Character Overview: The Help By Kathryn Stockett

The book , The Help by Kathryn Stockett, is about a women named Aibileen who is a black maid. She is taking care of her 17th white baby now. She works for a woman named Miss Leefolt. Aibileen has never disobeyed an order in her life and never intends to do so. Her friend Minny is the exact opposite. When she is around her boss, she has to hold herself back from sassing them all the time. Skeeter Phelan is different than the rest of the white ladies. She thinks that blacks aren’t all that bad. She decides to write a book about the lives of maids for white ladies. Otherwise known as the Help. She with the help of Aibileen and Minny hope to create a book that starts a revolution about what white people think about blacks.

The book “The Help”, written by Kathryn Stockett, is a book that takes place in Jackson, Mississippi, around the 1960's, when the blacks were segregated from the whites. The story is mainly about a black woman Aibileen whose main job is to take care of children as well as to handle household duties. Along the way they meet a woman Skeeter's whose lifelong dream is to become a writer however the only job she can find, is with the Jackson Journal writing a housekeeping advice column which she knows very little about. To succeed in the job, Skeeter turns to her friend's maid, Aibileen, for answers and help to write the column.

Through her life at home Anne Moody experienced poverty and understood the differences between the lives of blacks and whites. Anne spent a large majority of her child in extreme poverty, having to work after school to help provide for her family her mother was a maid for white women, but her income was not enough to buy food and clothes for Anne and her sister. Food in the book was a key distinction in status of whites and blacks. On most days they would only eat bread and beans and on a good day they thrived off of milk, peanut butter or table scraps from the white families they worked for. White families didn’t know how to cook good food or prepare food hygienically. Moody realizes this while working for Miss Ola. Moody states, “After eating the food Miss Ola I could see how Mama had to do the cooking because white women didn’t know how” (Moody 37). Anne follows up with a detailed description of mucus dripping out of Miss Ola’s nose right into the soup she is about to feed them. Whites compared blacks to animals. Anne’s mother used to buy milk from the white lady on the hill until Anne discovered the lady would leave the milk out and let her cats drink out of it and then sell that same milk to the African Americans in the community for twenty-five cents. Housing was another aspect of life

Gender roles and gender gaps were a big problem while Janie and Nanny were living. Woman had little opportunity to success and reach their full potential. In the quote, Nanny refers to woman as "Mules". Woman, in that time, were treated with the same amount of respect as a mule. Woman, black and white, were basically forced to be there husbands house slaves. Woman were forced to care for children and husband, cook, clean, and if they lived on a farm or planation, they would have to work hard and painful labor. if woman were to work outdoors, they would have to care for animals, chop wood, build huts or shelters, and take care of crops and gardens. Most men, not all, viewed woman as nothing more than a cheap pair of extra hands to help with chores and daily tasks. Often, woman were married off simply for the reason of sex. In "The Color Purple", Mister wanted to marry Nettie just for the simple fact that she could bring him pleasure in bed. Woman were sick of the horrible treatment against them. there was hardly a woman could do to change the lifestyle they were forced to live in. If a woman spoke up, their husbands would beat them. Eventually, woman were able to come together and speak up as a majority. In "The Color Purple", Whoppi Goldbergs character was able to leaver her abusive husband because she was able to unite with Shug, another

The Help, A novel written by American author, Kathryn Stockett in 2009 tells the story of black maids working in white home. Setting in Jackson, Mississippi during 1960s, the society is obviously segregated into two groups, whites and blacks. Although there is some variety in economic and social class, race is the first determinant of a person's place and whether or not having right to access to educational, occupational, and economic opportunity. Racial tensions are high because white community members employ violence and coercion to possess the Civil Rights Movement from sweeping into their Mississippi town. The unfair practices of post-colonization make the lives of the town's black members so difficult.

