The Help - Cultural Paper by Khala Flanagan

For my cultural analysis paper, I choose to discuss and read the novel The Help by Kathryn Stockett. I will admit that I was attracted to the book solely because of the recent film adaption, and also because I heard one of the main characters was an aspiring writer such as myself. Furthermore, I was intrigued by the cultural frame the novel takes place in – the 60’s, when some of the biggest, controversial moments in history took place. I live in North Carolina, and I still see Confederate flags advertised in small towns and bummer stickers. Racism still existed in full fury down in the South after the Civil War, and the time of Martin Luther King Jr. emphasizes that stark reality. To find a book that combines all of these cultural treasures into one made The Help extremely enjoyable to read.

The story follows the viewpoints of three different women who live in Jackson, Mississippi – Eugenia, Minny , and Aiblieen. Eugenia (a.k.a. “Skeeter”) is a college graduate who’s extremely different from the other women in her town, especially since she’s unmarried and wants to become a serious writer. After landing a newspaper job, she decides to write a book from the viewpoint of “the help”, the colored women who raise white children and keep houses. Aiblieen is one of those women who suffers from the loss of her own son but has cared for seventeen white children during her career. She is the first of the help who agree with Skeeter’s plan, and she eventually convinces her best friend, Minny, to do the same. Minny is the polar opposite when it comes to Aibileen’s soft and sweet personality, and is known to be Jacksons’ best cook and biggest mouth. Both Minny and Aibileen dreadfully fear for their lives and the rest of their community when they tell Skeeter their personal stories, knowing they’ll be horribly punished if they’re caught. Racial segregation is hot and heavy during this time with the KKK killing blacks and marches going on all over the country. However, all three women come to realize through their individual struggles and joint efforts that the only way to change things is to tell the truth – the truth about colored injustice.

The Help portrays a very vivid example of ethnocentrism – the belief that one culture is infinitely superior to another, judging from only one culture’s perspective. The saying “separate but equal” was a dominant philosophy in the minds of many white Mississippi women, especially to Hilly Holbrook from The Help. Hilly is the chief antagonist, the character who causes the most conflict not only for Skeeter, but also for the entire black community. Hilly, like thousands of others, believe that all colored people are inferior to the white community, and they are viewed as unsanitary, unintelligent individuals who can be taken advantage of. It’s always been a tradition for the Southerners to have colored help, and some refuse to let go of that mentality. In The Help, Hilly designs a bill that requires every white home to have a separate bathroom for the colored help, claiming that she’ll do whatever it takes to protect the town of Jackson. Skeeter, like many of the colored maids, is disgusted with Hilly’s attitude towards them and wishes she could change things for everyone, not just those in her community. Eventually, the idea to write a book about the help is the answer to that wish.

Ethnography plays an important role in this story as well. The gathering and interpretation of information based on firsthand study is the method Skeeter uses to write her book. She wants to tell the truth about the relationships between whites and blacks, but she has no idea how dangerous that topic is during that point in time. Because she’s been at college for 4 years, she’s been isolated from the heated segregation issues. Even though she was raised by her own beloved maid Constantine, she realizes she knows nothing about the dangers blacks are in or the consequences that would follow if they’re caught talking to her. Aibileen and Minny constantly remind her of this as they become her informants and respondents, those from whom Skeeter collects stories and information. As Skeeter listens to them and writes down their stories, she not only begins to see things through their eyes, but also her opinions and character changes as well. For example, Aiblieen asks Skeeter to check out some books from the white library for her, and Skeeter is once again reminded of the risk Aiblieen is taking just to speak to her. When Skeeter asks why Aibileen didn’t ask before, the maid replies, “These is white rules. I don’t know which ones you following and which ones you ain’t.” Skeeter answers that she’s tired of the rules and realizes she means it.

The more Skeeter interviews the maids, the more she sees just how many lines are drawn between whites and blacks, and not everyone from the colored community wants to help her because they’re so scared. She learns to take things one step at a time when asking the maids questions and to never press too far into their personal lives. After all, it wasn’t uncommon for blacks – men, women, and children alike – to be beaten to death, attacked by dogs, or imprisoned for life. Skeeter often criticizes her own ignorance of the matter: “They’d killed Carl Roberts for speaking out, for talking. I think about how easy I thought it would be… to get a dozen maids to talk to me. Like they’d just been waiting, all this time, to spill their stories out to a white woman. How stupid I’d been.” During the interviews with the other maids, Skeeter notices they often look back at Aibileen and Minny as if to ask, “Can I really tell a white woman this?” Because of their bravery and willingness to do something about the injustice, Skeeter comes to gratefully respect and revere all the maids who help her.

Capitalism is an economic system in which people work for wages, land and goods are privately owned, and capital is invested for profit. In The Help, the image of such a system is portrayed in the day-to-day lifestyles of people living in Jackson, Mississippi. The black community sells their labor and services to the white community in return for their livelihood, even though most of them are underpaid and all of them are denied fair treatment and resources. Hilly Holbrook and many other sophisticated ladies make ordinances in the town, such as separate bathrooms, and the white community also dominates the town’s resources for their own benefit. An example would be Hilly’s tactics to establish a strong racial prejudice in Jackson so that many whites will vote for her husband in the state elections. Like Skeeter, most white communities hardly know about the hardships colored people suffer throughout the country. Aibileen tells Minny that what they’re doing – telling Miss Skeeter their stories – is telling the truth, the truth they have to keep believing in. Both the maids hold onto this one word – truth – when times grow hard for them, and they realize it’s the only chance they have to make things better for the lives and the lives of others. Not only does Skeeter learn about the evils going on in her town and the segregational system, but she discovers facts about her friends’ lives - how they treat their children and their help at home - that changes the way she sees them and strains their friendships.

