- The Help
- Putnam, 464 pp.
- CLR Rating:
Mississippi Slow Burning
Hattie McDaniel, the Academy-Award winning actress who played Mammy in Gone with the Wind reportedly once said: “Why should I complain about making $700 a week playing a maid? If I didn’t, I’d be making $7 a week being one.”
Of course, she didn’t have much of a choice. For McDaniel in Hollywood, like many black women throughout the United States, the only role that white folks would accept her in was a domestic one. Mammy was expected to be chief bottle washer, maid, cook, and helpmeet. She could tell outlandish stories, sing spirituals or drop pearls of wisdom – that was part of her “character” – but speaking her true mind was out. She was, to all intents and purposes, the invisible woman.
The story of these unseen women forms the basis of Kathryn Stockett’s entertaining and problematic novel, The Help. Entertaining in that it is a yarn well spun, a tale of women’s lives that has its antecedents in books like the Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood or The Joy Luck Club. Full of plot twists and sly humor, The Help is what you might call an old-fashioned page turner.
Problematic in that this page turner is set in Jackson, Mississippi during the early 1960s, and is told from three points of view. Skeeter, an educated and prosperous young woman with no real plans for the future, is white. Aibileen and Minny, the titular help who reveal their stories, are black.
Now this, on the face of it, should not be a problem. Toni Morrison was happy to speak in the voice of white people in her recent book A Mercy and reviewers, including this one, were happy to accept the premise. There are no rules in novels (critics have fun superimposing those later).
And if you’re going to focus on the closeted, almost harem-like world of women in Jackson during the Kennedy years, choosing to speak with the voices of those who see all and hear all and ostensibly say nothing seems like a good choice.
Yet when an author treads into specific territories, the ground becomes awfully muddy. We’re happy to let writers play around with being a Roman slave of the first century or a prostitute of the eighteenth, but when it comes to depicting a person who has lived through the Holocaust or the Civil Rights era, ah, then I think we hesitate. Does an author, even in the services of fiction, have a right to appropriate these stories?
Stockett is smart enough to know she will be asked this question, and she tackles it in a number of ways. For one, she starts and finishes The Help with Aibileen’s narrative. Aibileen is middle-aged and without family – she lost a grown son to an industrial accident – but has raised seventeen white children as part of her duties. Maternal by nature, she nonetheless retains a dry sense of wit about her former charges:
And how I told him don’t drink coffee or he gone turn colored. He say he still ain’t drunk a cup of coffee and he twenty-one years old. It’s always nice seeing the kids grown up fine.
Aibileen works for Miss Leefolt, taking care of her daughter, Mae Mobley, and spends most of her time silently shielding the fat little girl from her mother’s verbal abuse.
Her friend Minny, on the other hand, has no problem with speaking her mind. Mother of five and married to an abusive drunk who works the night shift, Minny is known around Jackson as the best cook in the city and the one with the biggest mouth. If you can hear the theme tune of Gone With the Wind playing, Stockett can too:
If I’d played Mammy, I’d of told Scarlett to stick those green draperies up her white little pooper. Make her own damn man-catching dress.
After insulting the queen bee of the white hive, Miss Hilly, Minny is cast out from society, eventually ending up in the employment of a scatterbrained “white-trash” Miss Celia.
Between them, Aibileen and Minny have seen a lifetime of trouble and amusement, enough to fill a library. But Stockett leaves it up to Miss Skeeter to put the plot in motion. An aspiring writer, she decides to make her reputation by secretly interviewing black maids and compiling the experiences into one book. Maybe that will be her ticket to New York.
This being Mississippi at the height of segregation, library sit-ins and NAACP assassinations, complications invariably ensue. Miss Hilly, head of the Junior League and a filthily polite racist, begins to suspect Skeeter of radical notions and sets out to gun her and her conspirators down. This isn’t an idle threat. Though a white man’s fist hurts, Aibileen notes, a white woman’s slander has the power to destroy lives:
No, white womens like to keep they hands clean. They got a shiny little set a tools they use, sharp as witches’ fingernails, tidy and laid out neat, like the picks on a dentist tray. They gone take they time with em.
It takes a great deal of wit and will to combat Miss Hilly – toilets feature prominently in this battle – even as all three narrators must continue to deal with their regular lives. A Marilyn Monroe look-alike loses her mind, a handsome boyfriend appears and disappears, and personal tragedies loom. A grand finale is needed to tie up all these threads, and that’s what is delivered (if a trifle too conveniently in a couple of instances).
Amidst all this hoopla, Stockett explicitly, some might say obviously, points out the narrators’ widening awareness of the larger world. She has Aibileen reading seminal books by black Americans, Skeeter growing her hair long, and Minny dealing with domestic violence.
Yet when it comes to Skeeter’s true dilemma – whether she is exploiting others for personal gain – Stockett chooses to nick the surface and move on. She is certainly careful to have Gretchen, a young maid, accuse Skeeter outright:
Another white lady trying to make a dollar off of colored people.
But it is an accusation that is never thoroughly investigated. Gretchen lasts all of a page before Aibileen firmly steps in to contradict such a notion. Similarly, to bolster Skeeter’s case, over the course of the novel Stockett ensures that her white woman becomes more of a transcriber than a writer, with the maids often dictating or typing their own stories for her to edit. They will share the profits at the end; Skeeter will merely be the enabler.
