In ‘The Help’ the character Skeeter is the catalyst for change. The change she causes is a change in mentality towards the African American helpers. This change in mentality is represented through Skeeter’s mother.…
This movie is about Aibileen, who is one of many black women in the US South who work and raise the children of the prominent or well to do White Southerners. Aibileen with her best friend Minnie and a bunch of other maids work with an inspiring writer Skeeter to write a book of interviews about what it's like to work for White families from their (The Help's perspective).…
The novel, The Help, by Kathryn Stockett, takes place in Jackson, Mississippi in the 1960s, where Miss Skeeter, a white woman, secretly interviews the help, black maids, on how they are treated in…
In the novel, The Help, Skeeter is described as an abnormally tall, lanky girl who has trouble fitting in with most of the other girls. Skeeter has always been different-she does not follow the crowd (or Hilly) like the other woman do. Skeeter is a very caring and loving person, especially for her old maid Constatine whom she looses contact with. “I miss Constatine more than anything I’ve ever missed in my life” (Stockett 60). She believes in the rights of both colored and whites; she is constantly judging her friends’ decisions in her…
Throughout HIST 280 the theme of women’s roles in society has been prevalent. Women have been established throughout history as homemakers and caretakers of children, dependent on men for economic stability. This was exemplified in a Module 5 reading, which stated that piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity were hallmark traits of mothers, daughters, sisters, and wives1. A dichotomy has also existed: women have been categorized as either promiscuous and immoral or as domestic and submissive. For example, black female slaves were labeled as either a Jezebel: sensual, sexual, and impure, or a Mammy: maternal and “not just another slave” in Module 42. This division becomes complicated in Module 7A due to the new context of working women…
The Help is a very inspiring story about racism, bravery, and change. The main character skeeter, struggles to become a writer for Elaine Stein publishing company, she must create an “original” idea to write about for her first article in the paper. Aibileen also narrates the story and she’s describing what she feels throughout the story. The Help is important for our society to read because it’s reminding us that racism was a problem that happened and it’s important to learn about it.…
She is gathering black women in secret to share and record their stories of oppression as black help in the South. The reader might argue that change and commotion on the subject only arose because a white woman brought it up, or started the dialogue, but the same can be said about women's suffrage 40 years prior. That women were only granted rights because of men...but in reality if it weren't for those men, women's equality wouldn’t have been an issue in the first place. The same goes for the white people in The Help. If the white folk hadn’t built racist social constructs against them, black folk would already have been equal in the community. Skeeter using her voice as a white female was just another way for the black help to preach through her.“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.” The author was using the main white character, an equalist, as a way to strengthen the voices of the oppressed and convey her message to the reader. Social constructs built around minorities, can be demolished from the inside out, the other way around would have been ignorant hypocrisy on the authors, and histories…
The most prominent and significant similarity of both novels is the idea of racism. Entwined throughout the books, the theme of racism is the backbone, which reflects the hardships African Americans experienced throughout the 1960’s. In the novel, Coming of Age in Mississippi, the main character, Anne, and her family, are African Americans. Along with the other "black" plantation workers, her and her family live in shacks without electricity or indoor plumbing. On the contrary, the "white" family's houses have electricity and indoor plumbing. This is overbearing discrimination as the black families work unbelievably hard on the plantation just to live unsanitary while the white families live comfortably through them. In the novel The Help, the main character, Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan, asks different black maids, referred to as the “help”, domestic questions. She discovers her friend’s attitudes about the "help” and her friend, Hilly Holbrook, made something for her home called a "Home Help Sanitation Initiative". This initiative is for separate bathrooms for black maids because they carry different diseases. Hilly's thoughts reflect extremely racial judgments. Treating the African Americans as though they are not people, she often depicts them as dogs or wild animals that are bringing diseases and infections into her house. Both novels involve the public having an opinion that African…
“To kill a Mockingbird” was set in the 1930s and “The Help” was set in the 1960s. Both book and movie were bad and the black people were not treated right, but I am going to start with the mockingbird. The book “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee was in Maycomb Alabama. It this time the white people had servants and maids, unfortunately the were not treated well. The maids of that household would cook clean and even take care of the white people's children. The white people at that time did not even take care of their own children the black maids were more of a motherly figure than the actual mom. At this time also Black people could not use the same bathrooms as the whites. In this book the maid is considered to be Calpurnia. Atticus the…
Helping fits into a wider supporting network as when a client is going through change or having dilemmas in their everyday life they tend to seek counselling of some sort, during these they would identify the issues causing or have caused distress in their daily life.…
Cited: Kolbenschlag, Madonna. "A Feminist 's View of 'Cinderella '." Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum 6th edition. Ed. Laurence Behrens and Leonard J. Rosen. New York: Longman, 1997. 533-538. Print.…
Have you ever wondered what the lifestyles of Nineteenth Century women were like? Were they independent, career women or were they typical housewives that cooked, clean, watched the children, and catered to their husbands. Did the women of this era express themselves freely or did they just do what society expected of them? Kate Chopin was a female author who wrote several stories and two novels about women. One of her renowned works of art is The Awakening. This novel created great controversy and received negative criticism from literary critics due to Chopin's portrayal of women by Edna throughout the book.…
from his bitterness and doubts. Without Tante Lou, Miss Emma, or Vivian, Grant would have…
My name is Ida B. Wells Barnett was in born in Holly Springs, Mississippi on July 16, 1862. Six months after my birth the Emancipation Proclamation was signed to freed the slaves. My parents James and Elizabeth Wells were born slaves and I was the oldest of seven siblings. My father was one of the first broad members of Rust College, so education was very important to my parents. In 1878 the tragic outbreak of the yellow fever took my parents and one of my youngest sibling lives. At the age of sixteen I drop out of school and raised five siblings with the help of friends and relatives (Baker, 1996). Having to be a caretaker and provider, I convinced the school administrator that I eighteen year old and landed a teaching job. In 1883 my siblings and I moved to Memphis with my aunt who gives me the opportunity to seek employment and help me with rise my youngest siblings (Baker, 1996).…
In this country, many feel as though health care is a right of the citizens. I myself struggle with this idea as I do believe we need to address the health care needs of our country but do not feel responsible for those that make poor health care decisions on a daily basis and look for us as a country to care for them. With that same thought, I feel a responsibility to help those that are truly trying and are not offered health care benefits through their employers, and cannot afford to purchase health care insurance, as well as the underinsured. We have to take a stance of what is best for the whole.…