The Help is a 2009 novel by American author Kathryn Stockett.

The story is about African

Americans working in white households in Jackson, Mississippi, during the early 1960s.

The Help has since been published in 35 countries and three languages.[8] As of August 2011, it had
sold seven million copies in print and audiobook editions,[9] and spent more than 100 weeks on The
New York Times Best Seller list.

Stockett worked in magazine publishing while living in New York City before publishing her first
novel. The Help took her five years to complete, and the book was rejected by 60 literary agents
before agent Susan Ramer agreed to represent Stockett. The Help has since been published in 42
languages. As of August 2012, it has sold ten million copies and spent more than 100 weeks on The
New York Times Best Seller list. The Help climbed best seller charts a few months after it was
released

Stockett began writing the novel - her first - after the September 11th attacks

It took her five years to complete and was rejected by 60 literary agents, over a period of three
years, before agent Susan Ramer agreed to represent Stockett.

The Help is set in the early 1960s in Jackson, Mississippi, and told primarily from the first-person
perspectives of three women: Aibileen Clark, Minny Jackson, and Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan.
Aibileen is a maid who takes care of children and cleans. Her own 24-year-old son, Treelore, died
from an accident on his job. In the story, she is tending the Leefolt household and caring for their
toddler, Mae Mobley. Minny is Aibileen's friend who frequently tells her employers what she thinks of
them, resulting in her having been fired from nineteen jobs. Minny's most recent employer was Mrs.
Walters, mother of Hilly Holbrook.

Skeeter is the daughter of a white family who owns a cotton farm outside Jackson. Many of the field
hands and household help are African Americans. Skeeter has just returned home after graduating
from the University of Mississippi and wants to become a writer. Skeeter's mother wants her to get
married, and thinks her degree is just a pretty piece of paper. Skeeter is curious about the
disappearance of Constantine, her maid who brought her up and cared for her. Constantine had
written to Skeeter while she was away from home in college saying what a great surprise she had
awaiting her when she came home. Skeeter's mother tells her that Constantine quit and went to live
with relatives in Chicago. Skeeter does not believe that Constantine would leave her like this; she
knows something is wrong and believes that information will eventually come out. Everyone Skeeter
asks about the unexpected disappearance of Constantine pretends it never happened and avoids
giving her any real answers.

 She's a 23-year-old white woman with a cotton trust fund and a college degree.
  She lives at home on her family's cotton plantation, Longleaf.

 She belongs to the Junior League and is in tight with other high-society ladies.

 She's been best friends with Hilly Holbrook and Elizabeth Leefolt (villainous characters) since
grade school.

 as the story progresses, Skeeter becomes more and more distanced from this safe social status
and goes, as they say, rogue.

 She breaks all the rules and crosses dangerous lines – and we love her for it.

 Skeeter gets her nickname from her older brother, Carlton. When she was born, he said, "It's not
a baby it's a skeeter!"

 She's almost six feet tall and has incurably "kinky" hair, which she describes as "more pubic than
cranial"

 Like Mae Mobley, she doesn't exactly fit into the ideals of beauty of her society. Also like Mae
Mobley, Skeeter has a close relationship with the black woman hired to care for her,
Constantine.

 Constantine taught Skeeter to love herself and not to buy into racial prejudices.

 Constantine and Skeeter were confidantes for over twenty years. But, Skeeter stopped hearing
from her during her senior year at college.

 When she comes home from school, Constantine has mysteriously disappeared and nobody in
town will tell Skeeter what happened.

 In terms of Skeeter's story, The Help is a coming-of-age novel. Skeeter is bold, fearless, and she
doesn't buy into the myths that black people are dirty and have diseases that are poison to
white people.

