A long standing bridge game ensues in a Junior Leaguer’s Mississippi dining room. A black maid enters to serve refreshments, invisible and performing her duties deftly and quickly. Her thoughts are hidden behind a well-practiced mask of self-preservation. Unbeknownst to her boss, one of the bridge four-a young white lady-now shares a secret with the maid. A secret the author Kathryn Stockett presents as the catalyst for a collision between the worlds of the colored maids and the white debutants in the novel The Help.
“Taking care a white babies, that’s what I do along with all the cooking and the cleaning. I done raised seventeen kids in my lifetime. I know how to get them babies to sleep, stop crying, and go in the toilet bowl before they mama’s even get out a bed in the morning.” Seasoned maid Aibileen is entwined in a complicated relationship with her “white lady.” Miss Leefolt will entrust Aibileen with intimate household duties along with the raising of her children, but will not acknowledge Aibileen’s relevance as a human being.
It is 1962 in Jackson, Mississippi and conflicts regarding race relations are at their pinnacle. But real life still goes on for most, and the society women and their maids are simply trying to hold on to life the only way they know how. We meet Aibileen, a seasoned maid raising her seventeenth white child with all the love she can muster under the gaze of the child’s unhappy and critical mother. There is Minny, the outspoken and frequently fired maid known for her cooking who is trying to maintain life with an abusive husband. And then there is Skeeter, twenty-something, unmarried, overeducated and frustrated with the prospects of an unfulfilling Junior League type existence. Skeeter’s boredom and increasing dissatisfaction with the prejudices of those around her prompt her to begin investigating the lives of the maids and launch all three women on a dangerous adventure to have their tales told.
There are some movies, songs, and novels that you just have to share. They impact your life, or just make you laugh in a way that you want everyone to be in on the joke. The Help by Kathryn Stockett qualifies as one of those experiences that must be communal. Stockett brings together three wonderful voices to contribute to a story of discovery, friendship and ultimately freedom. Though deep issues of ignorance and oppression are dealt with, the narrative unfolds in a natural and endearing manner. It is essentially the story of women finding the immense worth found in each other and in themselves.
As one white lady says about her maid, “Even with all her own troubles she sits down and talks to me. She helps me get through my days.” And as Ms. Stockett states through her character Skeeter, “We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I’d thought.” The Help is such a pleasant reminder of that fact.