Ay, there’s the rub. For as much as The Help is a rollicking read, I still come back to the uneasy feeling that Skeeter, for all her awkward bumbling, is the narrator who truly frames the novel. Unsurprisingly, her story seems the most personal and the most convenient, the one most like Stockett’s life. Like Stockett, she grows up in Jackson and goes off to New York to make her fortune. And, like Stockett, she has the final edit on the narratives of others. Now I have never lived in the south, so I cannot answer to the truth of Aibileen and Minny’s voices and experiences. I can wonder, though, how black women of 1962 would respond to this 21st century version of themselves.
Is Minny with her outlandish catchphrases just another version of Mammy, updated for more sensitive times? Even if stories haven’t been told, is it fair for an outsider to tell them? What would Hattie McDaniel, who worked as that $7 maid before making it to Hollywood, think of this book?
These may not be fair questions to ask of a novel that sets out to entertain and does so with great panache, but, being a dour reviewer, I’ll ask them anyway.
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February 9th, 2009 at 10:35 pm
Hi Elinor Teele–
I appreciated reading your well-written and thought-provoking review.
“Even if stories haven’t been told, is it fair for an outsider to tell them?” Intriguing question. Of course, Harriett Beecher Stowe, New Englander or not, told of Uncle Tom’s ordeal to good effect.
For this writer, the question becomes how well the writer tells the story,and to what effect. My understanding of the review is that “The Help” is purely for entertainment; by no means a bad thing. In looking for levity as opposed to serious history or social commentary, Kathryn Stockett is given a broad playing field indeed.
Best Regards,
John R. Guthrie
February 15th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
LET’S ASK MINNY:
Elinor, first of all let me begin by saying that I truly enjoyed reading this review as you raised some interesting questions, but I would be remiss if I didn’t respond. As a black woman, I am thrilled that Kathryn Stockett, a white woman, had the courage to tell the stories. She crafted complex, strong, moral, loyal and need I say it, intelligent women, in Minny and Aibileen. Usually in literature, black women are relegated to being one dimensional, stereotypical characters: all nurturing, asexual, or completely invisible servants. So, I applaud her for at least giving these women emotional depth.
Second, you question the veracity of Minny or Aibileen’s voices. This tells me that you have not spent much time in the south, because any one who has, will surely feel the authenticity of these characters and their circumstances. I can state emphatically that Minny was my mother. She was an opinionated, strong, hardworking, sassy, progressive, MAID,
Finally, I think you posed the question, ‘what gives her the right to tell these stories, in the voice that she chose.’ My response to that is simple, she’s human. My interpretation of the story is that we are all human. What better way to demonstrate that than taking America back in time to an ugly part of her history, and showing through the experiences of these provocative characters that beautiful, human side. A writer needn’t be black or white to tell these stories, just truthful.
Kathryn Stockett should be lauded for writing brave characters in a time where bravery came at the ultimate price.
February 19th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
Hi John and Octavia,
Thanks for the comments! They’re all part of a debate that interests me as a writer (as opposed to a reviewer)- how do we get at the truth of another person’s experiences? Do the best stories come from one’s own life or a sympathetic imagining of another’s? I don’t have any answers for these questions, but I wanted to throw the ideas into the mix with my review. I also want to reiterate that I really enjoyed Stockett’s writing and mention (third to last paragraph) that I included the caveat that I’ve never lived in the South.
March 18th, 2009 at 11:50 am
“The Help” which takes place during the civil rights era gives witness to a unique transcendance that occurred during this period and the three main characters reinforce that story. The contradictions of southern bigotry and class as related to domestic help represented by these characters brought back so many memories. The mixed messages that those of us raised by black women witnessed are all there. The nurturing and genuine nature of these relationships defies all reasonableness and belief given the bigotry and hatred of the time, which is probably why the validity of these characters is questionned. Even as children, we knew as Mae Mobley and Skeeter did that this love defied what was the norm. It was not present with all families, there were many black and white who felt the need to be separate, which is evident in Minny’s Mother’s instructions to her about how to be a maid. The change these black women, portrayed as Aibileen and Constantine, made in the hearts of their charges has been beautifully expressed and was a source of pride for many former maids. I, too, knew how many others had been raised before me and how much they were loved. The book celebrates this transcendance and I thank Kathryn for understanding the contradictions.
August 23rd, 2009 at 12:09 pm
Last I heard stealing was the act of taking and depriving someone of something they owned.
It’s ridiculous to accuse a fiction writer of stealing someone else’s narrative – the act of owning your imagination does not deprive anyone else of their own.
If writers are not allowed to explore the viewpoints of others unlike themselves how poor the genre would be. And what kind of intellectual fascism is that?
Kathryn Stockett isn’t proclaiming to write *on behalf* of black people in Mississippi and naturally the story that is closest to her own is going to be the richest. Rare is the writer who could do otherwise.
When I see these kinds of accusations it makes me think that the writer is angry at themselves for not writing the story, of not having their thoughts represented. Have at it.
