The Help - Kathryn Stockett

 

'The Help', written by Kathryn Stockett in 2009, is a novel set in Jackson, Mississippi in 1962 that tells the different stories of african-american maids, working in white households. This is a world where the segregation of black and white citizens is the norm, where black maids raise white children but cannot even use the same bathroom as their white employers.

 

The novel is told in the voices of the three main characters; Aibileen, Minny and Skeeter.

 

Miss Skeeter is a white woman, who has just graduated from Ole' Miss, and has returned home to take care of her seriously ill mother. In contrast to her friends, Skeeter is not married and has never dated, focusing only on her career as a writer. However, in a desperate attempt to make her mothor proud of her, she attempts to act like a normal, southern lady, playing bridge with the other white ladies in the area, and allowing her sanctimonious friend, Hilly, set her up on dates with various 'suitable' men. In Skeeter's social circle, the family servants, called "the help", are exclusively black. The female servants do the cooking and cleaning, but their priority is to raise the child (or children) of their employers. The servants get passed down within families from generation to generation, so the child that they raised will eventually become their employer.

 

Aibileen  is a 53 year old black maid, who is raising her seventeenth white child, Mae Mobley, and working for the Leefolt family whilst trying to overcome the hurt caused by the senseless death of her son, Treelore, a few months earlier. She works tirelessly to maintain a clean home for her employers, while also taking care of Mae Mobley, who is abused and neglected by her mother. Throughout the novel, Aibileen refers to Mae Mobley as her 'special baby', and tries to make certain that Mae Mobley doesn't turn out like her mother, Elizabeth Leefolt, or her friend, Miss Hilly. She raises Mae Mobleys self esteem and tries to teach her about civil rights.

 

36 year old Minny Jackson is also an African-American maid, who works for Miss Hillys mother, Miss Walter. However, when Miss Walter is forced into a nursing home, Minny is made to work for her racist daughter, Hilly Holbrook. She is widely known as a fantastic cook, but her sassy tongue and inability to keep her thoughts to herself means that it is hard for her to stay in the job. Later in the novel, due to various circumstances Minny looses her job, and Aibileen is forced to listen on the phone as Minnys husband, Leeroy, beats her.

 

The novel is centered around an idea that Skeeter has to write a book containing a compilation of stories from the lives of various maids in the area, a book that will both start off her career and raise awareness of the black civil rights movement. This idea is sparked off when Miss Hilly tells Skeeter about her plan to have a law passed that will make it mandatory for white families to build an outdoor bathroom for the help, to "stop the spread of disease". In addition to this, Skeeter stumbles across a copy of Jim Crow Laws in the library, which are a number of segregation laws that were put into use in the Deep South between 1876 and 1965. Skeeter is horrified and starts to talk to Aibileen, who is her friend, Elizabeths, maid, asking her to put forward some stories for a book and try to get other maids involved. Aibileen originally refuses, but a string of events, among them a racist shooting of a young boy, causes her, and Minny, to reluctantly agree to the idea, and between them they get a group of twelve maids to submit their stories. Hearing their stories changes Skeeter as her eyes open to the true prejudices of her upbringing. Aibileen and Minny also develop a friendship and understanding with Skeeter that neither believed would have ever been possible.

 

As they continue with the book, Skeeter learns the truth of what happened to her beloved maid, Constantine, who had, as Aibileen does with Mae Mobley, always supported Skeeter throughout her childhood and adolescence. After Skeeter returned from college, Constantine had disappeared without giving a reason why. However, Skeeter finds out that Constantine had given birth, out of wedlock, to a girl named Lulabelle, who turned out to look white even though both parents were black. Neither the black nor the white community would accept Lulabelle, so Constantine was forced to give her up for adoption when she was four years old. She and Constantine were reunited when Lulabelle grew up, and while Skeeter was away at college, Lulabelle came to visit her mother in Jackson and showed up at a party being held in Skeeter's mother's living room. When Charlotte Phelan discovered who Lulabelle was, she kicked her out and fired Constantine. Constantine had nowhere else to go, so she moved with her daughter to Chicago, where she fell ill and passed away within three days. Skeeters mother-daughter relationship with Constantine, her black maid, in contrast to the cold relationship with her mother, may have been what caused her to go against the social norms in her area and emphasise with the black community around her.

Of course the major theme of the book is racial prejudice and the hatred directed at the black citizens of Jackson because of their race. The fact that racial beliefs were completely normal is highlighted by the fact that every single white character in the novel, with the exception of Skeeter, are racist, even if they don't realise it. It is simply believed to be common knowledge that being black immediately made you stupid and inferior, which is mad clear buy the fact that the help and other balck citizens are often referred to is terms that are usually applied to animals. It is also made clear that the racism, which is so prominent in a southern town like Jackson, can often lead to violence and means that much of the black community live in fear of saying or doing the wrong things, most of which were extremely trivial, that could lead to them or their families being hurt; "they blew up his carport last night. For talking." The fact that racial inequality is so entrenched is emphasised by the fact that many of the maids do not even aspire to be treated as equals to their white employers, as they have come to accept being treated as inferiors to be a part of their lifestyle, and are more concerned with the chaos that would be caused by even trying to be seen as equals, and don't believe it'd be worth it.

 

The repeated reference to segregated bathrooms throughout the novel also symbolises the twisted, racist society that was the 1960's deep south, as it implies that white people whole heartedly believe that black people carry disease and are dirty, and that one of the most effective ways to make sure you didn't catch these germs was to not share a bathroom with a black person. This idea is used to justify building separate bathrooms for the help in garages etc, which eventually becomes a huge issue in the novel. Stockett uses toilets and bathrooms to symbolise how appalling and disgusting the tactics used to maintain a racism and segregation in Mississippi during the early 1960s were.

 

Skeeter’s book is published and becomes a national best seller. However, the women in Jackson begin to recognise themselves in the characters in the book. Hilly Holbrook, in particular, is set on finding out who the author and maids were that were involved in the book. Although Hilly and Skeeter grew up as best friends, their very different views on race and integration are highlighted throughout the book, and they represent the two extreme views on racial segregation at that time. Hilly is only kept silent by a secret revealed by Minny at the end of the book.

Overall, whereas most history books focus on the more public part of segregation in the south, like the Jim Crow Laws and the separation of whites and blacks in public places, 'The Help' is an extremely powerful insight into the more private lives, thoughts and feelings of black citizens in southern America during the early 1960's. It provides a account of what life was like for a black maid in a white household, and, in this way, could be viewed as more helpful than many history books. However, one criticism of the book is that it implies that white people liberated black people, instead of black people freeing themselves from the racial prejudice they were forced to suffer.

Tara