the antics of the white than the partygoers themselves. The genteel men leer at Celia and make rude comments while feeding her more drinks for their own entertainment. The Benefit is meant to be in the name of charity but there is little kindness or charity in how the members behave. The narrator boils the Old South down to spoiled children who pout to get their way and cry when they don't. So much of the outcome is about saving face and keeping up outward appearances. The one person who is truly herself, Celia, is further ostracized because her outward appearance does not conform, and she is mocked for not fitting the mold.