August 24th, 2009 at 12:14 am
Kathryn Sockett is a white woman who grew up in the South with black help. As long as no one thinks it’s anything other than a privileged white woman’s take on what it must have been like to be black domestic help among privileged white people, then there’s no debate. However, what I hear in my small Southern town (from the privileged white women who are buying this book) is what a great thing Stockett has done for the voice of the black maid–and that’s about as deep as it gets. What I hear is “We really DID love our maid, Eddie Mae, and she LOVED us–she took CARE of us!!” and “We have always been so GOOD to our help–we give them so many extras!” My favorite line is “You better watch out–your help really KNOWS more than you think.” It’s just a story–no more than a beach read, and not a very good one at that. The fact that this book has gotten so much ink as a serious work of fiction is appalling. It is poorly written, embarrassingly trite, and condescending to literate people. I’m not a writer, so to the person who sent the email above, I am far from jealous! I am embarrassed–as an avid reader and as a Southerner, that anyone thinks that narrative has any historic merit. If The Help turns out to be a jumping off point for the REAL story of what it was like to be black in Mississippi in the 60’s–well, then that would make it worth something.
September 16th, 2009 at 7:43 am
I LOVED LOVED LOVED this book!
I enjoyed all the characters and story lines.
September 19th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
THE HELP has been recommended to me by many friends whose opinions and tastes I normally share. I must admit, however, that I am having lots of problems with this book. Primarily I think Stockett’s use of African American dialect is overused and inaccurate. Skilled writers can give readers a flavor of dialect by using it carefully and judiciously. A writer doesn’t have to render every speech by a character as precisely and phonetically as that character would speak. Besides, I don’t think she is particularly precise. I taught for many years in the South in a school whose population was quite diverse. I never heard an African American student say, for example, “pneumonia” when he/she meant “ammonia.” Many native Southerns say “I shoulda told the truth,” rather than the more careful and precise, “I should have told the truth” or even “I should’ve told the truth,” not just African Americans, but I soon wearied of Stockett’s consistent and overuse of “a” for “have” and “of” in rendering the thoughts and speech of her black characters. Also, I found it careless on Stockett’s or her editors’ part that she consistently spells “all right” as “alright.” Few careful writers (unless you have the status of a Cormac McCarthy) use this unconventional spelling. These are “nit picking” matters. More important, I believe, are some of the deep-seated issues that Teele addresses in her review.
October 10th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
I loved this story and am so glad it was told. I am looking forward to the discussion at my book club next month.
October 12th, 2009 at 4:15 am
After reading the book The Help, I found this a very moving book. Of how White America treated the Black people. Some treated them well, others did not.
I remember having been born in 1954, some of the things spoken of in this book and how black’s were treated.
It takes lots of courage for Kathryn Stockett to write a moving novel.
Even though it doesn’t say much for us the white folk whom treated Blacks the way they did, but the truth needs to told.
And it lets us know, no matter what color we are we are still His children, and we should treat everyone alike.
Thank you for writing the book Kathryn Stockett.
October 12th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
I find the reviews quite interesting. I’m a white woman, raised in Mount Airy, a racially integrated Philadelphia neighborhood, at a time when integrated meant, “separated by the train tracks.” I was immediately uncomfortable with the dialect in which Aibileen tells her story. It feels forced. And, I was uncomfortable with the fact that this is a white author telling the story of “The Help.” I always grapple with this issue–when a woman tries to tell a man’s story; or a man, a woman’s. This is what literature does, right? It allows us to enter another reality…and I think that goes for the author as well as the reader. Still, I’m uncomfortable. And, two chapters in, I have the sense that there will be little that isn’t predictable, and few sentences I’d be captured by. I still think the topic is important, and I like the fact that a white author took it on.
When I was three, a black caretaker that my mother employed one day a week to take care of me while she spent the day shopping, had a heart attack while I was napping. I remember climbing over her body to sit on my potty seat. She pulled herself into my brothers’ room but wouldn’t lie down on the bed. “Mrs. McVeigh, I’d never lay down on your bed,” my mom later told me she said. My mother was horrified, but clearly she hadn’t done enough to contradict the notion that this wasn’t acceptable. The woman’s name was India. She was carried down the stairs and put in an ambulance. She died the next day. It is perhaps my earliest memory and still affects my own story about race and injustice. So…I want to like this book, to find something resonant in it. I’ll try to stick with it, but I’m looking for more than a “good read” or a “beach book” (spare me). I’d just love to hear this story from another perspective.
October 18th, 2009 at 10:44 am
How can an English major, author of a best selling book consistantly misspell “all right?” I am reading THE HELP and I cringe every time I read “alright.”
October 18th, 2009 at 10:47 am
P.S. Maybe Kathryn Stockett should have majored in English at Ole Miss!!! :)
October 20th, 2009 at 10:37 pm
I read this book and believe me, I could not get enough of it; couldn’t wait to read it and was sad to see it end. I have not read a book this good in quite some time. First of all, this book is written as fiction, so there is nothing specific on which to base a lot of the details other than the experience upon which the author has drawn to tell the story. Having said that, there are many historical events in the book that are told with accuracy relative to the socio-economic climate of that time, specifically in the south. For those who question the language used by some of the characters as inaccurate, I would venture to say they have never lived in the south, and perhaps never had any relationships with others who have strong southern roots. I lived in the south as a child for a few years and based on my recollection, nothing in the dialogue(s) seems far-fetched to me.
