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Ethical Principles
The Help chronicles a recent college graduate named Skeeter, who secretly writes a book exposing the treatment of black maids by white affluent women. The story takes place in 1960s Jackson, Mississippi, during the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement. The death of Medgar Evers triggers racial tension and gives the maids of Jackson the courage to retell their personal stories of injustice endured over the years. The movie depicts the frustration of the maids with their female employers and what their lives were like cleaning, cooking, and raising their bosses’ children. The Help shines a light on the racial and social injustice of maids during the era of Jim Crow Laws, illustrating how white women of a privileged society discriminated not only against black women, but also against their own race. The movie examines a very basic principle: the ethical treatment of other human beings.
The characters of Aibileen, Skeeter, and Minny display the utilitarian ethical principle; their intentions are to expose the unethical treatment of the maids. However, during this time period the state of Mississippi had laws of conduct for whites and non-whites that limited interactions and could result in imprisonment. Hilly and Elizabeth thought they were doing right by alienating blacks from using their bathrooms and excluding their own race from their exclusive clubs; they were only following the law and its spirit. Throughout the movie there are several ethical dilemmas the black and white women encounter on a daily basis.
Character Analysis and Evaluation
Aibileen
Aibileen is the protagonist in the movie; she is the first maid to agree to recount her years of racial mistreatment by privileged white women. The majori...
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...ctitious, the content depicted the historical treatment of black maids during the time of Jim Crow Laws. Did the laws of Mississippi constitute ethical mistreatment of humans? Regardless, the treatment of non-white people in the state of Mississippi was not ethical even though it was the law.
The ethical implications of courage resonated throughout the movie. Skeeter and the maids needed courage to face the dangers of telling their personal stories of mistreatment. Skeeter’s mother exemplifies this in the statement; “Courage sometimes skips a generation, thanks for bringing it back to our family.” (Stockett, 2011). Sketter knew she was ethically responsible to expose the unethical laws of Jim Crow and risked being an outcast in Jackson, Mississippi. The courage of Skeeter and the maids of Jackson were mirrored in the trailblazers of the Civil Rights Movement.
She establishes "the 'do' and the 'don't' of behavior" (Smith 132) in her children and believes, "If you could just keep from them all the things that must never be mentioned, all would be well!" (Smith 142). At the same time, the southern white woman sits atop the pedestal of Sacred Womanhood that her husband and his ancestors built for her (Smith 141). She meekly sits there, a symbol of southern society used to benefit men's ideals, feeling empty and powerless against everything going on around her (Smith 141-2). The whispers in her children's ears and her presence on that pedestal fulfill the white woman's role as protectress of Southern Tradition, but does not fulfill the southern white woman. In fact, the roles of the southern black woman and the southern white woman are equally important and equally oppressive: "In a culture where marriage and motherhood were women's primary roles, neither black nor white women were free to be fully wives or mothers, and neither were able to shield their children from the physical and psychic destruction of the racist society in which they lived" (Gladney 6).
Kathryn Stockett's book The Help has sold over five million copies and has spent more than 100 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list. Stockett's book has also been made in to a major motion picture. The Help is a story about African American house maids based in 1960's Jackson, Mississippi. The story is told by three main women, Minny, Aibileen and Skeeter. Aibileen and Minny are both African-American maids, while Skeeter is the daughter of a privileged family. Aibileen is raising another white child by the name of Mae Mobley whose mother does not participate in her care. Minny is working for an outcast, newlywed, white woman who is keeping her employment a secret from her husband. Skeeter is working on becoming a journalist and takes the risk of interviewing Minny and Aibileen for her book that she publishes. All meetings are done in secret. All of the maids Skeeter interviews talk of a woman named Hilly, who holds the ideal that whites are superior to African-Americans and intends to get everyone in her “ladies group” ( in which Skeeter is a member) to join in the ideal and embrace it. Hilly is one of the specific antagonists in this story, which ends in her demise. This story describes everyone in Hilly’s circle to a T, but it is published with an anonymous author and the names get changed so that no one can figure out who wrote it. Most people will “rant and rave” that Stockett's book is an amazing story of the struggle for African American's in
The novel The Help by Kathryn Stockett is a New York Time’s bestseller, and with good reason. This work explores and uncovers numerous amounts of topics other books and writers would shy away from. Such as, but not limited to, racism, discrimination, prejudice, and segregation in the South during the nineteen-sixties. It also examines the lives of multiple characters including Skeeter Phelan, a writer determined to expose the hidden lives of the black maids in her community, Minny Jackson and Aibileen Clark, two colored maids living in Jackson, Mississippi during this time period. In addition to that, this novel helps create a sense of clarity and understanding of the lives of the colored in the early stages of the Civil Rights movement. Also, this work contains numerous important plot points that help reel readers in, creating a whirlwind of events that anyone would be interested in. However, none of this would be important without the location this novel takes place. Being the south, Mississippi provides the perfect setting to help add more roadblocks to the quest of three women against the world.
In Sister Citizen, Melissa Perry-Harris uses the analogy of the “crooked room” to explain how Black women transform themselves into the societal roles of a Eurocentric society. The crooked room analogy is society’s portrayal of Black women, based on stereotypes justified by slavery. The challenge Black women face is standing upright in the crooked rooms of society. For example, the unsung civil rights leader Ella Baker, unintimidated by the men who devalued the advice of women in the civil rights movement. She helped organize Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC ), and the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC raised money for NAACP, conduct voter registration drives, spoke to citizens groups and travel to community after community to help people help themselves. In spite of the lack of recognition of Black women in the civil right movement, Ella Baker was able to stand upright in the crooked room.
