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Though Skeeter is portrayed as far more progressive than most white women in Jackson, she begins the novel relatively naive, having been protected from the ugly realities of the world by her privileged upbringing. Growing up with her family’s maid, Constantine, as a maternal figure, Skeeter has only known affectionate relationships between Black women and the families they work for. However, Skeeter is provoked to look more into this dynamic after Hilly begins advocating for building separate bathrooms for maids in private homes. It is this topic that Skeeter arrives at when Elaine Stein recommends she write about something that disturbs her. While interviewing the maids, Skeeter begins to understand more fully the racism that is deeply entrenched in her family, her friends, and society as a whole.

The lessons Skeeter learns from the maids help her make a personal transformation as well. Although Skeeter would like to move to New York and get a job as a writer, at the beginning of the novel she does not resist her mother’s and friends’ attempts to find her a husband. Skeeter finds herself attracted to Stuart Whitworth and forgives him after his bad behavior on their first date. However, that attraction dwindles when she realizes Stuart broke off his engagement, not due to his former fiancée’s affair but because that affair was with a civil rights activist, information that could hurt his father’s political career. When Stuart proposes, Skeeter reveals to him the subject of the book she has been working on. It seems that Skeeter would accept Stuart’s proposal if he could accept being married to someone who would challenge the status quo. However, he cannot, and so Skeeter moves on. Unlike Stuart, she is unable to compromise her morals for someone else. At the end of the novel, Skeeter accepts a junior position at Harper & Row, showing she has fully rejected the traditional female role she was expected to play.

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