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Discussion of themes and motifs in Kathryn Stockett's The Help. eNotes critical analyses help you gain a deeper understanding of The Help so you can excel on your essay or test.

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"Gripping account of racial interactions in the deep South in the 1960's by an author who grew up there in the aftermath of the Civil Rights struggle. The book does have its flaws. How many times can the central characters "narrow" their eyes and how many times can the protagonist escape her parents suffocating attention to meet with her friend's black housekeeper without being found out? The plot may stretch credulity towards its conclusion, yet the book is hard to put down. Black critics have pointed at negative black stereotypes, especially black men but, valid or not, the story mostly rings true while projecting a ringing indictment of the 1960's white community. As such it serves as a powerful reminder today that much more progress must yet be made if the US is ever to be home to a racially egalitarian society"

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[This review from the Monitor's archives originally ran on March 4, 2009.] Kathryn Stockett's debut novel, The Help, is about crossing lines - racial, societal, emotional - in Jackson, Miss., in 1962. It crosses your brain barrier, too, with its compulsively absorbing symphony of voices. One of her three narrators, Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan, an aspiring writer recently graduated from " Ole Miss," wins the attention of an abrasive New York editor with her idea to interview black maids in her hometown for a book about what it's like to work for white women and raise their children.

Stockett makes the risks of this enterprise palpable by vividly evoking a time and place in which whites are persecuted for "integration violation" and blacks are fired or jailed for even unsubstantiated accusations of impropriety or theft, beaten and blinded for using white-only bathrooms, and murdered by the KKK for being "uppity." The first two women who are brave and fed-up enough to sign onto Skeeter's project share the novel's narration.

Aibileen Clark has lovingly raised more than a dozen white children, always moving on "when the babies get too old and stop being color-blind." Her current boss, Elizabeth Leefolt, is an old friend of Skeeter's. But she's an unloving mother, something Aibileen tries to make up for by indoctrinating her chubby charge: "You is kind ... you is smart. You is important."

Since losing her son in an industrial accident, Aibileen "just didn't feel so accepting anymore." Yet she holds her tongue when her boss harps on her or smacks her daughter. She comments, "Sides stealing, worse thing you'n do for your career as a maid is to have a smart mouth."

Stockett's third narrator is Aibileen's best friend, Minny Jackson, who's been fired repeatedly for talking back to her bosses. If not for the devious intervention of Aibileen, Minny, "near bout the best cook in Hinds County, maybe even all a Mississippi," would be unhirable after tangling with Skeeter's nasty childhood friend, Hilly Holbrooke, head of the local Junior League chapter.

We learn much about Hilly's evil machinations, including her "Home Help Sanitation initiative" for separate toilets "as a disease-preventative measure." In fact, Hilly's heinousness spurs the maids to open up to Skeeter.

Learning exactly what "the Terrible Awful" thing Minny did to Hilly before leaving her mother's employ is just one reason to keep turning pages in this masterfully plotted novel - though it's questionable whether it could effectively stymy this powerfully nasty woman.

Stockett skillfully interweaves her characters' stories, capturing their courage, fear, and pride in speaking about "How we too scared to ask for minimum wage. How nobody gets paid they Social Security.... How we love they kids when they little.... And then they turn out just like they mamas."

She evokes an insular community in which relentless summer heat, "like a hot water bottle plopped on top of the colored neighborhood," is another oppressor. "The Help" is anchored in reality with references to historical events, including Medgar Evers 's murder, and domestic details, including uses for Crisco that go way beyond pie crusts and fried chicken.

Stockett sustains suspense with multiple plotlines. What happened to Skeeter's beloved maid, Constantine, who disappeared while she was away at college? Why is Minny's new boss so listless and secretive? And, of course, will the women suffer repercussions for their project?

A native of Jackson, Stockett says she wrote "The Help" because she regrets never having asked her beloved family maid "what it felt like to be black in Mississippi, working for our white family." In an afterword, she confesses her fear of "crossing a terrible line," especially in "writing in the voice of a black person."