It is unbelievable to me that anyone feels a white woman cannot tell the story of black women, which I believe in and of itself, is a statement that perpetuates an element of racism. Skeeter had a unique sense of compassion and understanding of the women with whom she wrote her book in this story. She was dealing with her own issues; a white woman, and privileged at that. However, she was living her life in a world in which she did not feel comfortable, let alone accepted. She did not fit into the circle of friends that she was expected to be a part of and eventually, she was a social outcast because of views she was suspected to carry; because she was an individual not inclined to follow the Queen Bee . . . Ms. Hilly . . . which is more than can be said for the other women in that circle of “friends”. These are the mean girls that grow up to be mean women; judge every book by its cover, and in the case of this story, particularly by the color of one’s skin. Also, in spite of her attraction to and desire to be with Stuart, Skeeter was true to herself and to the women on whose behalf she completed the book, which makes her the perfect story-teller; likewise for the author of this book, who reflected on her own personal experiences to write “The Help”.
For those who don’t just want a “good read” or a “beach book” perhaps “Anna Karenina” or “War & Peace” would be a good choice.
October 21st, 2009 at 10:00 pm
Thanks to all who have commented thus far since I am still
thinking thinking thinking after finishing The Help at 2:00 am. Your questions and comments are helpful as I continue to process. I am not an English major.
October 25th, 2009 at 12:10 am
Like many, I stayed up late at night reading The Help as its description as a “real page turner” is extremely accurate.
Interesting though, that Kathryn Stockett did not include any young, educated middle class white women, Skeeter’s age, in Jackson MI who weren’t in the Junior League. There were plenty of these women and many of them were interested in the Civil Rights Movement and social equality. But they weren’t “Junior League Material” because they didn’t have the status, money or correct religion. I know, because I was one of these women. I watched the “Skeeters” float by at the country club and not give the non-Junior Leaguers the time of day. Why did I get the feeling Skeeter did this even after she was blackballed by her friends?
Unfortunately, though Skeeter is woken up to the injustices of the south, she isn’t enlightened enough to consider that her own white social class system excludes people and makes them feel “less” than they are because they don’t come from cotton or money.
If there was any reason why I moved to CA in my twenties it was to get away from these kinds of white women.
I enjoyed The Help and it brought back many memories of the South. Just wish Stockett could have taken Skeeter’s revelation one step further.
October 26th, 2009 at 8:15 am
I had a hard time getting through this read and felt the majority of the characters were over-the-top cookie cutter stereotypes. I couldn’t help but get an image of the bourbon drinking Senator wearing a white suit just like Colonel Sanders, going down to the Robert E. Lee hotel with his dog named “Dixie” in tow.
As far as the majority of the characters..
“Those that were good, were very, very good…and those that were bad were horrid.” Though the author is trying to portray the mood of a nation near the height of the Civil Rights movement, I get a twinge of collective guilt coming off the pages as I read them…which was perhaps intended.
Too bad this piece wasn’t written in the 1960s. It is fictional bravery at best, although the concept is interesting, it is safe…and blessed by Oprah.
I think I noticed about three references from TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, but this one is just a summer read with nothing too subtle about it…so I’m betting there’s a movie screenplay not too far behind.
The thing that got me is that Skeeter ends up cutting out to New York City for a new life…and everyone else is left to fend for themselves in Jackson and clean up the mess.
I did finish the book for our book club discussion. If anything… the discussion will be lively, so that says something!
October 26th, 2009 at 10:53 pm
I sit here wondering, truly wondering, what Kate would consider the “REAL story of what it was like to be a black woman living in the south” in the 60s. Apparently, Kate DOES know – and this is not it. She knows so well that this book is simply “appalling” to her. Well I’m dying to hear it!
Also having grown up in the South, I can’t for the life of my figure out what is so obviously and grotesquely wrong with KS’s characters’ POVs. Maybe they’re not accurate – I’M certainly not a black women who worked for a white family in the 60s so I couldn’t say. (And if you’re going to go THERE, why is a white woman sitting around criticizing other white women in defense of the “truths” of black women? Come on, Kate!) But “The Help” rang a bell with me, and while these are fictional characters so there is no “truth” or “non-truth” to what they felt, this book enabled me think about their real-life counterparts’ POVs in a more more intimate way than I ever had before and, I think, exactly the way I believe KS wanted.
I particularly loved that the relationships with the maids and the families were indeed complex. I didn’t find them at 2-dimentional. There was both love and hate all mixed together, and I got that. Seems pretty realistic to me.
But apparently, as someone also “from the South who reads avidly” [paraphrase] I should think this book was a mortifying shame if I want to be legitimate. I wish Kate would fill me in on what I don’t know about either identification.
October 28th, 2009 at 1:47 am
For Heaven’s sake, people, this was an extremely good book!….I, too, was sorry to see it end, even if it was a sad commentary about those times….which are, unfortunately, not that different today in Sikeston, Missouri (more cotton and money, a few hours north of Jackson, Mississippi). The vernacular was right on, and, good grief…NONE of us (not down here, anyway) says “all right”…Ole Miss English major or not…
Here’s what Merriam-Webster online has to say about it…
Main Entry: al·right
Pronunciation: \(?)o?l-?r?t, ?o?l-?\
Function: adverb or adjective
Date: 1887
The one-word spelling alright appeared some 75 years after all right itself had reappeared from a 400-year-long absence. Since the early 20th century some critics have insisted alright is wrong, but it has its defenders and its users. It is less frequent than all right but remains in common use especially in journalistic and business publications. It is quite common in fictional dialogue, and is used occasionally in other writing .
Bravo for this book!
