Reveries of a Parisian wanderer

The Help is a book written by Katherine Stockett, who spent her childhood in Mississippi in the 60’s. After her beloved maid died, she realised she had never asked her how it was to be a Black maid in a racist Mississippi. Therefore, she wrote this peculiar book to enable her to speak up and tell what she was really thinking.

The plot takes place in Jackson, Mississippi, during the 60’s. The Jim Crow laws are implemented and shrink Black people’s rights. For example, they hampered Black people to go to the polls.

The author points out many equivocations such as the fact that Black maids raise White children, but they cannot share the same toilets as White people because they are accused of having bad germs. The book also underlines how the children behave towards their maids when they grow up. Even if Black maids raised them, school teaches them segregation and children finally behave like their parents.

That is why, the main character, Aibileen, quits her jobs as soon as children turn 9, i.e as soon as they realise there is a difference between being Black and White in Mississippi. Aibileen is one out three narrators in the novel. The others are Minny, another Black maid and Aibileen’s best friend and the third one is Miss Skeeter, a rich twenty-three-year-old White girl who has just graduated from university. She is the one who decides to interview maids and to voice their concerns by writing a book.

This system of different narrators enables the reader to have the point of view of each protagonist and be intimate with each one of them. It also shows their fear to write the book on maids and their boldness when it comes out. Indeed, the book turns out to be very polemical. It bothers White people who witness Black people’s emancipation with powerlessness.

The character that strikes me most is Miss Skeeter because she is the one who losts almost everything: her friends, her fiancé. But she also impresses me a lot because I admire her intelligence and courage. She did not have to do it, she is not a victim of segregation, but she still decides to condemn it.

The book underlines how hard it is for these three ladies to be bold and to denounce segregation in a State that struggles to find its place in an ever-changing America.