General Information

 The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Help is a fictional novel by American author Kathryn Stockett published in Penguin Books in February 10th, 2009. The story is about Native Americans working with white families in Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960s.

Stockett began writing the paper for the first time after the 9/11 attacks. It took her five years to complete and was rejected by 60 literary agents, within three years, before representative Susan Ramer agreed to represent Stockett. Since then, The Help has been published in 35 countries and in 42 languages. By August 2011, it had sold seven million copies in print and audio publications and spent more than 100 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.

Kathryn Stockett

She is known for her 2009 debut novel, The Help, which is about African-American maids working in white households in Jackson, Mississippi, during the 1960s.

Kathryn Stockett was born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi. After graduating from the University of Alabama with a degree in English and creative writing.

She moved to New York City, where she worked in magazine publishing for nine years. She currently lives in Atlanta with her husband and daughter. She is working on her second novel.

Genre

Novel, Fiction, Historical novel

Setting

The story of The Help takes place in 1963 during the Civil Rights struggle in Jackson, Mississippi. Many scenes are set in downtown Jackson,in the historic Bellhaven neighborhood. Even though the book is a work of fiction, many of the sites mentioned in the book are real.

Tone

The novel has humorous and often sarcastic parts, clear examples are how Minny and Aibileen describe their experiences. The novel has tragedy and injustice, of the characters. Empathy between women who at one point want to change things for the better and for their family to stop suffering.

Characters

Aibileen Clark

One of the novel’s three narrators, Aibileen is a wise but reserved middle-aged black maid who takes pride in knowing that she has helped raise seventeen white children in her lifetime.

Minny Jackson

Another narrator and protagonist, Minny Jackson is a wise-cracking mother of five who refuses to curb her outspoken personality even though it gets her into trouble with her white employers. 

Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan

The third narrator and protagonist, Skeeter is a young white college graduate who comes from a wealthy Southern family. Strong-willed and individualistic, Skeeter is frustrated by the sexist expectations society has of her.

Hilly Holbrook

The novel’s antagonist, Hilly is on the surface the ideal of the Southern housewife: loyal to her husband, adored by her friends and neighbors, and loving to her two children. Hilly harbors viciously racist beliefs that spur her to treat the black women in the novel as if they were subhuman.

Constantine Bates

Skeeter’s childhood maid, Constantine is like a second mother to her, providing love and compassion. The novel begins in the months after Constantine has left Jackson for Chicago without telling Skeeter.

Symbols

○ Bathrooms

○ Minny’s “Special Ingredient” Pie

#Alejandro Rivera