Anne Berbling
November 1st, 2009 at 4:00 pm
I am a black woman whose mother grew up in Mississippi and migrated to Chicago in the 60’s before I was born. I also have many relatives who lived Mississippi during the time period Ms Stockett writes of in “The Help”. That said I did not find the lanquage over the top or the situations unrealistic. From all that I know and have heard I feel Ms Stockett was honest and brave. I may be wrong but most of the comments seem to be from white educated people who do not have an idea ofwhat life was like there in that time in history. I am listening to the book and I am thoroughly entertained as well as saddened and intriqued. Thank Ms Stockett for a wonderfully experience.
November 5th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
Having grown up a middle-class white girl in a small southern town in the mid-sixties, I was bowled over by this novel in sometimes troubling and complex ways. The voices of Abileen and Minnie were echoes of the lovely voices of the black women who helped raise me. Skeeter had a narrative in this book too. Some of us did, in fact, have our “consciousnesses raised” in the late sixties to use a shamefully trite phrase. The nature of life in that time and place is difficult to explain to those who didn’t live it. Ms. Stockett does a masterful job. This is a story worth telling and I hope other writers both black and white will try.
November 17th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
I am 74 years old. I remember the 60s well. I have spent 10 years living with black people in both Oakland and Los Angeles. The voices of Kathryn Stockett’s women are authentic and right. Much of the horror of the Civil Rights movement is told. I loved the book.
November 22nd, 2009 at 6:39 pm
I loved this book-unlike some other commenters I would not put this book in the “beach book” category at all! I admire the writer for taking a chance on writing this book. I fell in love with some of the characters and grew to hate other characters. Any woman who has had a friend involved “domestic” violence-knows the agony that Minny was going through-how could she leave her husband when she had so many kids? This book is full of layers and I for one enjoyed reading this book. I don’t read fiction anymore because it seems to me that a lot of books have been dumbed down for some reason or another. But this one has made me realize that there are writers out there who have wonderful stories to tell!
November 23rd, 2009 at 2:04 am
I am an African American Woman. Born in 1951, and raised by a woman that worked for white women and raised their kid. And this book made me sick! The one thing that kept jumping out at me was the fact that the writer (Kathryn)sounded like a white woman trying to sound like a black maid – - – but kept forgetting and throwing in phrases that would never be uttered by a black person – - especially back in the day! To a white person of course this book would be wonderful! In fact, it was a white friend that raved about the book so much that I decided to check it out.
The book’s authenticity from a black perspective was non-existent
I had a very difficult time getting through it and would throw it down from time to time because the authenticity just wasn’t there. It made me gag to think that the author actually “thought” she knew enough about how black women thought and felt (even back in those times) that she could actually concoct a whole book about it! Please!
The fact that she had the gall to even attempt to write a book from a black maid’s prespective proves her ignorance. And also proves that the “help” in her time were way ahead of the game because,trust me, my mama and many others cleaned the white women houses and raised their bad kids but not a day would go buy that she did not remind us that she never, ever, wanted us to clean up behind lazy white women!
The “help” showed the face that they had to show to survive, but believe me, even back in the 60’s, the help sang a whole different tune at home! But the white folk never ever got to see the “real” face of the “help” because if they did, they probably would not have had any help!
When I finally finished the book, I thought what a waste! At the end, the writer fell back on that “happy ever after”
ending for the white girl and left the “help” holding the bag! Typical!
November 23rd, 2009 at 11:33 pm
Miss Connie,
All I can say is THANK YOU.
December 2nd, 2009 at 6:38 pm
In one hour, I will be at our book group meeting where THE HELP will be discussed. We are all white professional women and I am just waiting to hear the comments. I hope that we will not dissect the book, looking for what Stockett could have included but didn’t. Rather I hope that we will give careful consideration to the fictional characters who, by the book’s end, have endeared themselves to us like neighbors that we’ve just gotten to know but who are now moving.
December 18th, 2009 at 10:01 am
Just finished it.Whether or not this is a “beach” book or not is going to be decided in the hearts of each reader.I have been naive before and maybe here I go again.
I think it will be seriously read for a long time.
I also think some of the comments are from folks who will never love a book the way this one should be loved,they’re way too smart for that.
All the comments critising the dialect are full of it.I grew up here, it reads like the gospel.
While misusing “pneumonia” for “ammonia” does not ring true today, for the early sixties it does, and not just for black folks.
December 28th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
Elinor – your’s is a wonderful,insightful review. And I appreciate your multilayered analysis and questions. Permit me to add one more layer that may seem less important than the larger view of the deep south in the 1960’s, but it is my perspective having just finished this book. I loved this book. Let me tell you why.
I was born in 1945, and I was not reared in the South, but in Pennsylvania by an older woman, a PA. Dutch nanny, whose name was Mazie. She was all my twin sister and I knew as a mommy, for our biological mother had a stroke the day after we were born. When we were 5, as she toweled us off one Saturday night from our bath, she said, “I have to leave you next week. Your dad is marrying Anne. She will be your mommy now.” Anne….the nervous, scary, dark red-lipsticked lady who did not like children.
As white and as northern as we all happened to be, as I read this book, I knew how Mae Mobley felt as she grabbed Aibileen’s neck and pleaded with her, “Please don’t leave Aibee…”
As it happened, twenty one years later, at age 26, I accepted a position as an Assistant Professor at the University of Alabama in Birmingham. It was there that I was told that, “Until I could dream in Southern, I should keep my mouth shut!” I learned first hand about the cultural mores of the South.
