The way white families, especially white women, invited black women into their homes to raise their children, cook their food, clean their houses, and tend to their every need seems charming. However, The Help shows how whites think they are helping and doing the right thing, when in reality the blacks still feel degraded and unappreciated. It shows you both sides of the story from an emotional perspective, not just a factual one.
The Help
by Kathryn Stockett
The Penguin Group
February 2009
The main maids Aibileen and Minny hold on to sanity by relying on one another for comfort and strength. They don’t work for much and do what they are supposed to each day, but still it’s never enough.
Skeeter is a classic example of a child who makes it out of her town and goes to college and comes home a woman changed for the better. She now has more confidence and is completely driven. These traits, plus the fact she’s dying to get a writing job in New York, help her convince Aibileen to let her document stories from her life.
Aibileen eventually concedes to helping Skeeter write her first book by gathering information from the perspective of ‘the help’. At first Aibileen is timid but as events happen around the town her confidence grows and she gains the help of Minny and many other maids.
After the book gets published everyone involved with the writing process is nervous as they still work in the homes of the very people whose deepest secrets are revealed. The maids however, know they cannot be touched now, because no one wants them to tell who each story was really about.
The book of course is better than the movie, giving you more details that reinforce ideals. The book also helps provide a better understanding of how policies and morals were passed on or changed through different generations.
I particularly enjoyed The Help because it provides another perspective on the life of black women during segregation without the grit. It does contain some racial violence, but it also wouldn’t have any authenticity without it. However the violence is in the background instead of being in your face.
