The Help

The Help is a 2009 novel by American novelist Kathryn Stockett. Set during the early 1960s in Jackson, Mississippi, it focuses on the lives of Black maids working in white households during the civil rights movement. Praised for its unflinching depiction of the lives of these women combined with a pointed sense of humor, The Help went on to be a massive bestseller, selling over five million copies and spending more than a hundred weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list. A film adaptation, directed by Stockett’s childhood friend Tate Taylor and starring Viola Davis, Jessica Chastain, and Octavia Spencer, was nominated for all three performances as well as Best Picture. Exploring themes of racism and the tight bonds that form among oppressed people under those conditions, The Help has become one of the most popular modern novels dealing with the experiences of Black Americans in the South.

Plot Summary

The Help is told from a first-person perspective split among three women. Aibileen Clark is an older maid who is returning to work since her 24-year-old son Treelore died in a work accident, and she works for the Leefolt household caring for their toddler, Mae Mobley. Minny Jackson, Aibileen’s friend, is an outspoken woman who has been fired 19 times, and currently works for Mrs. Walters, the mother of the book’s villain Hilly Holbrook. However, Minny is soon let go from her job at Mrs. Walters’s and starts working for a woman named Celia Foote. Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan is a young woman from a wealthy family that employs several African American workers on their cotton farm. She recently graduated from the University of Mississippi, and she wants to become a writer. However, her mother would prefer she settle down and get married. Skeeter is curious about the disappearance of the maid who essentially raised her, Constantine. Constantine wrote to her in college telling her she has a surprise for her, but Skeeter’s mother now says Constantine quit and won’t give her any additional information.

While trying to unravel Constantine’s disappearance, Skeeter starts to realize that the Black maids in Jackson are treated poorly. When Hilly asks Skeeter to place an advertisement in the Junior League’s newsletter advocating for people to install a separate toilet for Black workers, Skeeter doesn’t respond. Instead, she secretly approaches Aibileen and asks if she would like to help her change things in Jackson. Skeeter has the idea to write a book of interviews to capture the perspective of Jackson’s maids. Although she gets a publisher on board quickly, the maids—including Aibileen and Minny—are hesitant to speak to her, because a Black woman speaking out in the South in the early 1960s comes with life-threatening danger.

Aibileen and Minny eventually agree to help Skeeter, but the other maids in the town are unwilling to help, fearing reprisals. Skeeter starts to become increasingly outspoken about her distaste for the racial order in the town, which leads many of her friends to treat her as an outcast. Tension in the town begins to rise when one of Hilly’s maids, Yule May, is caught stealing a ring from Hilly to pay for her sons’ college tuitions. She’s arrested, and the anger over this leads many of the other maids to decide it’s worth taking the risk to tell their stories if it could create change.

Together, Skeeter and the maids collaborate on a collection of true stories about how the help in Jackson actually lives. Some stories in the book show beautiful, generous employers, but others show cruel, brutal, and racist people acting not much differently from the slave owners of old. In the course of the project, Skeeter, who grew up in privilege, begins to better understand the lives of the women who surrounded her all her life. Before the book can be completed, Skeeter must find out about Constantine’s disappearance so she can include her own story of growing up with Constantine in the book. Skeeter learns that her mother cruelly fired Constantine to save face after an incident involving Constantine’s daughter. The book is released, and the exposure of the town’s dirty laundry has a major impact on the way the people of the town are seen and the way they interact with their maids.