But I found ways that I could recognize our common bond, north and south. My southern friends and colleagues told me rich stories about their nannies, stories that ring true to what is written in The Help; stories that resonated with my own.
Kathryn Stockett has given us all much more than a piercing view of the culture of the early 1960’s in Jackson, Mississippi. She has given us a glimpse of what it means to a child to be cared for by a loving presence in our home who recognizes that we are each more alike than different.
This is much, much more than a “beach read.” Thank you Kathryn Stockett for having the courage to offer it to us.
January 2nd, 2010 at 11:09 am
I don’t presume to know anything beyond what I’ve read about Southern culture and racial attitudes – as a lifelong Yankee, it has always sounded like a whole different country to me. So there’s no sense in getting in the middle of the people for whom the writer’s portrayal captured some of this beautifully, and those who scorn her attempts. For me, the most moving storyline was the Aibileen-Mae Mobley relationship, and I know that is because I read this as a mother of young children. My heart broke for both of them, two people who loved one another in the purest sense, yet were kept apart by invisible barriers and small-minded people. Certainly, this also happened with Skeeter and Constantine, but even with Constantine’s death, the Aibileen-Mae Mobley story seemed more tragic. The reader wants to hope and believe along with Aibileen that the girl of four will remember what her caregiver tried to instill in her during their time together. That she will remember the feeling of being cared for, loved, paid attention to. And the unimaginable hurt for Aibileen – think of being separated from your children, then take it to a whole new level by adding on the fact that you might always be thought of by them as inferior, that they might never understand how much you loved them. And Aibileen had to go through this 17 times.
January 4th, 2010 at 5:24 am
On the recommendation of a friend I bought this book to give as a gift to my sister. I peeked inside to see if I thought it any good and couldn’t put it down. I thought it beautifully written and enjoyed the beginning, middle and end. I haven’t been able to say that about a book for a long time. I can’t speak as to whether it is “authentic” from a black maids perspective but I can appreciate the injustices portrayed from a woman’s perspective. I don’t know if the book will be considered literature. I for one am glad I didn’t wait for the beach to read it.
January 6th, 2010 at 3:08 pm
I agree almost whole hardly with Connie.
I was not born in the 60s but I lived a few hours from Jackson. My grandmother was a maid and ALL of her children are college educated and ALL of her grandchildren (of age) are college educated. Not once have I heard from my parents, aunts or uncles that my grandmother wanted her children to follow in her footsteps. She and my grandfather worked hard so they would have a better life. It was TIME for a better life.
I so hated the dialect in this novel. It is truly unbelieveable. I am an eduacator in a small southern town where most of the people are under educated and poor. Yes, I hear broken English constantly but never to this extent. The language was too generic for my taste especially from Aibileen who had a few years of education.
If the book gets people reading and not sitting on the couch watching tv or surfing the internet, then it has done a great job. The discussion of the book is great as well because I hope it makes people really think.
January 6th, 2010 at 3:11 pm
typo:
wholehearted
January 9th, 2010 at 11:56 am
wholeheartedly
January 16th, 2010 at 7:14 pm
Has anybody read both this book and any of Faulkner’s major works about the South? I chose Faulkner’s Light in August as our book club pick (in spite of some members’ reluctance). Light in August is a book that I found extremely powerful, masterful, an experience not to be missed – though difficult on many levels. Another book club member suggested we read The Help at the same time, to get another perspective. Now, I am just about to crack open The Help and finish it in time for our upcoming meeting. I find myself approaching it with some pessimism, as I cringe at the thought of a mere page-turner beach-read after my profound experience with Faulkner. Any thoughts on this? My suspicion is that someone who likes the Faulkner will not be too impressed with The Help, and a Help reader will be seriously put off by Faulkner. In both cases, the books contain back characters written by white writers.
January 19th, 2010 at 6:42 am
This book depicted exactly what I knew and loved about growing up in that time period and being a woman of color. I love the book, it was everything a book should be to a reader…highly entertaining and a definite page turner! I read the other comments above and would like to know when the ney sayers are going to be printing their books(they seem to be such pros)
January 19th, 2010 at 7:18 pm
I finished The Help last night and will be discussing it at my bookclub tonight. I thoroughly enjoyed the engrossing story, but was a little less impressed with the writing. The novel is definitely a step above beach read and comparing it to Faulkner is unfair to a first novelist, actually to just about any novelist!
I’ll be sharing some of your comments tonight.
Thanks for the lively perspectives and thoughts!
January 24th, 2010 at 1:04 am
I, too, am reading this book for a book club and am truly dreading our get together in a few days! I have heard only glowing praise for this book from the other members of the club but unfortunately find the book dreadful and hate to be the only dissenter in the group.
The premise of the book is a good one, but the writing is poor; the characters are thinly developed cliches of “The South”, the accent of the maids was forced, inaccurate and distracting and I found the story line quite boring. At least a good beach read has a compelling plot. I couldn’t empathize with any of the characters because their development was so shallow and thus didn’t find any of them believable enough to care at all what happened.
It was as though after she read few pages in her 10 grade history book on the subject, the author felt qualified to write a novel about it. By the looks of her picture she can’t be much past 40, so I don’t see how she could know about that period from first hand experience as seems to have been suggested.
