Is good Help hard to find?

The Help by Kathryn Stockett.

I picked up this first novel with some misgivings despite its great popularity and the personal raves given to me by several colleagues and friends. I was curious but hesitant, suspicious whether a white, Southern woman could write about black people and the relations between white and black people -- especially of that place and era -- without sentimentality or falling into the common pitfall of writing about black people as noble martyrs, i.e. Mark Twain's Jim in Huck Finn, Harriet Beecher Stowe's Tom in Uncle Tom's Cabin, Margaret Mitchell's Hattie in Gone with the Wind, Stephen King's John Coffey in The Green Mile. Unfortunately Stockett does not rise above this trap, but The Help does have its pleasures.

Set in Jackson, Mississippi from 1962-1964, The Help is, in many ways a conventional women's novel, exploring women's roles and relationships through a nexus of vivid female chararcters. Aibileen -- who is the heart and soul of the novel -- is the maid to Elizabeth Leefelt and "mammy" to her baby daughter. Elizabeth is, at best, an absentee mother, and Aibileen is a loving and conscientious surrogate parent. "Miss Leefolt's" two best friends are Hilly Holbrook, the president of Jackson's Junior League and a self-appointed community leader; and Skeeter, tall and awkward, literary, with dreams of a life outside Jackson. Aibileen's best friend Minny is the maid to Hilly's mother. An outstanding cook and baker, Minny is opinionated and outspoken -- dangerous behaviors for a black woman in Mississippi.

When Skeeter decides to interview "the help" in her circle of white homes for a book, the growing turmoil of the civil rights movement roiling the South -- which has barely impacted the lives of these women, black or white -- comes directly to Jackson and changes their lives.

Author Kathryn Stockett tells these stories through the voices of her main characters -- Aibileen, Minny, and Skeeter -- in alternating chapters. To Stockett's credit, each voice is distinctive and brings these characters alive. Aibileen, Minny and Skeeter are lovingly drawn characters and give the novel its authenticity. But the other characters are types (the "white trash" woman, the "good old boy," the silver-haired, whiskey-drinking Southern Senator, etc). Hilly, particularly is a caricature of a villainess; not only is she mean, controlling and bigoted, but she is also fat and a bad daughter.

The Help is a book whose authority rests upon the details of its characters' lives. Stockett does well when describing the routines, the chores, the summer heat, the place. But Stockett gets important details of the '60s wrong; no one heard The Beatles "Love Me Do" in 1962-1963. Worst is putting the horrific Birmingham church bombing which killed four young girls on September 15, 1963, before the August 28, 1963 March on Washington where Martin Luther King gave his "I have a Dream" speech before an estimated 100,00 marchers.


The Help works best as a traditional women's novel. Stockett's intricate plot will keep most readers turning pages. I only wish that Stockett had managed to go beyond the tired American literary tradition -- so that Skeeter's freedom wasn't purchased at Aibileen's expense. A mixed verdict on this one.