Character Analysis
Minny and Aibileen are the two primary women representing "the help" – the black women who
make life so nice and comfy for their white employers. In many ways, these two women are not
alike, and as a result, they hint at the diversity of women who do serve as "the help" in Jackson.
Minny was inspired by Alabama-born actress Octavia Spencer, who also plays Minny in the
movie (source). She's a complex mix of extreme strength and extreme vulnerability. When
Aibileen is with Minny on the bus ride home to their neighborhood, she thinks, "Minny could
probably lift this bus up over her head if she wanted to. Old lady like me lucky to have her as a
friend" (2.6).
When Celia Rae Foote tells Minny she's afraid the house is too much for her to clean, Minny
can't believe it. She tells us, "I look down at hundred-and-sixty-five pound, five-foot-zero self
practically busting out of this uniform" (3.64). She says, "Too much for me?" (2.64). This
superwoman works all day outside her home, cooking and cleaning for white families. She's
married to Leroy and they have five children, Leroy Junior, Benny, Felicia, Sugar, and Kindra.
She's widely known as Jackson's premier chef extraordinaire. Johnny Foote (whose opinion we
trust) tells her, "You're the best cook I've ever known" (10.191).
Yet, she is easy prey for the white women in town she offends, especially the villainous Hilly
Holbrook. Unfortunately, she is also easy prey for her husband, who beats her on a regular basis.
She's a nervous wreck, waiting for the next white person to betray her, or the next thing to go
wrong. At the end of The Help, Minny, like her co-narrators Aibileen and Skeeter, starts a new
(and hopefully better) life, away from her abusive husband and away from Hilly Holbrook.
Minny narrates nine chapters of The Help.

Minny and Help

Minny is crucial to the writing of Help. It takes Minny to persuade the other maids to help
Skeeter and Aibileen, for one. And her chapter in Help, under the pseudonym Gertrude, is also
critical to the safety of the other maids who tell their stories in it. Minny's revelation that Hilly
Holbrook ate two slices of a chocolate pie that included a special ingredient – Minny's poop – is
perfect blackmail for Hilly. (Read more about Minny and her one-of-a-kind chocolate pie in
"Symbolism, Imagery and Allegory.")
This doesn't actually protect Minny from Hilly, but it does offer some protection to the other
maids. If Hilly publicly declares that any Jackson maids are in the book, she admits to eating
Minny's poop, which is the lastthing she wants to have people know about her (though many
have figured it out anyway). If Minny had left that juicy bit out, there would be nothing to stop
Hilly from openly persecuting the other maids in the book. Aibileen observes,
Minny made us put that pie story in to protect us. Not to protect herself but to protect me and the
other maids. She knew it would only make it worse for herself with Hilly. But she did it anyway
for everybody else. She didn't want us to see how scared she is. (33.41)
No wonder the book's editor, Elaine Stein, says that Minny is "every Southern white woman's
nightmare. I adore her" (28.213). She's every Southern woman's nightmare because she fights
back, even though she's well aware of the risks, and because she protects and empowers her
friends, making it that much harder to preserve the status quo.
Revenge against Hilly and people like her certainly motivates Minny to lend her support and
voice to Help, but something deeper drives her too. During a conversation with Aibileen about
the blossoming Civil Rights Movement, Minny thinks,
[T]ruth is, I don't care that much about voting. I don't care about eating at a counter with white
people. What I care about is, if in ten years, a white lady will call my girls dirty and accuse them
of stealing the silver. (17.69)
Minny, though skeptical at first, comes to see the book as a way to effect positive change for the
future, for her children. Of course, the right to voting and the right to eat where one pleases are
necessary for people to participate meaningfully in US democracy too. But Minny realizes that
these rights don't necessarily translate into practical change that will really benefit her daughters.
Telling stories – true stories – on the other hand, is a power she can believe in. Selfless and
brave, Minny Jackson is the person working behind the scenes of Help to make it a success.

