Exploring The Controversial Themes in 'The Help'

The Help Themes
One of the greatest books in history known as The Help was published in 2009. Kathryn Stockett, the author, had an interview with Donna Florio about why she wrote the novel. One of the questions that Florio asked was ‘Did you realize the book might be controversial?’; Stockett responded like this, “The fact that I'm a white, privileged young woman writing in the voice of a black woman broke every rule my grandmother taught me. But I believe it's our job as human beings to imagine what it feels like to be in someone else's shoes, whether it's the President or a woman cleaning up the kitchen. That's how we learn to be better people” (Florio). This quote is better explained through the characters in the novel. Controversy is shown

all throughout the novel between the colored maids and the white families they work for. Through controversy the characters got to know each other more and more and it made them better people. Stockett’s idea for the novel first came to her when she was in New York and she felt homesick. She started thinking about Demetrie, her maid that she had growing up. Demetrie later became the character of Aibileen. As she wrote, she found that Aibileen had some things to say that really were not in her character. She was older, soft-spoken, and she started showing some attitude. Through the many themes expressed in the novel, the audience follows Aibileen and two others, Minny and Skeeter, through their journey as they learn about themselves and what they can do.
The title of the novel refers to the underpaid black domestic workers who are the ones “helping” their white employers. By referring to these women as “the help,” the white housewives uphold that the maids are like volunteers who want to work for families that treat them as subhuman. Miss Hilly believes that her bathroom bill will actually help the people. Hilly calls it, “the Home Help Sanitation Initiative” (Stockett 60). The thing about Miss Hilly she has false generosity that is meant to raise her class status as a charitable woman. If Hilly truly cared about generosity, she would provide fair wages to the woman working in her home. It becomes most complicated with the relationships that the maids have with the white children. The children love the maids more than their actual mothers because the maids teach them how to love. Skeeter models a form of help by risking her own life and reputation to give the maids a platform to tell their stories. This is confusing to the maids because they have never received help from a white person before. The maids realize that Skeeter’s help consists of not charity but an attempt to learn about their lives.
A major theme understood throughout the novel is racism against the colored people.

The Help takes place in the 1960’s in Jackson, Mississippi. During this time, there was violence toward all African Americans. This was organized by a group called the Ku Klux Klan. “The racial terrorism ranged from cross-burnings and church-bombings to beatings and murder” (Media). This book articulates the difficulty of being colored because it is found as a minority group in society that is fallaciously treated as subhuman. When writing from the perspective of the black maids Stockett uses an antiquated form of speech that makes the maids sound uneducated. Stockett starts from the very beginning of the novel. Aibileen says, “Mae Mobley was born on a early Sunday morning in August 1960. A church baby we like to call it. 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 mamas even get out a bed in the morning” (Stockett 1). This represents how black people talked, but show how hard they always worked without getting any compliments. Racism takes place when Hilly Holbrook, one of the antagonist, tries to push through a sanitation initiative so that all the white homeowners have a separate bathroom outside for their black maids. Hilly says, “All these house they’re building without maid’s quarters? It’s just plain

