I guess its only fitting since we’re coming up on the 50 year anniversary of To Kill A Mockingbird, that the search is on for the next great southern writer. Not only was Harper Lee’s novel a YA book that appealed to adults, but the movie of the same name garnered Gregory Peck an Oscar for his portrayal of the heroic, liberal attorney Atticus Finch, thus cementing Harper Lee’s legacy in literature and film history.
In the novel Scout was a precocious feisty heroine, a child readers could identify with and root for, along with her brother Jem. But with the 50th year milestone the novel shows its age (though true classics rarely go out of style) and its time for a change at the top.
For many raised on Mark Twain, William Faulkner or Harper Lee, finding a worthy successor has long been coming. Its high time to crown someone new. In the rush to do just that The Help has garnered a boatload of acclaim. Some reviewers have gushed over the novel, picking it as THE book of choice and Kathryn Stockett as perhaps the “one.” The author who could be proclaimed the next great southern born writer. Possibly so. Stockett shows glimmers of writing talent. But not with this book. Not with this “help.”
Protecting the honor of the All American Male
One thing The Help does quite skillfully is switch who the villain is during segregation. It’s done so well apparently, many readers don’t catch it. And in the process it protects the integrity and the honor of the All American male. The default image that readily comes to mind is a white male.
Now I apologize to any males reading this who happen to be white. But please understand, in The Help, the roles are reversed. White males make out rather well.
They are not the villains per say. It’s the white female. Or as Aibileen rationalizes:
Women’s they aint like men. A woman ain’t gone beat you with a stick…no, white womens like to keep they hands clean. They got a shiny little set a tools they use, sharp as witches’ fingernails, tidy and laid out neat, like the picks on a dentist tray. They gon take they time with em.
First thing a white lady gone do is fire you….then a week after you lose your job, you get this little yellow envelope stuck in your screen door. Paper inside say NOTICE OF EVICTION…then it starts to come a little faster
If you got a note on your car, they gone repossess it.
If you got a parking ticket you ain’t paid, you gone to jail.
Weeks pass and nothing, no jobs, no money, no house. You hope this is the end of it, and she done enough, she ready to forget…it’ll be a knock on the door, late at night.
It won’t be the white lady at the door. She don’t do that kind of thing herself. But while the nightmare’s happening, the burning or the cutting or the beating, you realize something you known all your life: the white lady don’t ever forget.
And she ain’t gone stop till you dead (Pg 188)
Powerful, compelling stuff. If only it were true.
When four young girls were killed in the bombing of a Birmingham, Alabama church, no white woman was convicted of sitting at her kitchen table, perhaps playing bridge while planning the murders.
When three Freedom Riders were kidnapped at gunpoint and found murdered in Mississippi, no white women were listed as defendants during the trial.
And while far too many white females stood united with their spouses and also benefited from segregation’s cheap labor, even the white female at the center of 14 year old Emmet Till’s brutal murder wasn’t accused or arrested. Because she wasn’t the one who killed him. The killers were males.
Stockett manages to change the focus on who the real culprits of segregation were, and who committed most of the atrocities against innocent African Americans. Radical males in league with, or sympathetic to the “cause” of the KKK. Males who looked the other way when beatings and the bombing of homes occurred. Males who believed in the separation of races and with civility, political power and prestigue, sought to keep it that way.
So why does The Help downplay the participation of white males in antagonizing African Americans during segregation?
I have my theories. But they’re just that. Theories.
One, I think out of respect for her grandfather and the other males in her life, and possibly her hometown, the author dared not go there. Because then the true horrors of a system that de-humanized one race and de-sensitized another would have to be fully explored.
Two, as the author told Katie Couric in an interview:
“There’s no way I could have harmed any of my main female characters. I just didn’t have it in my heart to do it.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjIowZrH4iM
And in yet another interview, the author explains:
“Oh gosh, I’m not funny at all. I don’t like writing too much trauma. I want to be entertained myself as well as the readers; I can’t stand too much trauma. I think the book needed some humour.”
Interview with Boof of The Book Whisperer
http://boofsbookshelf.com/2010/06/11/interview-kathryn-stockett-author-of-the-help/
By making the villains women, or really, just one woman in the novel named Hilly Holbro0k, it took the pressure off.
How much harm can one woman do? Especially since readers, and more importantly readers in the coveted women’s fiction market would probably reject a book that spoke too much truth. Better to let them read a sanitized, less upsetting version. One they could identify with, so it was important to include a character like Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan. A naive young wanna be writer, who ultimately ends up the heroine of the book. But even at the end of the novel Skeeter is in denial about segregation. She leaves the maids she convinced to help her write the exposé on their working conditions, seemingly for a job in New York.
