The Help

I just finished reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett.

I was sad to have finished. This book evoked many emotions from anger to laughter. And I wanted to savor it.

Set in Jackson, Mississippi in 1962, this book follows three main characters--2 black maids and 1 white woman who has the nerve to write a book giving maids a chance to tell what is really like to be a black woman working for white families.

To be perfectly honest, even though I have lived in the South all my life, I didn't know that there were people who had "help". First of all, I was born in 1969 so I guess that affects things a bit. Second, the small town (the size of the town itself could also have been a factor) in which I grew up was a town with one main industry, a paper mill. Most of my peers' fathers worked for or in some field related to the mill. Oh sure, there were people who lived "uptown"--maybe they had maids, I don't know. I don't recall ever hearing of anyone who did!

During my years of growing up, it always seemed that the town was integrated yet decidedly segregated. There was the "other" part of town. There were the black churches and the white churches. I don't remember lots of interaction between the races at school.

In a much smaller but just as gripping way, the author also delves into classism. The idea that one's family, which side of town one grew up in, which school one attended, what one's husband does for a living somehow gives a pedigree--or lack thereof. (In the book, there is even a discussion about silver patterns and how they "say" something about the family.)

As I read this book, I thought about the lines between people and how clear they seemed to be in the book (and often in real life) yet there is always some situation that blurs those lines. Usually the lines get blurred because someone somewhere has finally realized that many of the lines we sometime hold so dear are based on something that we have no control over and on things that could change in the blink of an eye. When life happens, the real, gritty, not so pleasant parts of life, lines suddenly don't matter quite so much.

In one section of the book, the 2 black maids are having a conversation about the lines:

"She just don't see 'em. The lines."
"You talking about something that don't exist....Lines between black and white...and the white trash and the society ladies...Some folks just made those up, long time ago. Those lines in our heads."

At the end, after the book has come out and the repercussions for it have begun, this statement was made:

"Wasn't that the point of the book? For women to realize, We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I'd thought."

Indeed.