The Help

For my novel I am reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett.  I had only heard of good reviews of the book and I enjoyed the movie so I thought it would be a good book.  The main synopsis of the book is the story from African American maids working in Southern Mississippi white housewives’ homes during the 1960s.  The story is told in a similar way to The Poisonwood Bible in that the story is told through multiple characters, Aibileen, Minny, and Skeeter.  Aibileen works for the Leefolt family cleaning and taking care of their toddler.  Minny is the outspoken maid who acts before thinking of consequences most of the time.  Skeeter, a recent grad of Old Miss College, dreams of being a writer, and is somewhat of a rebel in the way she thinks about society in the South. 

So far, the main defining elements in the book are the setting, how the setting shapes the society, and the society as a whole.  The story, or rather stories, take place in Jackson, Mississippi; this in itself helps explain parts of the story.  The South is known for its slavery and having been very slow to end slavery.  Personally growing up for five years in Texas even in 2002 people would comment that “we are still fighting the War of Northern Aggression…there was nothing civil about that war. ”  In a sense, these maids of the wealthy white households are kept separated as if they are practically still slaves.  Hilly Holbrook, who Minny worked for, for awhile, proposes a sanitation bill that declares it unsanitary for the help to use the guest bathroom or any bathroom in the house that the white people use because the whites could get diseases from the black help.  She demands that households build a bathroom outside of the house just for the help to use. 

In this way the ideals of the South in the 1960’s influences the society.  The group of white Junior League ladies, who hire the help, create a society built on petty sorority, to the extreme and rules.  Hilly could be considered the ruthless ruler.  She controls what goes on in the Junior League meetings, who is excommunicated, and what is the ideal way to live.  The rules of this southern society are made by Hilly as she goes.  Besides Hilly’s rules there are general society rules: the white people are expected to have help, the white women are expected to go to college to find a husband and then not finish, and the help are expected to raise the white children that then become their employers.  For all three narrators these “rules” are what they come to question.  Skeeter is the only one who has finished college and the only one out of all of her friends to not be married.  The society puts a lot of pressure to conform to these rules.  Minny used to work for Hilly but once Minny crossed Hilly she was fired.  Hilly didn’t stop at just firing her, Hilly had to make sure Minny would learn from her mistake so Hilly claimed that Minny stole from her.  This doesn’t seem like it would mean that much, but Hilly being the queen of society that Minny is essentially ruined destroying all chances of getting another job.  No one was going to dare and hire Minny and have to face the wrath of Hilly.  All except Celia Foote who is on the outside of Hilly’s society circle.  Celia is on the outs because she married an old boyfriend of queen Hilly’s, that Hilly never truly got over.  Celia in essence serves as a loophole in Hilly’s society; Celia longs to be part of this society but by being on the outs she opens up changes in society.

            There are many changes in society coming from the help being willing to talk to Skeeter.  Skeeter, the aspiring writer, decides that she wants to write a book about the help and the “irony that they (the employer) love them (the help) yet...They don’t even allow them to use the toilet in the house.”  Skeeter who has to deal with the pressures of society herself sees the unjust pressures put on the help.  She wants to bring change in her own society and life.

-Aimee E