I lived in the south for 10 years and am familiar with the accent the author was attempting, but she missed it by a mile! It his however possible to achieve this effect in writing. For comparison, Mark Twain in Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn wrote some passages in a thick accent that was dead-on, as difficult as those passages were to read. SIgh, yet again I am disappointed with a modern writer attempting to create literature.
January 24th, 2010 at 1:16 am
No idea how old Stockett is, but at the end of the audiobook she discusses how the book was inspired by her own experiences growing up in Mississippi, and her family’s relationship with the black domestic who was heavily involved in raising her and her siblings. (Stockett mentions some particular characteristics of this woman–unfortunately I’m forgetting her name–that clearly show up in the depictions of Aibileen and Minny.)
Incidentally, while listening to the audiobook (which I loved) I wondered how the accents of Minny and Aibileen were portrayed on the page. I can see how it might be more jarring to read the accent than to hear it read.
January 25th, 2010 at 8:54 pm
Now y’all …
Remember that the South is not monolithic–all we Southerners have some common experiences and all of us have unique experiences. There are many elements of the book that ring true enough for me that I can believe the language, dialect, and experiences could have existed somewhere to someone south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Stereotypes exist because they do represent some commonalities.
I found the book enjoyable and thought provoking–isn’t that why we read?
January 26th, 2010 at 3:41 pm
I agree with Shirley! Just as the experiences of all women cannot be grouped together, neither can those of all southerners, all blacks nor all black southerners.
Having grown up in the rural south in the 1960’s, it is my experience that, for the most part, the dialect is dead on.
My mother’s “domestic help” was a sweet woman named “Listine”. As much as we knew she cared about us, we always knew that her own family was her priority. My brother and I were never “her charges”, so I cannot compare that aspect of “THE HELP” to any personal experience.
I read to learn and to be entertained or enlightened. Stockett’s first novel was a success in all of the above. To say a white woman cannot write from a black woman’s perspective is like saying a man can’t write from a woman’s perspective…….What fun would that be if we pigeon-holed our authors with that criteria?
February 11th, 2010 at 7:34 pm
I am hosting book club tonight and we will be discussing The Help. I agree with those who loved the book and valued it for its glimpse into a world that seems so, so, so improbable when you’ve grown up in a small town in Wisconsin in the 50s and 60s. (really, everything was quite wonderful. We didn’t understand how sweet our lives were at the time perhaps, but in retrospect, we sure had easy, loving, peaceful, carefree lives.) I think that even if this book gets just a few people saying “Are you kidding me? I never thought about the life of a maid in the south. Seriously, is this how they lived? This book has has opened my eyes,” … then great value can be assigned to this book. It’s startling that a book that is this compelling is Stocket’s FIRST book. I can’t wait to read her next one.
February 13th, 2010 at 11:56 am
I am also an African-American woman who grew up in the 60’s and can honestly say I could not put the book down. I grew up in Maryland where my grandmother did “day’s work” for two or three white families. The experiences in Stockett’s novel were eye-opening for me, having never heard my grandmother say anything but kind words about her white employers. However, I know from listening to a friend share an experience she had in Maryland when she substituted for her grandmother that everyone’s story is not the same.
I especially recall one scene in which the woman of the house told her to wash her husband’s underwear by hand, even though she had a washing machine. The woman told her she was not being asked to do anything different. She refused and walked out immediately. To this day, she is bitter about that experience.
I applaud Stockett for writing this book. Someone had to tell the truth. Why not her?
February 15th, 2010 at 7:25 pm
I am the facilitator for discussing this book at our next book club meeting so was interested in other book club comments.
Personally, I enjoyed reading the book because the story flowed well. I also ‘learned’ from this book and like it for what it was – a depiction of the lives of people and how they differed in their approach to life – during a difficult time period for African-Americans. I am neither “black” nor “white” – but “brown”! I did not grow up in the US and so cannot comment on the accuracy of the language or the characters portrayed. What I did glean was that no matter which country’s history we look into, there were (and are) people who will nurture a superiority complex over others – it is just a matter of finding something to feel superior about, or finding something to demean others by. Sad but true. And I learned that for change to occur and humaneness to prevail and differences nulled – it has to start with a few, if not the one. This is the absolute truth – no matter what the issues are – black/white; educated/not; rich/poor; vegetarian/not; Accepting people for who they are – HUMANS!! – and seeing the good in people, books, literature, history is something that is portrayed in this book. It is a work of fiction, based on the author’s experiences, and is written such that the reader keeps reading and pondering. Isn’t that what reading is about? To make us think, and learn, and perhaps apply some of what we learn?
February 19th, 2010 at 1:28 am
I don’t have time to read fiction, so I always listen to the audiobook. The few lines of dialect that I have seen in these reviews suggest that it was very hard to write and (consequently)very hard to read. However, the actresses who read the African-American characters in the Penguin Audio edition (Bahni Turpin and Octavia Spencer)render the dialect flawlessly. These are exactly the voices I heard in Georgia in the 1950s and 1960s and that can still be heard in some pockets of the South even today. The writers who claimed that the dialect is inauthentic are both teachers. People do not speak in front of teachers the way they speak in the company of people who do not give them grades.
February 25th, 2010 at 4:48 am
I just finished The Help and really enjoyed it. A beach read?? Give me a break. Yes, it is fiction (which I read all the time) and pardon me if I was entertained and enlightened by it.
