“No, I couldn’t. That would be .. crossing the line,” (Stockett 104). Kathryn Stockett’s The Help is a dejected novel that depicts the racial issues and inequality during the 1960s in Jackson, Mississippi. The novel is a story that tells the stories of the African-American maids and their relationships with their employers and their views on life in Jackson through a white woman who chooses to go against the rules and norms of Jackson, Mississippi and their segregated ways. Told in first person, the characters expressed their perspectives on the race and segregation, bigotry, and feminism faced everyday in Jackson, Mississippi. One of the issues focused on in the story would be issues of race and segregation in Jackson, Mississippi. In Jackson, …show more content…
The character Hilly Holbrook expresses bigotry throughout the entire book. Her character doesn’t change and remains static, although she is silenced. Hilly holds the position as president of the Junior League Club and she is involved in many charitable activities. One of the charities listed in the book is “PSCA. The Poor Starving Children of Africa,” (Stockett 324). Hilly collected canned food for the children in Africa. The PSCA would tend for you to believe that Hilly is a woman who doesn’t feed too much into discrimination and racism. However, when a suggestion of sending money to Africa surfaces, Hilly responds: “You cannot give these tribal people money, Mary Joline. There is no Jitney 14 Grocery in the Ogaden Desert” (Stockett 325). In this part of the book the reader can distinguish that Hilly shows an ignorance towards the culture of the Africans as well as the Negroes in Jackson, Mississippi. Hilly endeavors in getting her bill the “Home Help Sanitation Initiative” passed requiring that all white homeowners should have an outside restroom for their black domestics (Stockett 30). According to Hilly, she asserts the bill “As a disease-preventative measure” (Stockett 30), going against the fact that the black domestics touches everything Hilly uses on an everyday basis. After Hilly pressures Skeeter about getting her bill in the paper, Skeeter decides to write, “drop off your old toilets at 228 Myrtle Street. …show more content…
Skeeter doesn’t make herself like the other women in Jackson. She goes out for a job and doesn’t partake in to relationships with men. She focuses on her book, the maids, and getting out of Jackson. Skeeter is part of the Junior League and very close friends with Hilly Holbrook and Elizabeth Leefolt. She has a, “double major English, and journalism” (Stockett 146). After returning home, Skeeter gains a job writing Miss Myrna, the weekly cleaning advice column for the Jackson Journal. (Stockett 148) Skeeter tries to avoid telling her mother about the job received, but does so anyways out of pure excitement for her first job. Her mother doesn’t show much enthusiasm for Skeeter’s accomplishment. “‘Oh the irony of it.’ She lets out a sigh that means life is hardly worth living under such conditions” (Stockett 148), she doesn’t believe Skeeter can give advice on cleaning rather since she doesn’t even “know how to polish silver, much less advise on how to keep a house clean,” (Stockett 149). Although Skeeter believes her mom has a valid point she turns to her friend Elizabeth Leefolt asking if her maid Aibileen could help her with the Miss Myrna letters and Ms. Leefolt approves (Stockett 154). Skeeter is then challenged by an Elaine Stein, the senior editor of the Adult Book Division to go out and “write about what disturbs you, particularly if it bother no one else” (Stockett 143). This is
A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines takes place in Louisiana in the 1940’s. When a young African American man named Jefferson is unfairly sentenced to death, school teacher Grant Wiggins is sent to try to make Jefferson a man before he dies. Throughout the novel, racial injustice is shown in both Jefferson and Grant’s lives in the way other people view them.
The stories that the author told were very insightful to what life was like for an African American living in the south during this time period. First the author pointed out how differently blacks and whites lived. She stated “They owned the whole damn town. The majority of whites had it made in the shade. Living on easy street, they inhabited grand houses ranging from turn-of-the-century clapboards to historics”(pg 35). The blacks in the town didn’t live in these grand homes, they worked in them. Even in today’s time I can drive around, and look at the differences between the living conditions in the areas that are dominated by whites, and the areas that are dominated by blacks. Racial inequalities are still very prevalent In today’s society.