dangerous. Everybody knows they carry different kinds of diseases than we do” (Stockett 8). Racism is a major problem in the novel, but there are also positive themes that come out of the novel.
Racism interferes with another theme to this novel, education. The three main characters undergo a series of adventures that open their eyes to their lives. They act as educators, using storytelling to effect positive change in their community. Also it looks at the unequal access to education in general for black citizens for Jackson, Mississippi. “As late as 1960, Mississippi was spending an average of approximately four times as much on white pupils as African American students. Some individual school districts were even more unbalanced” (Sturkey). For white women in Jackson, Mississippi college is a place to find a husband than a place to get good education. Skeeter explained this saying, “At Ole Miss, Hilly and I roomed together for two years before she left to get married and I stayed on to graduate” (Stockett 63). Skeeter is considered a failure because she did not find a husband like Hilly did. Skeeter and Aibileen proves the education when they go off to New York and publish Skeeter’s novel.
Social class is offered in The Help specifically with regards to race. Women are not as important people in 1960’s Mississippi. Women in The Help are seen as only having an ability to have children and cook. They stay home all day, they are practically nothing to society. The wealthy are at the top, setting the social conventions and attitudes for everyone else below. Two characters in the novel, Elizabeth Leefolt and Celia Foote, exemplify opposing ways of how a white Southern woman can navigate social class. Elizabeth comes from a good family, but her lack of inheritance and her husband’s low income meant she cannot fully integrate into wealthy society. She still hires a maid that she can barely afford. Celia’s social standing is the exact opposite of Elizabeth’s. Celia comes from a poor family but marries into a wealthy one. She treats her maid, Minny, with more respect than the other white women. Celia risks letting her white women friends have racist influence towards her attitudes. Later, Celia is rejected by her wealthy neighbors because she actually had a sense of what it means to be unfairly discriminated against.
Friendships is such an important theme to this story. Aibileen has raised seventeen white babies in her life. The eighteenth child she raised is Mae Mobley, Mrs. Leefolt’s daughter. The novel starts off with Aibileen describing the relationship she has with Mae Mobley. Aibileen and Mae Mobley have a special friendship. Aibileen tries to teach Mae Mobley to love herself. It is a part of Aibileen’s routine to tell her, “You a smart girl. You a kind girl, Mae Mobley. You hear me?” (Stockett 107). Aibileen shows Mae Mobley a friendship that she will never get with her mother. In the novel there were not just positive friendships, some friendships were lost. Skeeter, a recent graduate of Old Miss, returned to Jackson, Mississippi. She sees the cruelty towards the colored women maids and wants to find a way to fix it. The problem is she does not want to disappoint her mother or Hilly. She pursues completing a manuscript called Help with primary assistance from Aibileen. She created the manuscript from interviewing the colored maids that worked in white family’s homes. After hearing the maid’s stories Skeeter’s thoughts were, “These things I know already, yet hearing them from colored mouths, it is as if I am hearing them for the first time” (Stockett 304). It was a chance for the colored women to get their voices out. Even though she lost friendships with her mom and Hilly, she began to have friendships with the maids. More maids opened up to Skeeter, and that gave Skeeter a chance to look at society through new eyes.
Through racism and friendship there was deep love and hate in the novel.

“This is what is expected from a society that teaches black people and white people to hate each other, but where they also live side by side” (Shmoop). Love is shown through the close bond between the black maids and the white mother’s daughters. Aibileen and Mae Mobley. Mae Mobley loves Aibileen because Aibileen is the one who taught her to love. In this novel, it shows that nurturing love is not limited to blood relationships. Even when times get tough with the racism Aibileen still loves Mae Mobley just as much. Skeeter and Constantine also had a loving relationship with each other. Constantine taught Skeeter to love herself and not to buy into racial prejudices. Constantine mysteriously disappeared when Skeeter was in college, and no one would tell Skeeter what happened to her. Aibileen later told Skeeter what had happened, “We was all surprised Constantine would go and… get herself in a family way. Some folks at church wasn’t so kind about it, especially when the baby came out white. Even though the father was black as me” (Stockett 358). When Skeeter is interviewing the maids, she does not use the interviews to find about Constantine, but she is always on her mind. Friendships were made, but also there were significant losses. A lot of characters lose vital friendships and relationships. Skeeter loses Constantine, her childhood maid. She also loses her childhood friend, Hilly, after she published

her book. When Aibileen is fired from her job as a maid, she loses her close friendship with one of the children she calls hers, Mae Mobley. All of these broken relationships causes significant damage for these characters.
Throughout the novel, the narrators reveal many themes that lead them through their journey from being mistreated to following their dreams. By recognizing these themes and the experiences of the black maids, one follows their stories both emotionally and intellectually. First, the mistreatment of the colored people is not a new issue and this text shed the problem and the cruelty of it. Discovering how ironic the title of the novel is and what it actually means. Also, the idea of acceptance for those that are colored is an important aspect of the novel because it too reestablishes the necessity of fair treatment for everyone. Moreover, the significance of friendships and love in conjunction with each other is an essential qualities of a person’s completeness.

Works Cited
Florio, Donna. "Paper Napkin Interview: Dishing with Kathryn Stockett." Southern Living. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Apr. 2017. .
Media, American Public. "American RadioWorks - State of Siege: Mississippi Whites and the Civil Rights Movement." APM Reports - Investigations and Documentaries from American Public Media. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Apr. 2017. .
Shmoop Editorial Team. "The Help Theme of Love." Shmoop. Shmoop University, 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 14 Apr. 2017. .
Stockett, Kathryn. The Help. Penguin Books, 2009.
Sturkey, William. "The 1964 Mississippi Freedom Schools." The 1964 Mississippi Freedom Schools | Mississippi History Now. Mississippi History Now, May 2016. Web. 14 Apr. 2017. .