The Help by Kathryn Stockett Essay

“The Help” by Kathryn Stockett is a personal memoir written in the perspective of 20 year old graduate Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan. This story begins with Skeeter finishing school and coming home to a house with her maid, Constantine Jefferson, no where to be found. She begins questioning her mother about her whereabouts, with no luck. She begins to understand the prejudice that comes with being black in the day and age of 1962, with hopes of getting these women to tell their sides of the story she sets out on recruiting Aibileen.

In the book The Help by Kathryn Stockett main character Skeeter Phelan works with the help, who work for her friends and associates all over town, in secret to compile a book of stories, benign and riddled with malice, about their employers. The author uses contrasting locations such as the plantation owned and inhabited by Skeeter and her family and Aibileen's house across the bridge in the colored part of town to show how truly different these two characters are, and that despite their differences in status, upbringing, and financial state, they still come together to bring to light the injustices suffered by maids, and the need for civil change.

The Help is a novel that explores the lives of black maids living in the racially unjust, Mississippi in the 1960s, by using the perspective of two black maids and a female, white writer. Minny and Aibileen are the two maids who are close friends and like many other maids, have spent the majority of their life cleaning up after white families and raising their kids. Skeeter is the third character the novel centers around; she fondly remembers her own maid, Constantine but lacks information about her disappearance and current whereabouts. Her ambition to write and love for her childhood career lead her and the maids to eventually come together and become involved in a dangerous project which puts all their lives at risk.

Towards the end of Stockett’s novel, Aibileen has grown older and is now caring for two kids in the Leefolt house. Skeeter now tells Aibileen she has gotten a letter to go to New York and work for Miss Stein. When she goes, someone will need to take over the Miss Murna columns at the Jackson Journal. Here, Skeeter gives Aibileen the chance to take over for her. She also includes that she will receive the same amount of pay as she did. To this, Aibileen responds, “Me? Working for the white newspaper? I go to the sofa and open thee notebook, see them letters and articles from past times. Miss Skeeter set beside me (512)”. This is Aibileen basically conquering the issue of racism. The fact that Miss Skeeter put in such a good word about her that she got the job without an interview says wonders.

“‘Don’t you ever wish you could change things?”’ (10). In Jackson, Mississippi during the 1960’s, woman ahead of her time, Miss Skeeter, proposes an idea to write a book about the lives of colored maids in Jackson. Aibileen and Minny, two maids, are among the first ones to agree to help Skeeter, despite the potential danger to themselves. In The Help, Kathryn Stockett creates an engaging and immersive world that explores racism and social injustice by using well-developed writing, the ideal amount of imagery, and strong characters.

Section 1 : The book, The Help, is a very well written novel so far. It is a novel about colored maids in the 1960’s and their struggles. In the beginning the book introduces the characters. First the main character, Aibileen, is introduced. She is a maid for Mrs. and Mr. Leefolt, as well as their daughter Mae Mobley.

Based off of Kathryn Stockett’s 2009 novel, The Help is a movie told from an African American’s point of view during the early 1960’s in Jackson, Mississippi. The three main characters include, Aibileen Clark, Minny Jackson, and Eugenia (Skeeter) Phelan. Skeeter is a young writer who has recently returned from the University of Mississippi. She has been advised by the Elaine Stein, who is the head editor at Harper & Row, to write about a topic she is passionate about, that way she can continue her dream of becoming a serious writer. In addition, Skeeter accepts a writing job down at the Jackson Journal where she writes a housekeeping column. Ironically, she has no housekeeping experience as she grew up with in house help. In order to keep her job she goes to Aibileen, her friend Elizabeth Leefolt’s housekeeper. At this point in her life, Aibileen is just trying to get by. She writes out her prayers on a daily basis as a way to clear her mind since she is fairly reserved on the outside. On the contrary, Aibileen’s friend Minny is also a housekeeper, but she has a rather sharp tongue which doesn’t usually work in her favor. Consequently, she is trying to find a new employer, but is having trouble since there is a bit of discord between her and the most influential socialite in Jackson, Mississippi.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett gave everyone insight to the life of an African American woman in the early 1960s. The Help criticized racial inequality, and gives society an insider's view of segregation and fear of the status quo in their own race. Throughout the 1960s many African American woman worked in housekeeping. The novel follows the lives of three maids who are have a book wrote from their point of view. The story follows them as they go through the struggles of life and how stressful writing the book is on them because of time period and how dangerous it was to be seen with a person of the different race if you weren't working for them. Being seen with a person of the different race could get you labeled or worse thrown in jail for an integration violation.