Being her first published novel, I think author Kathryn Stockett did a terrific job at writing, “The Help.” This novel won awards from Goodreads, The Choice Awards, best fiction and was voted the New York Times number one bestseller. I like how this novel is based around the theme of prejudice, making it easier to understand because prejudice is a big thing in our history. “I want to yell so loud that Baby Girl can hear me that dirty ain’t a colour, disease ain’t the Negro side a town. I want to stop that moment from coming - and it comes in ever white child’s life - when they start to think that coloured folks ain’t as good as whites… I pray that wasn’t her moment, pray I still got time.” I also liked how the author, Kathryn Stockett, gave each character a southern accent, therefore the novel came across as more realistic. The ‘flow’ of the novel is easy to follow and isn’t
The Help is a novel written in 2009 about African-American maids working in Southern homes in the 1960’s and a young white woman pursuing to write a book about the maid’s lives. Stockett was born in 1969 in Jackson, Mississippi. She worked in magazine publishing in New York before attempting to publish The Help, which was rejected by 60 different literary agents. Stockett’s personal background played a major part in her ability to tell this story so well. She grew up with African-American maids working in her household and grew up shortly after the decade in which this novel takes place. The society that she grew up in and her experience working in a magazine helped her to write from the personal viewpoint of African-American help and a woman striving to become a journalist in America during the 1960’s. In The Help, Stockett uses specific setting, point of view, and allusions to tell the incredible story of three young women of different ages, backgrounds, and race that join together in a work that readers will never forget.
This is because many people consider different as bad and dangerous. Uniqueness allows people to stand out and be who they are, but this isn’t always a good thing. Being different may sometimes be good but other times it isn’t as pleasant as the person would be the “odd man out” and be disliked by many people. It takes courage to be set apart and maintain this difference with pride. Skeeter had to muster up lots of courage, especially when she began to write her book about the life of black maids in Jackson. Not only was the book illegal, no one supported her. Even her own mom wouldn’t stand beside her and her work. The movie took place in the 1960s, during the Civil Rights Movement. During this time, many black people were killed for being black and any white people sympathizing with blacks would be murdered as well. So this meant that Skeeter had to do her work in secret or she risked being attacked. Minny is another person who dared to be different. After being fired by Hilly, she decided to take revenge by giving Hilly a pie baked with her own excrement added. This was very risky as no black person would dare performing such a dangerous act on any white person, let alone Hilly, the most influential white woman in all of Jackson. Minny had to have been very brave to have pulled off a stunt like the one she did. When Skeeter
Kathryn Stockett's book The Help has sold over five million copies and has spent more than 100 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list. Stockett's book has also been made in to a major motion picture. The Help is a story about African American house maids based in 1960's Jackson, Mississippi. The story is told by three main women, Minny, Aibileen and Skeeter. Aibileen and Minny are both African-American maids, while Skeeter is the daughter of a privileged family. Aibileen is raising another white child by the name of Mae Mobley whose mother does not participate in her care. Minny is working for an outcast, newlywed, white woman who is keeping her employment a secret from her husband. Skeeter is working on becoming a journalist and takes the risk of interviewing Minny and Aibileen for her book that she publishes. All meetings are done in secret. All of the maids Skeeter interviews talk of a woman named Hilly, who holds the ideal that whites are superior to African-Americans and intends to get everyone in her “ladies group” ( in which Skeeter is a member) to join in the ideal and embrace it. Hilly is one of the specific antagonists in this story, which ends in her demise. This story describes everyone in Hilly’s circle to a T, but it is published with an anonymous author and the names get changed so that no one can figure out who wrote it. Most people will “rant and rave” that Stockett's book is an amazing story of the struggle for African American's in
America has always been a country with different cultures, races, and people. Only, not everyone has been accepting of different kinds of people. A persons thoughts on another person can differ depending on a person's race, gender, or age. In Harper Lee’s, To Kill a Mockingbird, racial equality is nonexistent. The African Americans were treated like they weren’t people, and were totally isolated from the Maycomb, Alabama society. America will never achieve true racial and social equality because people are ignorant, have a history of being prejudiced, and are unjust.
The 1960s was the time when women and men were treated with cruelty, were paid barely enough money to spend on food, and were beaten senseless just because of their race. Though it sounds like an excruciating life to live, many of these African Americans lived life to the fullest despite what others thought of them. In Kathryn Stockett’s The Help, African Americans are treated hastily by whites, as analyzed by the book’s historical significance, personal analysis, and literary criticisms to fully comprehend life in the 1960s of the south.