Minny's Mouth
Tuck it in Minny. Tuck in whatever might fly out my mouth and tuck in my behind to. Look like a
maid who does what she's told. (3.1)
Minny is definitely not a maid who does what she's told. She's a maid who tells it like it is. Like
Skeeter, Minny says unpopular things – things that can and do get her into trouble. Unlike
Aibileen, who sometimes says things she doesn't want to, just to keep out of trouble, Minny
refuses to be treated like an object. She asserts herself continually as a person with views,
preferences, and a strong voice to make them known. This attitude clashes with what her mother
tried to teach her. She remembers,
I saw the way my mama acted when Miss Woodra brought her home, all yes Ma'aming, No
Ma'aming. I sure do thank you Ma'aming. Why I got to be like that? I know how to stand up to
people. (3.130)
At first Minny views telling her story to Skeeter as being in opposition to her free speech. She
says, "What am I doing? I must be crazy, giving a white woman the sworn secrets of the colored
race to a white lady. […] Feel like I'm talking behind my own back" (17.50). Minny is afraid,
and not without reason, that the facts revealed will simply provide information that can be used
against her and the others.
But it's implied that she eventually comes to realize that the book can be the ultimate act of
speaking out, her opportunity to let it all out. She also realizes the danger involved in this. If The
Help were a tragedy, Minny's mouth would be her tragic flaw. But The Help ends happily.
Although Hilly incites Leroy to attack Minny by making sure he knows he was fired because of
his wife, Minny escapes and finally decides to leave him for good.

Minny and Celia

The relationship between Minny and her employer Celia Rae Foote is pretty important. Working
for Celia, after all the kinks are ironed out, shows Minny that there are white people out there
who aren't mean and abusive. Celia pays Minny double what she was getting before, she gets
weekends off, and she gets to leaves early in the day. Celia sees nothing wrong with eating at the
same table as Minny and using the same dishes.
Minny herself isn't down with this at first. Unlike Aibileen, she doesn't have a problem with
white people and black people living separately and differently from one another. She sees
Celia's friendliness as something fake, crazy, or just plain stupid. But by the end of the novel, we
can only describe the two women as friends. Minny and Celia have both saved each other's lives
and earned each other's trust.
Character Analysis
Aibileen's heart is so big, we just might all fit inside it. If you're lucky, she might even write you
into her prayers, which are known to be particularly powerful. Her best friend, Minny Jackson,
tells her, "We all on a party line to God, but you, you setting right in his ear" (2.143).
When The Help begins in August 1962, Aibileen, narrator of eleven chapters of The Help, is 53
years old. She's a black woman who has been taking care of "white babies" and "cooking and
cleaning" (1.1) for white families since she was a teen. As Aibileen reveals to Skeeter Phelan
during their first formal interview about her experiences, her mother also worked as a maid and
her grandmother was a slave. Aibileen picked cotton on the plantation owned by Skeeter's family
when she was 22. Now, she lives alone and works for Mrs. Elizabeth Leefolt.
Aibileen has raised or helped raise seventeen white babies in her lifetime. The eighteenth one,
Mae Mobley Leefolt, who has just turned two years old when the novel opens, is Aibileen's
"special baby" (1.6). Aibileen's own beloved son, Treelore, died in a senseless accident a little
over two years before the novel opens. He was only 24 years old at the time. Treelore's death,
and Aibileen's love for Mae Mobley, moves her to take the extraordinary risk of making her
story public (albeit anonymously).

