The Help Review

Kathryn Stockett’s new book The Help has made a huge impact on readers everywhere. Many people are buying this funny, sugar-coated book of the past. The Help is a story of equality based in 1962 in Jackson, Mississippi.

The quirky main character, Skeeter Phelan, is an aspiring journalist recently out of college. She disagrees with the ways of her town and seeks to make some sort of difference. She gets the idea to write a book from the point of view of the help, about how they’re treated, how they feel about their white, women bosses, and their lives. A sweet, black maid, Constantine, whom she was very close to, and admired, raised her. After being called ugly, Constantine consoles her, “But with Constantine’s thumb pressed in my hand, I realized I actually had a choice in what I could believe.” Constantine had a huge impact on Skeeter’s life, making her who she was today. She respected the maids and what they did, and she wanted to know what it is like on the other side, as a black maid raising white children. Unfortunately, she finds out that writing this book isn’t easy, it’s a dangerous thing to do during this time period, and not many maids are willing to take the risk of being interviewed. At first, not even Aibileen, a wise older maid who was desperate for the times to change, was willing to help her with the book, “I already told you, I’m sorry, I can’t help you with that book, Miss Skeeter.”

Luckily for Skeeter, Aibileen eventually caves and decides to help out Miss Skeeter. After a little, Minny, a sassy maid known for talking-back and getting fired for her big mouth, agrees too, Skeeter is overjoyed with her new interviewees and everything seems to be going well. She tells Mrs. Stein, an editor from New York, hoping that she’ll be willing to accept what she has and pursue farther with it being published. Little did Skeeter know that to have Mrs. Stein even consider publishing her story, Skeeter will need at least a dozen other maids to interview. The other maids in the area are even more reluctant than Aibileen and Minny were.

The main antagonist, Hilly Holbrook is one of Skeeter’s best friends; she has an intense, even to the extreme, hate for the help. It’s somewhat unbelievable how mean she is outwardly to them. She thinks they have special diseases, and tries to spread a bathroom initiative, making every household have a separate bathroom for the help. Hilly notices Skeeter carrying a Jim Crow laws pamphlet around, and takes it. She confronts Skeeter on this, and tells her to drop it. Throughout the book Hilly is a monstrous barrier to Skeeter, she is a continuous roadblock on the completion of the book. Yet, Hilly was the reason most of the maids decided to be interviewed. She had her maid, Yule Mae, arrested for petty theft. Yule Mae has two sons, who she was hoping to put through college, but was short on one of the tuitions, so she took one of Hilly’s rings that she never wore to pawn it for money. After Hilly had Yule Mae arrested, the maids decided to no longer put up with the ways of the town, and help with the book.

 Even through all of the setbacks, the determined authors managed to write an anonymous book. The book was soon published and sent a shock wave through the town. More copies were sold than they could have even dreamed. With rumors that the book was, in fact about Jackson, Mississippi, everyone in town started reading it, guessing who each chapter was about. As Hilly read, she told people who she thought was who, and demanded they fired their maids for talking about them. The frightened, maids began to worry, but were forced to wait. As Hilly read on, she was horrified when she got to the chapter about herself. She read about how she ate Minny’s, I’ll put it nicely, poop. Two slices of poop pie to be exact. This was the insurance that Hilly would be sure that it was clear the book was not written about their town, because her reputation couldn’t handle this unfortunate event in her life getting out. But is it too much? How could she eat two slices of poop? It all seems a little dramatic and too extreme, something like this isn’t realistic, but it worked.  

The book was tear-jerking, it will make you want to change the world, and how things were. Although some say this is controversial, like Janet Maslin, from the New York Times, but I disagree, this book isn’t saying it’s historically accurate, or that these black maids needed help from a white woman to better their lives. It was a fictional story about a girl wanting to start off her journalism career by writing a book from the point of view of the help. It was realistic, but at sometimes extreme. Although, this extremity could be why it was such a good book, it was interesting. Reading this will make you feel like a better person, like you helped out the black maids at the time. The book was a great-read, it read fast and kept you interested with its constant drama, it receives four out of five stars.