Miss Aikeeter's Alienation In The Help

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Can one person change the false societal assumptions about people of color in Jackson, Mississippi? In the novel "The Help" the Author uses Miss Skeeter 's alienation to demonstrate a 1960s societal assumptions about black people. When Miss Skeeter was outcasted she was able to realize that many white people wrongly accused black women of being carriers of "different diseases", of being unintelligent, and unable to conceive a white child. During the early 1960 's, Jim Crow Laws were conclusively abolished and discrimination in public places was made illegal. This included the elimination of separate bathrooms for white and black people. Many Caucasians did not agree with this new rules, and they developed ways to get around them. In the novel “The Help,” Miss Hilly, a very influential white woman, pounded the idea of separate bathrooms for the help to her friend, Miss Leefolt. She called it the “Home Health Sanitation Initiative.” Her reason was that the help were black women …show more content…

Even Miss Skeeter is guilty of underestimating Aibileen 's intelligence. It was only through Miss Skeeter 's alienation that she was able to understand Aibileen could and liked to read. With a small thought, "I hadn 't thought of Aibileen as a reader before.", Miss Skeeter conveys that she assumed Aibileen was not intelligent enough to read books. Not only did Miss Skeeter dismiss Aibileen 's knowledge, towards the end of the novel Miss Hilly challenged Aibileen 's writing skills. Assuming that she was not knowledgeable enough, Ms. Hilly said, "Nobody will believe what you wrote!" To prove her assumption was wrong, Aibileen wittily replied, "I don 't know. I been told I 'm a pretty good writer, already sold a lot of books!" Aibileen responded as such to imply she assisted in the writing of "Help." She proved to Hilly that people of color are just as bright as white

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