Aibileen and Writing

Aibileen's pseudonym in Help – the book that she, Skeeter, and the other maids write – is Sarah
Ross, after Aibileen's teacher who died before the book opens. When Aibileen was forced to
leave school to help her family make ends meet, Miss Ross told her, "You're the smartest one in
my class, […] And the only way you're going to stay sharp is to read and write every day"
(2.126). Aibileen tells us, "So I start writing my prayers down instead a sayin em. But nobody
call me smart since" (2.127).
Well, all that is about to change. With the publication of Help, Aibileen's intelligence, as well as
her bravery, is recognized not only by her own community, but also by the general public who
reads her story.
Aibileen and Skeeter connect because they are both writers. In terms of writing, they provide lots
of parallels. For example, Skeeter and Aibileen are both writers in a society that isn't friendly to
female authors.
There are also many direct contrasts between them. Skeeter has a degree in English and
Journalism; Aibileen is forced to drop out of school in junior high, to help support her family.
Skeeter is a fledgling writer, but Aibileen has devoted hours to writing each day for decades.
Skeeter pens the Miss Myrna column, but it's Aibileen who tells her what to write. Aibileen is
content (at first) with just writing her prayers; Skeeter wants to write books and articles.
The contrasts between Skeeter and Aibileen gradually diminish as they work together to tear
down the system that tells them they are "so different" from each other. Aibileen writes her own
story and works with Skeeter to edit the other women's stories. Aibileen takes over the Miss
Myrna column when Skeeter moves to New York. Both women (and the other contributors) are
getting equal amounts of money for Help. Both women are using writing to create positive
change in their communities. Both women are making a living as writers – a very male-
dominated occupation in those days.
This is particularly amazing in the case of Aibileen. For a black woman in Mississippi in the
early 1960s, getting a job writing for a white newspaper is no small feat. Of course, Aibileen is
writing, as Skeeter was, under the name of Miss Myrna, who is a white woman. Nonetheless, she
is being paid the same wage Skeeter was. She's also being recognized by her boss, Mister
Golden, as the consummate expert in relationships and housework that she is.

Aibileen and Mae Mobley

Aibileen's relationship with Mae Mobley is touching in the extreme. For three years, they are
each other's world. Aibileen identifies with Mae Mobley because, right from the start, the little
girl doesn't fit in to the society she's born into. Mae Mobley is plump, has a bald spot, and even
Aibileen admits, "she ain't cute" (22.5). But "cute" isn't very important in Aibileen's system of
values. Kindness, intelligence, fairness – these are what matter to Aibileen.
Aibileen is also the only buffer between Mae Mobley and the mother who neglects and beats her
and seems to despise her. Mae Mobley isn't the first abused child Aibileen has cared for. But,
she's the first one Aibileen really tries to teach. The lessons Aibileen tries to give to Mae Mobley
revolve around two basic themes: self-love and racial equality.
Self-Love: First and foremost, she tries to teach Mae Mobley to love herself. When Mae Mobley
responds to her mother's yelling by telling Aibileen, "Mae Mo bad" (7.17), it occurs to Aibileen
to try a bold new experiment. She thinks, "what would happen if I told her something good every
day?" (7.25). From then on, it's part of her routine to tell Mae Mobley, "You a smart girl. You
a kind girl" (7.27), and then have Mae Mobley repeat it back to her. In showing Mae Mobley
nothing but kindness and love, and teaching her to speak her own self-worth, Aibileen is
providing the girl with an invaluable foundation – one which she'll surely need when Aibileen
later gets fired and Mae Mobley has to go it on her own.
Racial Equality and Civil Rights: What Aibileen does that's far more dangerous is to teach
Mae Mobley about racial equality and civil rights. If Aibileen is found out, she will be fired at
best, but likely also face some pretty hefty physical and social penalties – maybe even death – for
her transgression. These lessons are born of Aibileen's desire to "stop that moment from coming
– and it come in every child's life – when they start to think that colored folks ain't as good as
whites" (7.80). Aibileen's desire points out that people aren't born with racist ideas. These ideas
are taught, passed from generation to generation. Aibileen is trying to break this cycle, by
presenting Mae Mobley with alternative ways of thinking about race.
One of the most wickedly hilarious moments in the novel revolves around the story Aibileen tells
Mae Mobley, whose favorite show is My Favorite Martian , to teach her about Martin Luther
King, Jr.:
"One day, a wise Martian come down to Earth to teach us people a thing or two."
[…]
"What's his name?"
"Martian Luther King. […] He a real nice Martian, Mister King. […] but sometime, people
looked at him funny and sometime, well, he downright mean."
"Why Aibee? Why was they so mean to him?"
"Cause he was green." (23.17-23.25)
We love this! And just imagine an older Mae Mobley coming to realize what an amazing thing
Aibileen is doing for her. Sadly for Mae Mobley, Aibileen gets fired from the Leefolt house at
the end of the novel. But, since they live in the same town, we doubt they've seen the last of each
other. Plus, Aibileen is likely to send over more good influence through the next person hired to
take care of Mae Mobley