I look forward to Kathryn Stockett’s next effort.
February 25th, 2010 at 11:21 am
I am an Italian-American who grew up on Long Island in the 50s and 60s. Those complaining about the authenticity of the portrayal and dialects of blacks in The Help remind me of my brethren who complained about the portrayal of Italians in The Godfather and The Sopranos. Get a life. It’s fictional entertainment where hyperbole and stereotyping are often used to heighten the enjoyment of those who are being entertained. Hasn’t anyone ever noticed that everyday speech is vastly more disjointed and replete with “uh”s and “you know”s and “inaudible”s than you’ll ever find in a book or screenplay. I’ve listened to more than 140 unabridged books on tape and The Help was among the top five.
February 28th, 2010 at 8:16 pm
I will be giving a short review on Stockett’s novel this Thursday night as part of our library’s quarterly “book review night. Having read all of the above commentary, I beg to add a few notes as well. Having grown up in the deepest South possible, South Texas, and being of white ancestry, I can attest to the fact that, yes, these “Junior Leaguers” existed even at the junior high school level, and no, I was never included in their cadre, thankfully. We had a wonderful maid, Leola, who came in once a week to do ironing, and I didn’t realize she was a different color than I until I was probably 10 years old. We respected her and her needs, and she respected us as well.
Stockett has nailed the privileged white women’s personalities, and the “colored” women with their dialects as well. I have not had the opportunity to hear the recorded book, but plan to do so before Thursday. I thoroughly enjoyed Stockett’s first effort and look forward to her next one with great anticipation.
Oh, and by the way, we were taught that “alright” was a fully acceptable compound word!
March 6th, 2010 at 8:49 pm
I am white, 64, grew up in the south, and we did not have any help. We did our own housework. Most in our neighborhood did have help.
I do not see this book as a book club selection. Unless it is a racially mixed book club, I would not waste my time attending a discussion of the book.
Most book clubs I encounter are pretty homogenous, and I can just see a room full of white women my age bragging about how wonderful their family was to the black help, which I doubt. Most were paid with old clothes, old food, and too little money.
March 9th, 2010 at 7:20 pm
Wonderful book. It will be discussed at our book group this Thursday. I enjoyed this commentary as it opens up much needed dialogue. The south in the 60’s unfortunately is no different than the south in 2010, whether your in the deep deep south or the north for that matter. I also think that if this was a work of non-fiction, the author would have found the sources needed to validate it as a work of non-fiction. I think she took the easy way out by calling it a work of fiction. Kudos to you Kathryn for not being afraid. Kathryn said in her interviews that she didn’t think anyone would read this work. Well, she was wrong.
March 10th, 2010 at 2:15 pm
I thoroughly enjoyed reading the Help and also enjoyed the various comments provided by other readers here. I’m just curious if all those who criticized Kathryn Stockett for being a white woman writing about a black woman’s point of view also believe that men should not write about a woman’s point of view. While I sometimes feel that a male author’s female characters are not entirely accurate, it would be nonsensical and extremely limiting to say men should not write female characters and vice versa. The situation in The Help is no different. People may agree or disagree whether the voice is accurate, but it’s ridiculous to say it was wrong of her to try.
March 20th, 2010 at 7:56 pm
I just finished The Help today. I was on a library waiting list for two months. Obviously, this book is a hit. I enjoyed the book on many, many levels. Although I was not born in the South, as an adult, I lived for several years in two different southern states including the city and state where Ms. Stockett went to college. So, on the one hand, I feel like, as a Northerner, I had some things to learn about the culture Stockett writes about, and, on the other hand, I believe that my own personal reflections on my experiences in the South allowed me to look at the book critically. Overall, I enjoyed the book and believe that one can enjoy a book and be critical of it at the same time. I dislike hearing people suggest that an enjoyable read should not be criticized at all. And I am especially bothered by the idea that in order to criticize a book you have to have written one.
It seems to me then that this discussion has turned into a debate. Either people like the book or they do not. Yet, those who have commented have strayed pretty far from Ms. Teele’s initial question concerning who gets to tell “the story.” This is a question that one of my professors used to ask (mostly white) education students as they went into urban (mostly black) schools to conduct research. Sure, on the surface, it seems that stories do not belong to anyone. Whoever feels moved to write should write the thinking goes. Yet, I think we miss the point that in the past and, I would argue, even today, a structure existed which provided unequal access to publication. So long as this is the case, people of certain groups will always have a better chance of framing and telling the stories to a large audience and, just as importantly, they will continually benefit financially from this greater access. In Stockett’s novel, all of the black women interviewed received a share of the proceeds from the book. In real life, this is hardly ever the case (and I haven’t heard that Stockett has given back financially to Hot Stack or its real-life equivalent. Who knows? Perhaps she has, but if so, the fact has not been publicized.) So, Ms. Teele’s question raises not simply the issue of who has the right to speak but who in reality gets to speak most often, what structures underlie the privilege of voice, and, I would add, whether most of us are so used to invisible structures of privilege that even when one hints at them today, we turn our minds in less troubling, more sentimental, directions. Probably the single greatest thing that I got from reading this book was how a culture of privilege could be so blind to the oppression of others. So, this is an eye opener that encourages me to look around, even at the Northern city in which I live today and ask who gets to speak and what are the social and economic implications of that power.