Skeeter also leaves to escape a type of white segregation. She’s now ostracized from the very society she grew up in. Yet the maids are not that fortunate. The author has them facing no more than a loss of income for their participation. But segregation was much more insidious than that. And retribution took many forms.
There’s no way to make segregation anything but what it was. It wasn’t slavery, but it was pretty darn near close.
I will agree that women, while thought of as the weaker sex, can be cunning and cut throat. Still, not many plotted, kidnapped and lynched back then.
By concentrating the majority of the novel on women, and drenching the pages with secondary tales showing the affection between the black help and the children of those oppressing them, Kathryn Stocket took a pass on the murders and human rights violations during those times. She simply name dropped and skimmed over assaults, never going into detail but included just enough information to acknowledge such things happened. But the message in The Help’s pages are crystal clear. Don’t rachett up the fear. Pull the heartstrings instead.
One reviewer noted this, though the novel was still given a stellar recommendation:
“Smartest of all, Stockett has downplayed the horror that was Mississippi in 1962. Back then, it wasn’t just Medgar Evans shot in the back outside his home, it was the leaders of state government defining the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People as ”Niggers, Alligators, Apes, Coons and Possums.” And more, and worse.”
Jesse Kornbluth, Editor of HeadButler.com
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jesse-kornbluth/is-the-help-more-than-a-s_b_333448.html
Kornbuth also believes this about the novel:
“The black Southern dialect will someday seem mawkish; today, it still sounds right.”
And this:
“The maids are long-suffering, delightful, spicy; they’re a dream team of strength, wisdom and compassion. The white women — and this is the novel’s big achievement — are small-minded and pitiable, but they’re never cartoon villains. And the men are in the background; there’s no messy sex to distract readers”
Keep in mind this is a liberal reviewer, whose opinion of the novel was reprinted in the Huffington Post. And he calls Medgar Evers “Medgar Evans.”
So while characters like Stuart Whitworth, Skeeter’s romantic suitor can be called a heel, he’s not a racist. At least not one who’d harm a black person, even when he learns his girlfriend has secretly been meeting with black maids on an explosive book, one that’s not about “Jesus”. And while Carlton Phelan, Skeeter’s father and for that matter her brother, also named Carlton benefit from segregation, nothing they do in the book implicates them. They’re neither hot or cold. They’re written as if they’re southern liberals smack in the middle of old friends who most certainly aren’t.
Even the naked pervert is given a pass. For it’s Minny, the wise cracking, ”sassy” maid, the one who embodies screen maids of old, with her bossy but mirthful image of a black domestic , it’s Minny whom the author uses to attempt a physical attack. With a knife no less.
The author slaps the African American characters with negative traits that actually fall in line with labels that have dogged the culture for years. Many of the black males are painted as “no-account” or absentee fathers who run off, possibly fearing the responsibility of raising a child.
Aibileen, the martyred maid has one such mate she dubs “Crisco.” A “no-account” husband who’s run off with another woman and left her to raise their son alone.
Constantine, the other domestic martyr also has her lover run off and leave her with a near white looking baby.
Minny fares no better, confiding that her “no-account” daddy was a drunk, and her husband Leroy is a drunk who abuses her.
Yet the males who controlled segregation in the south are portrayed as upstanding citizens. Men who hold down jobs, love their wives and are generally respectful to their black help.
This is why I call The Help “Segregation lite.”
It’s a book that is the Uncle Tom’s Cabin of this generation.
And like her character Skeeter, I have to wonder if Kathryn Stockett was in denial.
To quote a reader and frequent commenter on this blog named Karen:
To me it feels as though Skeeter never really comes to an understanding of what she’s doing. Is she fighting to dismantle a form of white supremacy or is she building up her professional portfolio with an edgy little project that has to stay secret?
Does she even understand what racism is? It’s not just Hilly being mean and ignorant. I want her to come to the awareness that racism is what built her home, kept her fed, and paid her way through college… that racism is what allows her to be the nice white lady who writes a book and gets a few pats on the back from the less powerful people who depend on her.
I want the veil to roll back enough for her to see herself as something less than a hero.
And yes, I want her to have to make some tough decisions and face some real consequences. I don’t see how she has either the strength of character or the bonds of love that would enable her to stand strong against racism in the face of terror.
