Kathryn Stockett - "The Help"

The Help is a novel set in the Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960s and told from the viewpoints of three women. The first is Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan, a young white woman, a recent graduate of Ole Miss, and daughter of a wealthy cotton farmer. To her mother’s chagrin, she is different from her friends. She is sensitive and curious, and wants to be a writer. Her friends meanwhile, though just out of college, have already settled down with husbands and started having children. And they have also hired their first black maids.

It is through one of these maids, Aibileen, that Skeeter gets the idea to write a book telling the stories of black help in Jackson. Aibileen is the second POV character, and she acts as a conduit between Skeeter and the maids who will eventually contribute to the book. She is older than most of the maids and so serves as something of a leader. She has garnered wisdom from her years of service and even finds a sense of peace in her job through the raising of the white children she cares for. She takes pride in this job, and tries with all her might, though usually futilely, to prevent the children from being influenced by the bigotry everywhere around them.

The third POV character is another maid, Minny, who is set up as a contrast to the mature and even-keeled Aibileen. Minny is rebellious and has an unstoppable mouth. She has often been in trouble with her employers, and a cruel practical joke on one of them serves as a sort of resolution to Minny’s conflict with the employer and as a solution to the problem of secrecy that dogs the writing of the book.

Stockett does a great job portraying Mississippi in the sixties, with humorous touches, such as the rusty old pick-up truck that Skeeter drives around in. She peppers in real events and cultural references that keep the reader firmly tied to the time period and help build the racial tension.

Further tension comes from a number of different relationships: Skeeter against her friends, who become increasingly aware of her sympathetic views; Minny against Hilly Hollbrook, Skeeter’s former best friend and a vindictive racist who serves as the novels’ primary antagonist. But it is the risk that Skeeter and these maids are taking, risks that include everything from harassment to death, that form the novel’s primary drama. Stockett’s best scenes are those at Aibilene’s home, where Skeeter meets the maids to write down their stories, and where the fear from what they are doing is most palpable. These are the scenes where the reader’s empathy really pours forth.

Some readers may be offended with the thick ethnic accent Stockett gives Aibileen, while leaving the white women without much of one. (Anyone who’s listened to Haley Barbour speaks knows white people from Mississipppi have a strong accent.) But given the novel’s sympathetic tone, it’s almost impossible this was intended to offend. More likely she used this as a device to distinguish the characters.

Some readers may also not like the ending. It’s not a ‘Hollywood’ ending, at least not for all the characters. Hilly’s resolution left me unsatisfied, in something of a limbo. There is also some ambiguity for at least one of the main protagonists. (It is also left somewhat ambiguous whether or not Skeeter writes the book to help race relations or to become the writer that she desperately wants to become. There’s no question she’s sympathetic, but I still couldn’t help but ponder her motive.) But this is a credit to Stockett. With a book that she had to know would have broad appeal, she could’ve taken the easy road and tied everything up with a bow, but didn’t. And The Help is a better book for it.

In fact, The Help is a very good book. But comparisons to Harper Lee, Carson McCullers and other great women writers of the South, as some reviewers have done, is premature. There is a distance from the events here that softens it. It doesn’t have the quiet desperation of so many books of that time period. But it’s always important to keep those times within our memory, and The Help helps us do that. Even from the safe distance of forty years, it educates and enlightens. And most importantly, it spurs empathy. This book shows the power of empathy to change things for the better, even if it’s from just from one person.