No novel inspires me more than the New York Times bestseller The Help by Kathryn Stockett. It inspires me to fight, to write, to change the world. Considering that the extreme horrors of racial segregation are behind us, a passion to fight and write for has yet to grab my attention. But something inside tells me it will one day present itself. Perhaps my passions will align with Stockett focusing on the rights to which every individual is entitled. Perhaps they will lean toward education or more political matters. Whichever it is, I dream of writing a novel as novel as the one sitting by my side at this very moment.
The Help is daring. Though over fifty years have come and gone since the decade this book was set, Stockett digs into America’s deepest and darkest closets housing the concrete walls of the racial prejudice of the southern ‘60s. Not without caution did she approach this subject. Stockett describes it as a “slippery issue (she had) been struggling with and couldn’t catch in (her) hands, like a wet fish.” Stockett praised the Pulitzer Prize–winning article “Grady’s Gift” by Howell Raines for summing it up in a few simple sentences:
“There is no trickier subject for a writer from the South than that of affection between a black person and a white one in the unequal world of segregation. For the dishonesty upon which a society is founded makes every emotion suspect, makes it impossible to know whether what flowed between two people was honest feeling or pity or pragmatism.”
Reflecting on her work, Stockett is pulled in two directions – the fear of having told too much and the fear of having told too little. As a child growing up in Jackson, Mississippi, she was taught that speaking of “such uncomfortable things…was tacky (and) impolite.” However, she felt there was much more to be told on both positive and negative ends of the spectrum. For some help, conditions were far worse. Unimaginable, even. But others experienced deeper love than Stockett had the “time or ink to portray.”
How I wish I could tie these two up with a bow and beg her for more! Why? Because, The Helpis captivating with characters so rich you could eat them up like a slice of Minny Jackson’s chocolate pie. Well, not Miss a-Hilly’s own special pie. You steer clear of that one now, you hear! Stockett masterfully layers the chapters between the story’s three main characters –Aibileen, Minny, and Miss Skeeter. The reader has a unique opportunity to climb inside the heads of these two black maids and a white twenty-something’s whose fingers itch to write change into Jackson, Mississippi. Minny and Miss Skeeter play major roles in the story, but it’s Aibileen with whom we begin and end.
“‘All the babies I tend to I count as my own,’” she says to Mae Mobley – her seventeenth child. Aibileen Clark loves her Baby Girl when her own mama only picks her up once or twice a day. Then it is to reprimand her or get her chubby fingers off the windows. After watching some of her earlier babies grow up, Aibileen resolves to teach her special baby that she is kind, smart, and important despite whatever her mama says or does. As the novel progresses and civil rights becomes a more prominent theme, she also shares Secret Stories with Mae Mobley about someone named Martian Luther King who people hated because he was green.
Equality is a subject that is close to Aibileen’s heart. The Help opens not three years after the death of her twenty-four year old son – a death mocked by white men in their lack of empathy. While working at a lumber yard, Treelore got caught under the wheels of a truck crushing his lungs. White men dumped him on the sidewalk outside of the black hospital and honked the horn as they drove away. People have shown more compassion for a kitten with a broken toe. After that day, a bitter seed took root inside of Aibileen. But bitter as it was, a seed is a seed. And a seed can yield fruit.
Minny Jackson debuts like a tornado of Crisco with a heaping spoonful of sass. One Terrible Awful thing she did gets her out of a job just as the story dawns. With a houseful of kids and a drunk, abusive husband, her friendship with Aibileen is what gets her through these trying times. Her job search is choked by the victim of the Terrible Awful and none other than the queen of Jackson herself: Miss Hilly Holbrook. If Miss Hilly says Minny Jackson is a liar and a thief, then all of Mississippi believes that Minny Jackson is a liar and a thief –all except one corner of Madison County. Miss Celia Rae Foote went and married Miss Hilly’s ex-boyfriend and therefore has no friends, no connections, no nothing. Just an enormous white mansion that needs dusting, polishing, edible food in the pantry, and those floor-to-ceiling windows washed. She wants Minny for the job. But there’s a catch; there’s always a catch. And she’s just going to have to sleep with one eye open.
Though nobody should be more on their guard than Miss Eugenia Phelan. An Ole Miss graduate with a double major in English and journalism, Skeeter is hungry to break her way into the writer’s world, but she is splashing in puddles nobody has ever dared to poke their toe in.
Every person has a lens, a filter, through which they view the world. In Jackson, Mississippi, all anyone sees is black and white. But Miss Skeeter sees color. She sees people drowning in a pool of racial discrimination while others strut by sipping their Cola. Challenged by her superior to “write about what disturbs (her), particularly if it bothers no one else,” Skeeter sees this as an open door to write from the point of view of the help.
And write she does. Skeeter’s ambition, Aibileen’s passion, and Minny’s expression come together to produce Help by Anonymous. Boasting a white dove of peace on its cover, two hundred and sixty-seven pages pile together in a controversial bestseller telling stories ripe with laughter, tears, love, and pain. Life in Jackson will never be the same again. And neither will the perspective of Stockett’s readers.
Why? Because The Help is convicting. Many of its readers identify with either side of the spectrum – the victim or the oppressor. A full generation stands in between myself and that of which the story relates. My conscience is burdened by the injustice and suffering endured by the black population, but in my reflection, I feel no personal responsibility for what they suffered. I have spoken to several members of the white, in-between generation about this book and have found they share a similar response to it: guilt. Guilt for even being white. But even this mindset, this guilt, can be settled by what is The Help’s most prized quote: “We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I thought.”
Putting aside all of the depth and heavy truth integrated into the story, The Help is beautiful. Relationships are built like bridges bringing together different classes, ages, and races. How unlikely is the friendship between solid, sassy, no-nonsense Minny Jackson and flighty, flashy, naïve Miss Celia? Yet, out of every relationship developed, theirs is the most endearing. The story’s sole consistent friendship exists between Minny and Aibileen. They journey the story laughing and crying on one another’s shoulder swearing to stand by each other until the end whatever that end may be. With a substantial amount of time and patience, Miss Skeeter and Aibileen’s relationship conquers the highest peak of trust. The weight of their confidence leaves their lives in each other’s hands. This is an incredible feat to have been accomplished between people of differing color especially in the segregated South.
All others aside, 0ne relationship threads together and bookends The Help – that of Aibileen and Mae Mobley. Stockett preaches racial equality from the rooftops the entire novel, but it is this simple bond that speaks volumes above the others. Human nature at its origin responds to love and kindness not skin color. When Mae Mobley calls Aibileen her “real mama,” she is recognizing the one who holds her, feeds her, and tells her stories as the one who loves her most. The natural instinct characterized in this relationship is the heart of the fight against Jim Crow. We were created equal. Nothing can change that.
Fifty years later, with the bulk of racism behind us, what can we take away from this beautiful story? Aibileen tells us in chapter twenty-four: “All I’m saying is, kindness don’t have no boundaries.”
- Thursday, June 30, 2016
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