To paraphrase, does Stockett even understand what racism is? It’s not just being mean and ignorant. I want her to come to the awareness that racism is what allows her to be the nice white lady who writes an erroneous and insensitive book and gets a few pats on the back from the less powerful people who depend on her.
Because the author, in seeking to preserve the honor of the white southern male, and injecting humor to lighten the sting of segregation, dishonors the countless men and women who toiled under segregation.
To be continued…
Kew
July 22, 2010
My book club read this book earlier this year. Most in the club are from the South, as I am currently living in Tennessee. I am from the North. Most of the women in the club remember the “help” in their homes as they grew up in the ’60′s. My mother and I did all of the cleaning and cooking in our home as I was growing up, and I made money in high school and college cleaning houses. All of the women in the club, including myself, are white and middle to upper middle class. A few started out poor in the South, but through education, etc. have become middle class.
I read the book and was furious, but did not adequately understand what my concerns were before I attended the meeting of the club. I am so glad to find this site, as I have become increasingly aware of my troubles with the book and am rather disturbed about how big a sensation the book and the author have become.
I do not believe my analysis would add much to the extensive discussion here. I do want to add one thing, however, and that is the reaction of the women in my book club. I should preface this description with the punch line — I am no longer in the book club and left because of the brouhaha I created through my increasingly negative reactions to the book and to my fellow book club members during the night we discussed the book. I am not proud of my response and I have spent a number of months trying to understand my visceral reaction.
I did not start the discussion of the book, but listened for quite awhile as the women in the club described how much they enjoyed the book. Then, the stories started about themselves or their mothers or their families – memories of the black women who worked in their homes or who helped raise them as young children. Some of these stories included descriptions of their own good deeds to the “help” and their families, e.g., bail money, references, help with sick family members. Some of these stories included regret at what they didn’t do, but mostly what they didn’t know they should have done. And, there, I think is why the book is so utterly popular. These women lived as children and families in which very intimate but perverse relationships between white and black had been the norm. In some instances, their side of the family was the enlightened one – holidays with racist relatives are frequent fodder for discussion in this book club. Each one of them felt they were Skeeter, and each one of them wanted to have done what Skeeter did – or more precisely wanted their mothers to do what Skeeter had done.
My visceral disgust at this book was the polar opposite of their nearly soul affirming love for this book, and I acted very poorly. As an aside, another affectation of the perverse development of relationships in the South makes speaking plainly and honestly very dangerous even today. It can get you fired, or blacklisted, or not invited to the important functions, etc. Since I spoke too plainly, I was labeled rude and am no longer invited. I felt Stockett in this book absolutely could not speak plainly and truthfully. Many of the entries on this site are pointing out the truth of the time, but that is not what this book is about. I believe another as called it absolution. Possibly, but I think it is the Junior League (whose children still attend the local Cotillion) approaching a delicate and difficult subject in the “proper” understated way, bless their hearts.
acriticalreviewofthehelp
July 22, 2010
Kew, thanks for your courage in posting your feelings. Very good point you made, and if I may, I’m going to expound on it in a future post.
Sorry you couldn’t reach an understanding with the members of the bookclub. We can never go back, but had they invited some African Americans into their group, they may have gotten a better understanding of who really suffered what. It’s interesting that they didn’t want to listen to you, so maybe they wouldn’t have been open to listen to an African American explain that children during that time period were not responsible for what their parents did. In addition, perhaps they needed to look more closely at segregation and what Stockett had Skeeter really do. Skeeter did nothing heroic. She actually took Treelore’s idea so SHE could land the job of her dreams. And another problem is that the author of the Help refused to be honest about the time period. Stockett stated in an interview with Katie Couric that she couldn’t let harm come to any of her characters. That would be like writing a book on the Holocaust and no one dies in the concentration camp. To do what Skeeter and the maids did would have resulted in more than a loss of employment. And Minny would have had to leave the south to escape with her life. So while Skeeter may have been someone they (in the bookclub)may have wished to live vicariously through, I believe over time the character will be revealed as weak, less than honorable and sadly, under developed. Thanks again for your comment.
Kew
July 23, 2010
Thank you for your response, and please expound. As I mentioned, I wasn’t able to articulate my difficulties with the book but this site has helped me structure and categorize those difficulties somewhat. I have not yet found anyone in person (as opposed to electronic) who has had a similar reaction, so I appreciate the opportunity to try to describe, analyze and learn.