The book , The Help by Kathryn Stockett, is about a women named Aibileen who is a black maid. She is taking care of her 17th white baby now. She works for a woman named Miss Leefolt. Aibileen has never disobeyed an order in her life and never intends to do so. Her friend Minny is the exact opposite. When she is around her boss, she has to hold herself back from sassing them all the time. Skeeter Phelan is different than the rest of the white ladies. She thinks that blacks aren’t all that bad. She decides to write a book about the lives of maids for white ladies. Otherwise known as the Help. She with the help of Aibileen and Minny hope to create a book that starts a revolution about what white people think about blacks.
Characters in The Help are faced with an array of conflicts relating to their gender that confine them to a life that they are not satisfied with, but with time they grow the courage to lead the life they choose. Although, Skeeter is unable to speak her mind because society perceives her gender to be unknowledgable and overall useless other than completing the roles played by the typical housewife, she finds her voice. Skeeter becomes conscious of her community looking down on her for having a great deal of ambition in pursuing her career as a writer rather than finding a husband. Her quest to become a writer was not an easy one; she experienced a variety of struggles. Not only did her mother not support her, but most places were not hiring women. Stockett writes, “My eyes drift down to HELP WANTED: MALE. There are at least four columns filled with
The 1960s was the time when women and men were treated with cruelty, were paid barely enough money to spend on food, and were beaten senseless just because of their race. Though it sounds like an excruciating life to live, many of these African Americans lived life to the fullest despite what others thought of them. In Kathryn Stockett’s The Help, African Americans are treated hastily by whites, as analyzed by the book’s historical significance, personal analysis, and literary criticisms to fully comprehend life in the 1960s of the south.
The Help is a perfect example of a book that has a lot of strong characters who are being held down by segregation. Specifically this book is talking about the unfair discrimination against colored people in the U.S. in the early nineteen sixties. Many people, mostly those being discriminated against, were angry about the injustices that they had endured and had a breaking point at some part of their lives. This was the point when those people decided that somehow they would change the wrong doings that affected people like them and make others see things their way, “it weren’t too long before I seen something in me had changed. A bitter seed was planted inside a me. And I just didn’t feel so accepting anymore” (Stockett 2). It was a tough time fo...
For this assignment, the movie “The Help” was chosen to review and analyze because it presents a story of fighting injustice through diverse ways. The three main characters of the movie are Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan, a young white woman, Aibileen Clark, and Minny Jackson, two colored maids. Throughout the story, we follow these three women as they are brought together to record colored maids’ stories about their experiences working for the white families of Jackson. The movie explores the social inequalities such as racism and segregation between African Americans and whites during the 1960s in Jackson, Mississippi.
Although slavery has ended, segregation still has a lasting effect on American society. There are still African-Americans being mistreated in parts of the country, some people cannot get jobs and in recent time some people will not sell land to blacks. The mistreatment of African-American occurs in both stories. In Uncle Tom’s Cabin ...
Feminist theory is a term that embraces a wide variety of approaches to the questions of a women’s place and power in culture and society. Two of the important practices in feminist critique are raising awareness of the ways in which women are oppressed, demonized, or marginalized, and discovering motifs of female awakenings. The Help is a story about how black females “helped” white women become “progressive” in the 1960’s. In my opinion, “The Help” I must admit that it exposes some of our deepest racial, gender, and class wounds as individuals and social groups, and that the story behind the story is a call to respect our wounds and mutual wounding so that healing may have a chance to begin and bring social injustice to an end. The relationship between Blacks and whites in this novel generally take on the tone of a kindly, God-fearing Jesus Christ-loving Black person, placidly letting blacks and whites work out their awkwardness regarding race and injustice. Eventually both the black and white women realize how similar they are after all, and come to the conclusion that racism is an action of the individual person, a conclusion mutually exclusive of racism as an institutionalized system that stands to demonize and oppress people based on the color of their skin and the location of their ancestry.
Even though racial discrimination may not be as prevalent in the present day society, many African American men and women believe that they do not experience the same opportunities as the white race. Media in general plays such an active role in bringing more information about racial discrimination and how it is still occurring today. But media can also bring negative effects to the struggle in living up to social standards to today’s society “norms”. Anna Mae was very brave in lying about her identity to become someone she really wanted to be. But, I feel she should have never had to have done that. He story just goes to show how the power of society can change you as a human being. It can make you believe that you must change your identity in order to “fit in” which I find to be very sad. I think that more people in this world need to stand up to theses stereotypes of being the “perfect American” and say that no one is perfect in this world and everyone is created by the most perfect human God. Overall, racial discrimination is a part of our everyday lives and "By the Way, Meet Vera Stark" can still speak to us today, even with the play set in a time 80 years
One of the main issues in the story was that using a bathroom that a black person used was not healthy for whites. In the book, it was a fact that you could catch a disease if you did. It really symbolizes what is wrong with the white community in Mississippi in the 60’s. A man was beaten for accidentally using a white bathroom. Little Mae Mobley gets spanking for using Aibeleen's bathroom.
Throughout the story, the African-American maids are treated unfairly in several different ways and Stockett does a great job of making the readers picture that in their mind as they progress through the story. She made sure to show that when people take a stand and make their voices be heard they can make a difference. When someone wants to be heard they will be heard if they try hard enough. So, with a bit of courage and hope anything can be achieved if you really want it to. Through this compelling story, it is seen that writing does have the power to make forceful yet positive changes, on individuals and a community as a whole, even when society has such a strong outlook on what is right and
Aibileen was the first maid to come forward to tell her story about what it's like to live in a small town of Mississippi down South. See in her mind she hates those white women because her son got taken away from her, and in her place she blames all white men and women. But toward the end skeeter put her own perspective in there she said she wanted to write what is was like for her growing up having an African American raise her for her to get fired for getting old.