But today I bring you something I’ve been pondering the past couple weeks. I recently read/sped through The Help by Kathryn Stockett and fell in love. With the story, the message behind it, but most importantly the characters. It’s one of those books where you connect with the characters as if you truly know them (or at least I did). One character really captured my attention, and it isn’t one of the characters you’d think.

I feel like I am/I know a million Celia Foote’s. Seriously. Her character seemed like the most real one to me. Because I feel like she’s a lot like most of us.

She screws up. A lot. But she knows she does. And she was willing to ask for help (albeit hiding that tidbit from her husband forever).  She’s the most vulnerable, dependent on others’ attention and adoration. I think the thing that gets me about her is how hard she tries. She tries to be a good housewife. She tries to be friends with the society girls. She didn’t give up. She is the most naive character I think I’ve ever read about. She was blind to Hilly and her asinine attitude. She just wanted to fit in, and she tried her damnedest.  She was an optimist if I’ve ever seen one, always happy or trying to be so. She didn’t have the “image” of southern class like Hilly and Elizabeth and Skeeter; she didn’t come from the ‘best’ kind, but she made the most of what she did come from instead of trying to hide it. While that didn’t exactly work to help her image any, she didn’t try and change for them. She brought herself to the table exactly how she was. Even though she was tacky, blonde in every sense of the word, and not someone Hilly nor the other girls that idolized Hilly wanted anywhere around them and their “kind”.  And when she finally realized this, she stood up and held her head high (well, after the Benefit fiasco). I nearly stood at cheered at that part of the book!

She’s in her own little world, and I say I’d much rather be in it than the one we’re stuck in. 

I thoroughly despise Hilly, and sadly know too many people in this world are like her. Rude, judgmental, yet say what they mean in a way that not only sounds sweet as pie but convinces others to believe every lie that pours from his/her mouth. 

  We have far too many Hilly’s in this world. Too much hate, too much judgement, too much cattiness and gossip and sugar-coated evil. I’ve been her before, and I don’t like it one bit. I think we all have been, at times. 

We don’t need anymore of her “kind”, I think. 

We need Celia’s. We need more people looking through life in their rose-colored lenses, happy as a clam in a world and life that is so sad and lonely. In a bleak earthly world, we need the optimism and naivete Celia carries with her, despite the troubles and problems throughout her story. We need to try more. We all make mistakes-some more than others. But we can’t let them hold us. They’re made to change us and push us towards the next step. Celia in some of her problems was out-right silly. But even in the end we see that her silliness was an effort to make things right, to make sure she didn’t miscarry…again. 

At the end of the day, she never gave up hope. There have been so many days where I’ve given up hope. I want to be like Celia, with her blonde hair held high and her fireplace poker ready to attack what comes my way. At the end of the day, despite all her faults and failures, Celia still tries hard. And I want to try too. 🙂