I agree with you that Skeeter is not heroic — elsewhere on this site described as the stereotypical white savior, for example. And her motives are mixed at best, but clearly self-serving and careerist. But she is an interesting liminal character between a young white woman in the south who might have joined the Freedom Riders (e.g., Joan Mulholland) and most of the young white women who did nothing (e.g., the women in my book club and their mothers). I think that is why Skeeter is an appealing character for white women who grew up in the South during the ’60′s and the ’70′s. She was more “normal” for my book club members — they could imagine themselves as Skeeter (or as mentioned before, they could imagine their mothers as Skeeter).
Skeeter went to college, became cognizant of a world outside of her small town, and did what she could with her talents. I felt no connection with Skeeter but the women in my book club not only felt connected but felt they would have been her. And for them, Skeeter’s actions were plausible actions that they could have taken — and further, felt they would have. And, as you have pointed out, they do not view Skeeter’s writing the book as using the interviewees for her own selfish purposes, but as liberating, heroic actions. If bad things had happened, they could not have had that connection to Skeeter. If bad things had happened, Skeeter would have been exposed as naive and blundering at best. If bad things had happened, they would have had to confront the reality and danger of the world in which they grew up. And most interestingly, if bad things had happened to Minny, Aibileen, or any of the other African American women, it would have happened to women they loved and loved them back (they believed) — the perverse intimate relationship between the “help” and the children. And, that would have hurt the children/women in the book club.
acriticalreviewofthehelp
July 23, 2010
Kew,
That’s what the character of Skeeter was meant to do. Give white readers (and possibly others) someone to identify with. I even identified with her up to a point, because Minny and Aibileen’s characters turned me off. Perhaps the author thought that by making Aibileen “saintly” and Minny “sassy” it would give African American readers a character to relate to. Well Aibileen’s no Sydney Poitier, and Minny’s no Whoopi Goldberg. Stockett was limited in her depiction, because she forgot something. No matter what color, we’re still women, but more importantly, we’re still human. Stockett gave her black characters “black traits” I suppose as she saw them, and gave her white characters “white traits”. But the content of someone’s character isn’t black or white. It’s merely human. Both Minny and Aibileen come off more times than not to me, as a bit slow. And that also goes for Yule May and Constantine.
Anyway, going back to Skeeter. This is a character not only writers use, but film makers. I last saw a form of Skeeter in Avatar where the character of Jake was the “Savior”. Now, I enjoyed Avatar. But it’s a calculated move when writers/screenwriters do that and by now they must know that filmgoers and readers can easily spot this character. Much like the character Sandra Bullock played in The Blindside at times this character can reach almost mythic proportions. In Avatar, Jake saved a whole planet. In The Help, Skeeter helped the maids “see” how they could be set free with their writing. Never mind the civil rights movement would be even bigger. Never mind that Ralph Ellison had already written “The Invisible Man” and that Martin Luther King Jr had written “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” no, the author of The Help wanted to inject some savior character into all this history because Americans don’t like to see themselves as the villain. And that’s what the bookclubs around the country get out of all of this. A poster on another site talked about a white woman holding up a photo of her “help” as if she’s talking about a favorite pet (from the Katie Couric interview with Kathryn Stockett). And Stockett went on a book tour, talking about it as “having a lot of fun”. Have you ever heard anyone having fun on a book tour about the Holocaust? Segregation was a black holocaust. Yet even the author of this book doesn’t “get it”. Twice mind you (edited to add that the count is now at three known audio interviews), she stated in an interviews how Medgar Evers was bludgeoned to death in front of his children. HE WAS SHOT IN THE BACK. If she’s going to slip into the skin of a black woman, then at least get the history right (Interview with Barnes and Noble and another one I’ll post the link to shortly). So it’s no wonder the readers don’t seem to see the irony in all this. The author doesn’t get it either. Like I said, Americans have the idea that we’re always and will always be the hero of any story. A villain? That’s for another culture, another country. Not us. I often wonder why segregation, as well as slavery is something many people don’t want to talk about, much like religion. Even the author of the Help stated in an interview that Americans don’t like to talk about race. That’s not entirely correct. Most people of color and some whites who truly get it do want to talk.
And frankly, Stockett didn’t really do any talking about race in The Help. If she’d been more open to her own denial, then the book would have been all the better for it. As it stands, the novel paints a somewhat rosey picture of what domestics and others faced under segregation, all because the “sensibilities” of a large market share of readers should never be disturbed. Well, I say put on your big girl panties ladies. We’re in two wars and race relations are still fragile. The economy is bad and people are out of work. Hoping to get a little bit of “Skeeterville” in your life is the least of our problems.