Kathryn Stockett (2009) The Help. Penguin Books.

Kathryn Stockett (2009) The Help. Penguin Books.

 

Summary

The Help is set in the early 1960s in Jackson, Mississippi, and told primarily from the first-person perspectives of three women: Aibileen and Minny, who are coloured maids and Eugenia 'Skeeter' Phelan, the daughter of a prominent white family that employs many negroes on its cotton farm and in the household. Skeeter has just finished college and comes home with dreams of becoming a writer. The nemesis of all three main characters is Hilly Holbrook, the social leader of the community and head of the Junior League.

 

Skeeter wonders often about the sudden disappearance of Constantine, the maid who raised her. Skeeter's family tells her that Constantine quit abruptly to live with relatives in Chicago. Skeeter does not believe that Constantine would just leave, but no one will discuss the former maid. Skeeter decides (with the assistance of a publisher) that she wants to reveal the truth about being a coloured maid in Mississippi. She struggles to communicate with the maids and gain their trust in the face of the dangers of writing such a book in the South during the early 1960s.

 

 

Comments

 

·       It's another book about a book!

·       CONTEXT. Just enough references to the times (Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, John Kennedy [but not Robert], Bob Dylan) to give it a 'real' context without turning it into a documentary.

·       LIBERALISM VS. RACISM. The 'liberal' white employers don't hate African-Americans as much as the 'hardliners' - e.g. Hilly Holbrook, crusader for separate outside toilets for 'the help' because of their (separate) diseases. However, they don't have the guts to stand up to them and just go along with them. So while they want to have personal relationships with their 'help', the impersonal force of racism prevents them from doing so.

·       CHANGE. Aibileen is puzzled when Skeeter asks her whether she wants to change anything, because Aibileen 'knows' that nothing can change. Stuart is also puzzled when Skeeter responds to his proposal of marriage by telling him about the book, because he doesn't think that anything needs to change.