The Help by Kathryn Stockett

The Help

by Kathryn Stockett

Penguin Books, 2009

ISBN: 978-0-141-03929-2

444 p.p.

The Help transports readers down south to the harsh social climate of the 1960s where, months before King’s march on D.C., the very real problem of racism comes to a head in the divided community of Jackson, Mississippi.

The story is told from three main points of view: the perspectives of black maids Aibileen and Minny, and the voice of white socialite Miss Eugenia Skeeter. Along the way, these three young women become one united force, an interwoven mix of heartache and righteousness spanning three unique consciousnesses. Together they battle their way through the hiccups of life, struggling to break into the New York world of publishing, and share their stories with the world.

Skeeter is at a crossroads in her life. Having graduated college, she returns home to find her beloved childhood maid, Constantine, missing. Skeeter now sits on the board of the Junior League, an elite white social club for women, and quickly lands a job writing for her local newspaper’s home and garden advice column, Miss Myrna. But when Skeeter realizes that she doesn’t know the first thing about housekeeping, she turns to the only group she can think of who might be able to offer her some advice: the help.

Enter Aibileen and Minny. The two strongest voices of the maid community in Jackson, these two women have been through the ringer of social slights. From fielding blunt insults at the monthly bridge club meetings to being forced to use a separate, colored bathroom, they have come to understand very clearly what their community of white female employers thinks of them. To the women in Skeeter’s society, the help represent the lowest rung of society, individuals hardly worthy of their recognition or kindness. It’s a terrible place to be in but these colored women must accept it or be without a job. With their own families to support, being without a job is not an option for the help.

So when Skeeter resolves to find Constantine and join in the fight for equality, she embarks on a mission: write a tell-all account of what it’s really like to be a black maid in Jackson, Mississippi. With the help of her new friends, she pieces together that truth one story at a time, fighting to get it all done before her December deadline. And along the way, she discovers more and more about the underside of her previously polished, porcelain society.

As the background rumblings of social injustice become perceivable in Jackson and the deaths of people like Carl Roberts start to make front-page headlines, tensions in the black community bubble over. For some, the pressure of being found out and punished by their employers is too much. Some of the maids rescind their promise to contribute to Skeeter’s book and it falls to Skeeter, Aibileen, and Minny, an unlikely trio of newly realized social justice advocates, to join hands across the color line. Together they must convince the rest of the maids in Jackson to sacrifice what little safety they have for the cause of social change.

In the end, it is only by putting their voices to print and getting the stories in circulation that these women are able to truly make a difference in their community. They are willing to put their necks out on the line for something they believe is right and, thanks to that courage, the housemaids take a noble step. They are able to clear a path for women of color and anyone else restricted by the harsh limitations of social categorization.

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Kathryn Stockett is a Jackson, Mississippi native who broke onto the New York Times Bestsellers List with her first novel, The Help. After graduating from the University of Alabama with her degree in English and Creative Writing, Stockett went on to work in the New York publishing industry for a period of nine years before writing her debut novel. Currently she resides in Atlanta, Georgia with her husband and their daughter.