Racism is a prevalent theme in the book "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett. Set in the early 1960s in Jackson, Mississippi, the story follows the lives of black maids working in white households and the relationships they form with the young white privileged women they work for. These women have dedicated their lives to raising white children and caring for their households. Despite their hard work and dedication, they are treated unfairly and with disrespect because of the color of their skin. The maids are paid less than their white counterparts and are not allowed to use the same facilities as them. Hilly Holbrook exemplifies racism throughout the book. She feels as though it is hazardous for people of colour to use the same bathroom as white …show more content…
Throughout the novel, the characters are constantly negotiating their place in a world that has strict expectations for their behavior based on their gender. The black maids, Aibileen and Minny, struggle against the expectations placed on them as women of colour in the South and fight for respect and independence. The white women in the novel, including Hilly and Skeeter, also grapple with the limitations of gender roles and the pressure to conform to traditional expectations. Charlotte, Skeeter's mother, is unhappy that her daughter is still single and has various ideas for resolving it. She tries to improve Skeeter's appearance, manners, clothing, and attitude toward life. Charlotte is constantly comparing her youthful self to her daughter as she says “...here you are twenty-three years old and I’d already had Carlon Jr. at your age….” (5.66) This quote reveals the societal expectations in which these women are strangled within. The anticipation is that they will become mothers and fulfill traditional gender roles as homemakers and caregivers. It is made abundantly clear how badly Miss Celia desires a child. She has gone through several traumatic miscarriages and has kept them hidden from her husband. Her hesitation in telling him shows the deeper worry she has about losing what she feels is her purpose as a wife, which is to carry a child for her husband. “What’s he going to do with me?” (18.276) She fears that if she informs Johnny, he will too discard
Summary: Aibileen is becoming more confident and vocal about her opinions on race, especially after a member of the NAACP is killed by someone who is presumed to be KKK. Hilly also confronts Skeeter about a booklet about the Jim Crow laws that she had seen Skeeter reading because she says it would be bad for her husband’s image as he is running for the state senate. Hilly’s maid, Yule May, also agrees to be interviewed by Skeeter. Personal Connection: Most of this chapter is about things changing, whether it is relations between blacks and whites or a new tension between Hilly and Skeeter. I feel like this time in my life involves a lot of changes.
In the city of Jackson, Mississippi has a bundle of white people and a bundle of colored maids who work for white families. It is the white society that appears to have the power over the colored society. The white society are mean to the colored help. For example, Hilly latterly treats colored maids like they are slaves. She bosses her maid and other maids around even when they do not work for her.
She feels that the way black people are treated in Jackson is unfair. She’s kept quiet for awhile, but the opportunity comes for her to write about it and possibly help things, so she took it. Skeeter is an aspiring writer who is very independent. She’s been given the chance to write a book and possibly get it published, so she decides
Women in Williamsburg at least were taught to be ashamed of giving birth, with even Katie, Francie’s mother, ushering her, “Not to let the man in the house,” during the event (Smith 421). These girls grew up to internalize such ideas, and face blatant misogyny when they defy those expectations. In her neighborhood, Francie meets a girl named Joanna, who got pregnant at a young age, albeit never married. Nonetheless, she carried her head high and wouldn’t let the other women get to her. Francie perceives her in awe and pity, unsure of whether to act in the same hostile way toward Joanna.
In the novel entitled, The Help, race is a socially constructed concept. Jackson, Mississippi is an extremely segregated society where the majority of the white population creates rules that try to differentiate blacks from whites. However, there are a group of white individuals that stand for equality, which in turn could lead to danger amongst each other. Although Mississippi is the setting, seemingly different women joined together to change the way coloured maids were viewed. They set aside the false stereotypes of black individuals as well as white and spoke against it.