The Film follows the journey of a young woman named Skeeter Phelan. She has just returned from living in New York and somehow her experiences there have changed her view of her home in Jackson Mississippi .Along her journey, she has discovered a new found friend, Aibileen Clark. Aibileen Clark is an African-American maid who has raised seventeen white children in her lifetime, including her recent and last “white baby” Mae Mobley. The book she writes with skeeter and the other African-American maid empowers her to stand up for justice. Aibileen is a great example of the earth mother as she not only she 17 “white baby” but she also taught them that color of skin does not matter, but kindness and love do. An earth mother is considerate and encourages the good things in life instead of the dark soul within. They put other people’s needs before their own despite of having their own personal problems. Like Leigh Anne, Aibileen have also risk her lives of teaching Mae Mobley about racial equality and civil rights. This is a risk as she is breaching the law which can cause her to lose her job and eventually face social penalties. This risk that she had taken was to prove that people were not born to be racist but is eventually taught through generation , "stop that moment from coming – and it come in every child's life – when they start to think that colored folks ain't as good

The next major topic of discussion in the novel is the nature of female slavery, in which White highlights the labor performed by female slaves and the masters’ expectations for childbearing. She describes how African American women were expected to perform duties of labor “with the strength of any man,” while also

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

Stockett also portrays the African-American women and men in very stereotypical ways. The Association of Black Women Historians “condemned the novel’s stereotypical representations of black life, particularly the disappointing resurrection of Mammy and the irreverent dialect of black characters” (Rountree 60). Abilene the most memorable domestic maid in the novel talks about taking care of white babies along with cooking and cleaning. The author writes “I know how to get them babies to sleep, stop crying, and go in the toilet bowl before they mamas even get out a bed in the morning (Stockett 1). This Mammy stereotyping allows the reader to ignore the back-breaking, low paying jobs these women had. It takes away from the fact that the domestic help were routinely exploited, yet they were very much a necessity of the time. Stockett also portrays the African-American man in a stereotypical way. While not in the story much, the black man is depicted as violent and abusive. Many “found Stockett’s characters stereotypical and the portrayal of black life, simplistic” (Jones 9).

From the very beginning, racial tensions were seen, even from girls of such a young age. While being in the shelter, Twyla did not want to share a room with Roberta because previously her mother had told her that “those people smell funny.” Come to find out, this was an untrue statement and the two girls ended up sticking together; it is the girl’s bond that keeps them sane in this orphanage. They are the only one’s at St. Bonny’s that still actually have parents and this too is a reason they stay so intertwined. The narrator of the story talks of all the things that lessens herself as a person and she is most likely ashamed of. In the early pages of the story, Twyla remembers a time when Maggie ran through the field to catch the bus, which she was inevitably late for. The older girls in the orphanage always gawked at and made fun of this poor woman and the way she walked, which made her fall. Twyla felt tinges of guilt remembering how she never helped Maggie

“‘Did you know that when you were a girl, growing up, that one day you’d be a maid?” “Yes ma’am. Yes I did’”(Stockett 169). The Help by Kathryn Stockett is a story about Aibileen Clark, a black housemaid, and Eugenia, “Skeeter” Phelan, coming together to write a novel about how black maids are treated- good and bad- by their white employers in their hometown of Jackson, Mississippi. Aibileen shows a lot of change throughout the story, evolving from reserved, to progressive, and finally, to content.

Before watching the movie, I already had a general knowledge of racism in the United States, the civil rights movements of the 1960s, and the discrimination that African Americans went through. I have seen different movies based on the civil rights movement and segregation, but this movie was the first one that I saw that focus on African American women experiences during the civil rights movement. After watching the movie, years later I decided to read the book that based on. The book “The Help” was published in 2009, by the author Kathryn Stockett. This story is about African Americans women working for white households in Jackson Mississippi, during the early 1960s.

The Help, written by Kathryn Stockett, is set in Jackson, Mississippi, during the 1960s Civil Rights Era. The book is written is three perspectives, and in each perspective you get a different idea of what it is like in Jackson. There are several different friendships in this town, but not all of them are real, and the real ones may just as well be considered fake with the rules of society.

Kathryn Stockett was a very talented writer, in her book the help she writes about the quality of life. She uses so many different themes throughout the novel. In her own words she writes about her experience about life like in Jackson Mississippi. The Help by Kathryn Stockett emphasizes the life of a black maids taking care of a white families and the struggles they had with the constant reminder that they are not good enough. The maids soon had enough of the way they were mistreated and put up a fight to get “revenge” on the white families that disrespected them. The main themes that are found in the novel are race, gender, and equality. In the help the themes race, gender, and equality seems to be taking away our natural rights as a human being.

The main character, Skeeter Phelan is a college graduate, who was raised by a black maid named Constantine. Skeeter is a very well educated woman, however after returning to her home town, realizes that she is very different from the people she grew up with. She had the idea to write the book from observing the relationships between black maids and their white employers throughout her whole life. Since she was raised by a black maid, and through social learning, she does not see a difference