How Does Stockett Use Feminism In The Help

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The sixties; a time of walking on the moon, the Beatles and where African-American maids raise white children, but aren’t trusted not to steal the silver.
The Help, written by Kathryn Stockett, is a novel published in 2009, set in 1962 Jackson, Mississippi. The novel involves a white woman dealing with societal pressures that involve having no career or aspirations and two African-American American maids who find the courage to talk about the most taboo subject in Mississippi. Skeeter is a young, white woman, who has recently graduated from college and is hoping to become a writer, whilst dealing with society and the view on women’s role in society. Aibileen and Minny, are two African-American maids, who have been dealing with oppression based on the colour of their skin since the beginning of their time. These three women come together to create a book, in the hopes of changing and informing society on how they feel they are being treated. Skeeter writes about her want for a career and society’s want for her to stay at home and be the wife to a working husband and mother to children she doesn’t raise. Aibileen and Minny write about their experiences working for white families and how they raise white children while their own are at home alone (GoodReads, n.d.).
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The novel is set during what is called the ‘Second Wave’ of feminism and the uprising of African-Americans fighting for their basic human rights. To deconstruct how ‘The Help’ contains feminist material, Elaine Showalter’s Gynocriticism will be applied to the novel as well as Toril Moi’s theory of Feminist, Female, Feminine. To prove how the author has really enforced this feminist reading, narratology will also be applied to the novel to show how the reader is persuaded to take away the underlying feminist tone within the

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