Lynley Swartzendruber Mrs. Bonnie Noel English III 20 April 2023 “The Help” Literary Analysis Imagine getting treated badly by getting called names, poor, uneducated, yelled at, and never knowing what is going to happen. Or you could be high class, and have a healthy lifestyle, it all depends on what color your skin was. In the 1960s, there were many different opinions about how people should be treated, especially in Jackson Mississippi. In the historical fiction novel “The Help” written by Kathryn Stockett and published by Penguin Books in 2009, there are many themes and characters. The story is based in the city of Jackson and there are African American ladies working in white households.
The white ladies they worked for were very racist. All the ladies had a separate bathroom for the servant. The bathroom was outside of the house and not very nice. “I realize, like a shell cracking open in my head, there’s no difference between these government laws and Hilly building Aibileen a bathroom in the garage, except ten minutes’ worth of signatures in the state capital.” The white housewives, especially Miss Hilly, degraded the black women, calling them “unclean and inferior”.
The theme of racism is shown is The Help because the black maids of the white families are treated terribly because of their race. In the story, many of the white characters believe that blacks are dirty and carry diseases that white people are nonimmune to. Because of the oppression they face, every black character has a difficult time living their most fulfilled life. White children are taught from a young age that they are superior to black people. This is displayed when Aibileen, the maid of Elizabeth who takes care of Mae Mobley, when Aibileen says, "I want to yell so loud that Baby Girl can hear me that dirty ain’t a color, disease ain’t the Negro side a town.
Their wives were not in position to pester the man for his aspirations and were as a result left to express their fury upon the slave girl, making life much more difficult for them. Being a mother changed Linda Brent’s life completely. She began to worry about how she would be viewed and what would happen to her children. She says, “Now how could I look them in the face?
Nazish S. Quraishi Professor Ahmadi ENGL 101-13 10 January 2016 Courage Triumphs over Racism The film “The Help” (November 24, 2011) of genre historical fiction directed and scripted by Tate Taylor is a faithful adaptation of the bestseller novel The Help penned by Kathryn Stockett. It is a story about how three women team up to form an alliance and secretively work on a writing project that would be shunned otherwise. The film portrayed the time when segregation existed between the whites and the blacks to be specific in the early 1960s in Jackson, Mississippi. The film began with a flash-forward scene where Aibileen a black domestic maid is being interviewed, how it feels to work for a white family?
Tate Taylor, the director of The Help, set in Jackson Mississippi 2009. Is a movie filled with all different characters and personalities. However, “Separate but equal” In the scene where black maids are seen raising white children instead of their own. Shows “Separate but equal,” because where are the white women and the mother of there child.
The Help is an intriguing novel about racial issues, as well as social classes. In this novel the character Hilly Holbrook serves the role of a villain. Her villainous actions throughout The Help show the themes of the book, such as race, social classes, as well as justice. From the beginning of the book it is shown that Hilly feels that the black population is inferior to the white population. An example of this is when Hilly enacted her Bathroom Initiative, stating that the help, black maids “carry different kinds of diseases than we do.”
Kathryn Stockett’s The Help, attests to the hateful and cruel reality that is the life of African Americans in Jackson, Mississippi circa the 1960’s. Stockett writes many anecdotes surrounding the relationship between Constantine, an African American maid, and the child she cares for, Skeeter. Skeeter reflects upon a memory of Constantine and
The Help (2011) directed by Tate Taylor, is an inspirational, courageous and empowering story about Southern women in the 1960s. It's the story of the help: the black maids of Jackson, Mississippi, and the relationship with their white employers. The central theme of the film is courage, and how the characters embrace courage to overcome obstacles and fight for social justice. Whether it is their ability to deviate from in-group norms, or overcome fear, courage is essential throughout the characters' journeys. In this essay, I will analyse the situations endured by the characters, and how they respond to these situations with courage.
1.0 INTRODUCTION The Help is an example of American drama film. It was released in August 9, 2011 and its length was 146 minutes and directed by Tate Taylor. The film was adapted to a novel, where there has been a long tradition of African- American women serving as “The Help” for upper-middle class white woman and their families. Descriptions of historical events of the early activities of thecivil rights movement are peppered throughout the novel, as are interactions between the maids and their white employers.