Aibileen is a black maid in the 1960’s who works for a white family and helps a young girl write a book about what it is like to be a maid in Jackson, Mississippi. Skeeter is a young white girl who just finished college. Aibileen’s perspective affects the novel because it gives a sense of what it was like to live in this age in time as a maid. Looking at Skeeter’s point of view, it is a look at what the rest of the world was doing. By giving both perspectives of both the characters, the novel can be seen from different angles and receive a whole new perspective.
Ethical Principles The Help chronicles a recent college graduate named Skeeter, who secretly writes a book exposing the treatment of black maids by white affluent women. The story takes place in 1960s Jackson, Mississippi, during the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement. The death of Medgar Evers triggers racial tension and gives the maids of Jackson the courage to retell their personal stories of injustice endured over the years. The movie depicts the frustration of the maids with their female employers and what their lives were like cleaning, cooking, and raising their bosses’ children. The Help shines a light on the racial and social injustice of maids during the era of Jim Crow Laws, illustrating how white women of a privileged society discriminated not only against black women, but also against their own race.
The death of Aibileen’s son inspires her to help Skeeter write her book about the lives of colored maids in Mississippi. Aibileen experiences many forms of social inequality throughout the movie. For instance, throughout her life, Aibileen is forced to take care other people’s children while her son is at home taking care of himself. Additionally, at the end of the movie due to her involvement in helping Skeeter write her book, Hilly falsely accuses Aibileen of stealing silverware and convinces Elizabeth to fire her. She was fired for trying to show the social inequality between colored people and white
She becomes consumed with the desire to find out what has happened to her. In the beginning of the story it is discovered that Skeeter wants to be a writer. She has always felt “the norm” that she has always been taught was wrong, but she fails to speak up and voice her opinion, because this is all she has known and been taught. After returning home from college, the only job that Skeeter is able to obtain is as a domestic maintenance advice columnist for an advice column called “Ms. Myrna.” As Skeeter knows nothing about housekeeping she seeks that advice of Aibileen an African American maid who works for one of her friends named Elizabeth.
Novels are written for a variety of reasons. Some for entertainment and other for the purpose of being informative. Melba Pattillo Beals record of the details of the experience of integrating Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas is more the latter. Beals’ work allows audiences to look into the life of a student in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement as she attempts to integrate a high school in the South despite opposition from the white community. Beals begins her novel with how she almost died as a baby because the doctors at the white hospital didn’t give her the care she needed because she’s black.
Jocelyn Bourgoin 9/1/17 Summer Reading Essay Have you ever wondered what life was like for a maid in the 1960’s? Well, the book The Help, written by Kathryn Stockett, gives the reader a somewhat fictional and interesting view on the lives of maids who work for white women. The book follows the points of view of three different women, Ms. Phelan, a white women, Minny and Aibileen who are both black. Many things are happening in the town of Mississippi that they live in, like how many people were building bathrooms for the blacks because they did not want to use the same one. Or how the blacks were being treated horribly.
The movie’s storyline is about a white woman (Bea) and her daughter (Jessie) gives the job of housekeeper to a black woman (Delilah) and provides her and her daughter (Peola) a place to live. The shows the differences of both girls growing up on the same house and because they have the same “skin color” they are treated as equal. This happens until the truth of Peola’s background comes to light. Peola started to feel embarrassed and discriminated because of her true identity and so decides to reject her mother completely. Bea and Jessie felt bad on how Peola treated Delilah but they couldn’t do anything to make Peola understand that she was doing wrong.
Sue Monk Kidd’s childhood inspired her to write the fiction novel, The Secret Life of Bees, from her experiences with racism in the 1960’s. Kidd vividly remembers the summer of 1964 when the Civil Rights Act had been signed and coloured people were allowed to vote. She remembers the cruelty, hate, and injustice towards the African-American people when they wanted to vote. She “found her redemption through writing” walking away from the summer of 1964, as a different person who saw life differently. Kidd had always been exposed to injustice her entire childhood so it seemed like the norm for there to be separation between black and white people.