One of the most poignant scenes in The Help which, I think, illustrates the book’s theme is when Minny and Aibileen are sitting together having coffee just before the Benefit party. Minny is talking about her new boss, Miss Celia, and how she treats her like a good friend instead of just her maid. This confuses Minny because she’s so used to being mistreated with disrespect, and she doesn’t understand why Celia doesn’t see the “lines” between blacks and whites. Aibileen comments that “You’re talking about something that don’t exist.”
“Not only is they lines,” Minny says, “but you know good as I do where them lines be drawn.”
“I used to believe in em,” answers Aibileen, “I don’t anymore. They in our heads. People like Miss Hilly is always trying to make us believe they there. But they ain’t. Lines between black and white aren’t there. Some folks just made those up, long time ago. And that go for the white trash and the so-ciety ladies too. All I’m saying is, kindness don’t have no boundaries.”
This is a perfect example of ethnic boundaries, claimed cultural attributes by which ethnic groups distinguish themselves from others. According to our culture textbook, ethnicity, like the nation, is popularly viewed as a “bedrock” of “natural” ties based on “common blood, language, attachment to a place, or culture” passed down largely unchanged from generation to generation. The society ladies and people of Jackson have distinguished themselves as an elite group who believe in Southern tradition and they way things have been for years – to have colored help. Likewise, the black community has resorted to be considered an inferior group of servants and workers, and because most of them believe nothing will ever change, they just go through the motions of everyday life. After Skeeter plays a trick that makes Hilly the laughingstock of Jackson, the ladies’ League shuns her from all their social events, eventually firing her from her position as their article editor. Skeeter tastes firsthand what it means to be a social outcast because of strong ethnic boundaries separating people.

Yet, she knows the book will help erase those racial lines and make others regain their humanity and respect. Skeeter has a revelation when Lou Anne speaks to her after the book is published. Even though Skeeter doesn’t know her very well, Lou Anne is particularly touched by the book because she is one of the rare white women who truly cares about the help and hates racial prejudices. Skeeter learns from the other maids that Lou Anne went out of her way to help her own maid care for her injured grandson and treats them with heartfelt love. Skeeter laments that she didn’t try to become friends with Lou Anne before, knowing she could’ve treated her a little nicer. She reflects that “there is so much you don’t know about a person. Wasn’t that the point of the book? For women to realize, we are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I’d thought.”

I also think this was why the author, Kathryn Stockett, decided to write the story through three characters’ perspectives instead of just one. Most stories are told through one point of view so the reader won’t become confused about who the story is really about. The Help, however, is an exception to this rule because Aibileen and Minny are just as crucial to the story as Skeeter is. Even though Skeeter is the main protagonist, I wouldn’t have understood the full nature of how culture shaped the story’s plot if I didn’t see things through the maids’ eyes, too. To grasp the real hardships and understand the Negroes’ mentality during this brutal time, it makes sense to have different parts of the story told by Minny and Aibileen. Some of the most important events in the book only occurred through one of the three women’s viewpoints, and I learnt something about each of them that wasn’t shared with the other characters in the story. Yet, these important events and experiences needed to be included so that the story would make sense, that these women would become “real” , and the cultural frame of the book would literally be three-dimensional.

The Help is, without a doubt, one of the best books I’ve ever read. Not only did it leave me with a message about humanity, but it also opened by eyes just like Skeeter’s to realize the full scope of fear and injustice that haunted the South in the 60’s. Because of so much hate and discrimination towards blacks, it was no wonder the maids were unwilling to share anything personal with Skeeter. Most of the whites were either born and bred to be racist, or they were simply ignorant of what was going on. For me, it was so shocking to read about the abuse and hatred some whites had for blacks, to witness the corruption and twisted mentalities of those who really believed they could treat other human beings with such violence and prejudice. Aibileen, Minny, and the other maids joined forces with Skeeter in order that the truth would finally get a chance to surface and change things for everyone.

What hope do the innocent, minority, helpless, and forgotten have if the good people in the world stand back and do nothing while they are tortured and abused simply because they’re “different”? From what I’ve learnt in my Anthropology class, this is one of the reasons why some anthropologists choose the work that they do. Some of them want to make things better for everyone by approaching a group of different people on their level in order to understand their culture and to teach the world who they really are – human beings, just like everyone else. Skeeter may have not wished to be an anthropologist, but her work among the help and her desire to do something about the cultural issues of her time characterized her to be that sort of person. All three of them – Skeeter, Minny, and Aibileen – were those individuals who became the change they wished to see in the world, especially when it came to breaking down the evil barriers that separate human beings from each other.

Even though I have not yet seen the film adaption of The Help, I know it will be available on DVD next month, and I’m anxious to see it! This is the official trailer for the film:

http://www.youtube.com/user/TheHelpMovie?v=IpKIfvh5C9E&feature=pyv&ad=9292651238&kw=the%20help