A book driven by guilt could have been mawkish, but Stockett's ear for both outrage and humor and her earnest efforts to correct stereotypes pay off - despite her decision to convey only black voices in dialect, with nary a dropped "g" among her generally less sympathetic Southern white characters.

By addressing not just injustice but the "inexplicable love" that flourishes between servants and their employers, "The Help" arouses both admiration and indignation.

Moral righteousness at past transgressions, however, is easy. The question is whether readers will recognize the troubling power dynamic between employers and their less privileged - often immigrant - domestic help that often still exists, despite civil rights advances of the past 55 years. As Skeeter says of her inflammatory book, "please let some good come out of this."
Heller McAlpin, a freelance critic in New York, is a frequent Monitor contributor.

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This review from the Monitor's archives originally ran on March 4, 2009.] Kathryn Stockett's debut novel, The Help, is about crossing lines - racial, societal, emotional - in Jackson, Miss., in 1962. It crosses your brain barrier, too, with its compulsively absorbing symphony of voices.

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Kathryn Stockett

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Kathryn Stockett is a writer and editor of American origin. Born in 1969 in Jackson, Mississippi, she is best known for her critically acclaimed novel The Help.

Stockett studied creative writing and English for her undergraduate course from University of Alabama. Then she moved to New York in order to pursue work in publishing business. For about nine years she offered her services in marketing and publishing of magazine there and later relocated in Atlanta, Georgia. She shifted her interest to literary writing as she moved back to South.

After five years of hard work on her personal writing project she finally had The Help published in 2009. It was not easy for Stockett to find a willing literary agent to represent her work. After rejection from 60 literary agents consecutively, eventually agent Susan Ramer took upon the task. The novel became a milestone in Stockett's writing career earning a tremendous praise for writing on a unique subject matter. The inspiration for the novel is Stockett's own childhood.

The Help highlights the relationship dynamics between whites and their African-American domestic help in South. At first Stockett was reluctant to write about the dynamics of this relationship as she knew it would be heavily criticized. In her interviews she recounted her experience as a child in South where Jackson had equal population of white and back, though she never saw any black receiving education. Her childhood memories are only of blacks as domestic help for white people which she assumed customary affair. It was not until she moved to North she was able to see the bigger picture. She realized that she was living in an isolated place where blacks were not considered equal race.

As she shared her childhood experiences of black domestic help in her family with other Southerners, she mulled the idea of writing down a story on it. The model for her novel was her close relationship with a black housekeeper, Demetrie. In an interview, Stockett sketched Demterie's life who was underprivileged and was treated somewhat like a slave despite the change in segregation laws in 70's. Every family in Stockett's town had a black woman as a domestic help and they were expected to wear a white uniform which granted them access to white people's markets. They were not allowed privacy or offered any sort of comforts.

During the initial process of writing Stockett employed the first-person narrative of a black housekeeper, thinking her work would never have any readership. It was not until she let her friends read the book in order to get their valuable feedback, she felt concerned about her narrative technique and depiction of characters. Despite her apprehension, the novel won rave reviews from readers and critics alike. Over ten million copies of the book have been sold in over 42 different languages. In 2011, the novel was adapted into film by Walt Disney Studios.

After publication of the novel, Kathryn Stockett professed that she felt mortified that it took her 20 years to see the unjust treatment of blacks. And the sole reason for her writing The Help was to understand why she couldn't see through the duplicity of things in South. The memories of Demterie still haunt her and make her wonder what her childhood companion would think of present America, electing a black president twice.

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Kathryn Stockett Biography - Kathryn Stockett is a writer and editor of American origin. Born in 1969 in Jackson, Mississippi, she is best known for her critically acclaimed novel The Help. Stockett studied creative writing and English for her undergraduate course from University of Alabama.

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1962, Jackson, Mississippi

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What does the title mean in The Help book, meaning of title

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A novel about black maids in Jackson, Mississipp, in 1962. The black maids work with Skeeter Phelan, a white women, to create a book depicting their lives. The chapters are narrated through the eyes of three main characters: Aibileen, Minnie, and Skeeter.