Publishing a novel in 2009 about the fictitious writing of a novel which exposes the injustice of the treatment of black women in the 1960’s was always going to cause mixed reviews, but particularly so given the controversy surrounding the author herself. Stockett is a white woman from the Southern states, imitating a cliched thick dialect of black-maid’s voices interspersed with a comparable version of a middle class Southern drawl. Add to this, the lawsuit she is currently battling from an ex-maid who insists that Stockett has unflatteringly stolen her own story for this novel and it is no wonder that Stockett’s debut novel was primarily rejected by 50 literary agents.
The Help could be begrudgingly classified in my opinion as ‘chick-lit’. With its domestic setting, and femino-centric activity, I could not imagine that it would have much appeal to the average male. However, this novel is devoid of the traditional ‘chick-lit’ archetype of romantic interest, the men in this novel (however tactlessly so) are shown to beat their wives. Yet this novel was able to render in me a true emotional response; rather surprisingly both tears and genuine laughter. If I am entirely honest, I have never given much reflection or thought to domestic servitude nor do I still profess to know much about it. However Stockett is able to entirely immerse the reader into a foreign world of ‘Crisco’ and effectively achieves her outcome of constructing a profound interest in the reader for the characters that she introduces.
Split into three first person accounts, the novel commences with the black maid Aibileen’s delineation ‘taking care a white babies. That’s what I do‘ and you realise that without these, perhaps at times insulting, narrative voices the novel would not truly be able to communicate this still recent repression in the Deep South. At times, the narration is almost farcical, with the continual dropping of the letter ‘g’. However it does produce a depth to the character due to the way that you truly hear Stockett’s characters. Aibileen is raising her seventeenth white child after the death of her own son, Minny whose sharp wit provokes an enemy in her former employer and necessary humour in the text and the white, educated writer Skeeter who is curious to know why her beloved old maid, Constantine, has left the family home. So as to avoid racist accusations, Stockett is wise to use a striking difference in register which can be noted throughout each of the three perspectives so as not to merely segregate the characters by their race.
The villain of the novel, Hilly, is a dramatic triumph; her friends fear her and her outcome is superbly designed and delivered. Hilly’s character epitomises the extreme prejudice of the Deep South and is introduced in the opening chapter by her mother, Miss Walters’, statement that ‘she’s upset cause the Nigra uses the inside bathroom and so do we’. This typical idea of the novel expresses the gravity of the accusations disgracefully branded onto these black people from birth. They are not only accused of stealing and blaspheme, but of being carrier pigeons of fatal disease, which are made further tangible by Hilly’s seemingly sweet nature, for example she chillingly asks Aibileen ‘how do you like your new [outside] bathroom?’ Hilly has an antithesis in Minny’s new employer, Miss Celia and Hilly’s intolerance of Miss Celia merely for being from a less desirable family with a provocative marilyn monroe-esque look, effectively intensifies her xenophobic attitude.
To conclude, The Help successfully illustrates a world completely inconceivable to the average student from Surrey, with hilarious and almost heart breaking twists Stockett’s characters are able to show the injustice of their individual situations through their action. Perhaps however, this is a novel which is intended for and would appeal to a middle aged woman on her annual holiday as a tool to further transport her from her quotidian life, but Stockett is able to portray a deplorable truth to her reader with a worthy intention; ensuring that such reason discriminations are never forgotten nor left without reprimand.
Harriet David-Wilkinson
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