She persuades the maids to help b talking about the work they do for white families at a time when just telling the truth put them in a great amount of jeopardy. The book portrays of the maids' relationship with their employers and children they take care of. This peeks into a dark period our country has once been in. This period started first with the Jim Crow4aws.

Kathryn was born in 1969 in Jackson Mississippi. She is a writer of the book The Help.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett is ultimately about the racism in Jackson,Mississippi and how it invaded every aspect of social life. The story highlights the life of a girl named Skeeter she has just graduated from Ole Miss and has an interest in writing as she edits the news letters for The Junior League,but she really wants to be an author. She comes up with the idea of telling the true stories of the domestic victims this soon becomes a reality once the publisher approves of her idea she soon finds out the horrific stories about everyone around her. People may say this story only highlights the domestic victims life this may be somewhat true the book is in Skeeter’s point of view. This story's theme is about racism,segregation,and overcoming obstacles in society.

Susan Donaldson states in her critique of The Help, the stories the maids tell, "only serves to launch Skeeter into her career" and act as a "vehicle for redemption […] of a long and ugly legacy of racism" (Donaldson 8). While Skeeter does come to realize the shame of the things she does, such as off handedly saying "colored people attend too much church," this is not the driving motive behind Skeeter's intention with her book (Stockett 179). At first, Skeeter's motive is entirely self-centered, using the book as a stepping stone into her career, but the further she gets involved with the book and subsequently the lives of the maids she talks to, the less she cares about what she gains from the book, but rather how they benefit from the book. As they near the completion of the book, Skeeter realizes the responsibilities that "lay on [her] shoulders" (328). The maids need this book, perhaps more than Skeeter herself does. They need it to vent their frustration that otherwise stay bottled up in their chest for fear of punishment. They need the book in order to hope that maybe one day things will change. Skeeter sees this and feels the pressure not because of guilt over past actions, but rather the camaraderie she forges with these women as they take a huge risk,

(C)After watching The Help, I noticed it may have been an issue that a white woman wrote the book because she doesn’t really know what it feels like to be “the help”. (E) The movie, The Help illustrates this when Skeeter is very surprised by the things Aibileen and Minny are telling her. She didn’t know how bad it was to be a black maid and was shocked by some of the things she heard about their lives (“The Help”). (R)This explains how the perspective of a white woman could never be as accurate as the perspective of an actual maid. “The Help” have experienced so much, maybe more than they are telling Skeeter, and people will never get the full story from someone who hasn’t gone through the same pain as they have. (CS) After all, it may not

Although the maids were struggling and going through a difficult time in 1960’s, The Help portrays that their family members were too. Segregated society against the backdrop of the growing US civil rights movement in the 1960’s has an impacted. “Race also determines who has access to educational, occupational, and economic opportunity. Racial tensions are high as white community members employ violence and coercion to try to keep the Civil Rights Movement from sweeping into their Mississippi town” (Shmoop Editorial Team). The white community in the movie continue to keep the black women as their servants throughout their lives. As Skeeter the white lady, who writes a book about The Help and portrays through the book that the African American women go through. As the white women of Jackson, Mississippi read the book they began to act more violent to the black women. The book is away as the black women to make a statement about the civil rights they have.

To have a relationship with a person of an opposing race was atypical of the societal norms of the 1960s in Jackson, Mississippi. However, Aibileen and Miss Skeeter challenge this view by developing a relationship characterized by equality and kindness to create a social change.  Miss Skeeter, a recent college graduate, returns from college with a new perspective about race. With the help of the education Miss Skeeter received, she begins to dismiss society’s views. She realized quickly that her actions towards the help are much different from her peers who