Date: November 16, 2024
Author: Kathryn Stockett
Title: The Help
I put in a good 300-page-effort into this one. I watched and appreciated the movie and I know how this novel is portrayed to be a must-read.
My biggest problem with this story is that it was written by a White woman. I understand that she has expressed apologies for any incorrect account of how things really were for a Colored person in Jackson, Mississippi in 1962. It was not a nice place for the Colored community. And I understand, had this story not been told by a White lady it may have never had the platform it would require to be picked up by the masses. Mz. Stockett did say in her autobiography section that she, herself, also grew up in Jackson, Mississippi and did, indeed, have her own maid as well.
That makes me feel like Mz. Stockett is just like her character, Skeeter, using Aibileen’s tips on cleaning as her own for her Miss Myrna column. Ironically, Mz. Stockett writes this paragraph on page 128, ‘“I told her, let the regular old history books tell it. White people been representing Colored opinions since the beginning a time.”’
One other incident I couldn’t get past was the scene where Skeeter ‘accidentally’ forgot her satchel with all the maid’s accounts inside. Accounts that described life as a Colored maid during this time period, along with a pamphlet of Jim Crow Laws. Now, Skeeter knows how incredibly sensitive this material is and the brutality these maids would suffer if it got out they were telling stories about their White employers. They could be killed. Have their tongues cut out. Beaten. Any number of horrors.
Sounds like a pretty important satchel. I know if I was in charge of it no matter how distracted, or in a hurry I was, I’d never let it out of my sight. It started feeling like the story was going to hinge heavily on this fact and I couldn’t get past it to enjoy the ending.
If you do not agree I invite you to leave your comments….
Addendum: I felt guilty for not finishing the story. It’s so widely known, and I get the importance of the subject matter.
I got sucked in.
*Spoiler alert* I got to T-minus-twenty pages and Hilly, a not-very-nice-White-employer, figured out who one of the maids in the book was! Skeeter actually put in writing an account from one of the maids using way too many identifiers. So now, the White lady that could reign death upon all their heads knows!
After the first mystery maid was revealed Hilly was able to decipher exactly who the other eleven maids were. Apparently, one of the interviewees described a very well-known and very specific scratch inlaid upon the very specific surface of the White ladies’ table.
If they were trying to be so careful so-as not to reveal any connections between the maids of the story and the maids of Jackson, Mississippi. If all that was so, then why did they include that scene in the book? Why not just install a big, neon sign over the offending maid’s head? That is where there was no turning back. I gave this one better than my best college try.