For this assignment, the movie “The Help” was chosen to review and analyze because it presents a story of fighting injustice through diverse ways. The three main characters of the movie are Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan, a young white woman, Aibileen Clark, and Minny Jackson, two colored maids. Throughout the story, we follow these three women as they are brought together to record colored maids’ stories about their experiences working for the white families of Jackson. The movie explores the social inequalities such as racism and segregation between African Americans and whites during the 1960s in Jackson, Mississippi.
Racial discrimination is a conviction within one’s self. No matter how long we fight against it, it will always remain present in our society. Too often people are quick to judge others based on physical appearances. Often, people base their judgments on the unknown; whether that is fear, curiosity or unfamiliarity. The quote in the novel, “A bill that requires every white home to have a separate bathroom for the coloured help. I’ve even notified the surgeon general of Mississippi to see if he’ll endorse the idea,” Hilly Holbrook, the novels “villain,” wants to legalize such discriminatory actions to separate blacks from whites. In another quote, she states that, “Everybody knows they carry different diseases than we do.” Holbrook re...
Feminist theory is a term that embraces a wide variety of approaches to the questions of a women’s place and power in culture and society. Two of the important practices in feminist critique are raising awareness of the ways in which women are oppressed, demonized, or marginalized, and discovering motifs of female awakenings. The Help is a story about how black females “helped” white women become “progressive” in the 1960’s. In my opinion, “The Help” I must admit that it exposes some of our deepest racial, gender, and class wounds as individuals and social groups, and that the story behind the story is a call to respect our wounds and mutual wounding so that healing may have a chance to begin and bring social injustice to an end. The relationship between Blacks and whites in this novel generally take on the tone of a kindly, God-fearing Jesus Christ-loving Black person, placidly letting blacks and whites work out their awkwardness regarding race and injustice. Eventually both the black and white women realize how similar they are after all, and come to the conclusion that racism is an action of the individual person, a conclusion mutually exclusive of racism as an institutionalized system that stands to demonize and oppress people based on the color of their skin and the location of their ancestry.
“The Help” by Kathryn Stockett is a story that takes you through the ups and downs of living in Jackson, Mississippi in the 60’s. With the bravery of these 3 brave women they were able to write and release a book about being the help. The help. While there were small repercussions in the end, Jackson, Mississippi saw a change for the better after the book was released.
Kathryn Stockett is one of the most powerful, courageous, and bravest writers I have ever read about and that is why I have chosen to write about her. I read her book "The Help" and by reading this book it has shown me many things about history I had not known existed. This book is all about African American housekeepers in the 1960's and how they were treated, even though the laws may have made them equal, society did not. If it wasn't for books like this people like me may not know about these rough times and how life has changed drastically since then. Reasons like these are why I was inspired to write this paper about Stockett.
Although bigotry and segregation were pointed in majority towards blacks, other accounts towards whites were also heard of, though not as commonly. There are acts that are so discreet that you almost don't catch them, but along with those, there are blatant acts of bigotry that would never occur in our time. Lee addresses many of these feelings in her novel. One subtle example of discrimination the reader sees is the treatment of Calpurnia, a black woman, the housekeeper/nanny for the Finch family. Although she is treated fairly, it is obvious that she is considered to be on a lower social level than the Finches.
Minny showed that her husband is violent, " 'Why? Why are you hitting me? ' .... I was trapped in the corner of the bedroom like a dog. He was beating me with his belt. It was the first time I’d ever really thought about it. Who knows what I could become," (485) and "I ain 't telling, I ain 't telling nobody about that pie. But I give her what she deserve! .... I ain 't never gone get no work again, Leroy gone kill me..." (24). Also, it shows that Minny is forced to work for her family to earn money in order to raise their family up. It 's different from Skeeter 's situation in that Skeeter is hoping to continue her career but Minny has no choice to change her situation. Minny is a strong character in the book and she even took revenge against Hilly after she spread rumors about Minny. However, Minny seems so weak, vulnerable and under the mercy of her husband Leroy. Even if Leroy abuses Minny, she endures it because she loves him. Sexism here is in the superiority of men over women that give them the right to abuse them. According to Skeeter, in early 1960s, Sexism appeared in jobs that were open only for men, "My eyes drift down to HELP WANTED: MALE. There are at least four columns filled with bank managers, accountants, loan officers, cotton collate operators. On this side of the page, Percy and Gray, LP, is offering Jr. Stenographers fifty cents more an hour," (68). Characters from