Darth J 's Reviews > The Help

“These is white rules. I don’t know which ones you following and which ones you ain’t.”
We look at each other a second. “I’m tired of the rules,” I say.
-p.155

The Help spins the tales of women of color who worked as housekeepers in Louisiana in the early 1960’s, as told to Skeeter who will chronicle their stories and publish them anonymously in one volume. Her naiveté is shattered when she realizes the back-breaking labor these women do and some of the conditions with which they must endure to make ends meet. The way she looks at her family and friends will forever be changed as she embarks on this project.

I shake my head at my friend. “Not only is they lines, but you know good as I do where them lines be drawn.”
Aibileen shakes her head. “I used to believe in em. I don’t anymore. They in our heads. People like Miss Hilly is always trying to make us believe they there. But they ain’t.”
-p.312

The audience perspective is not limited to the outsider looking in with Skeeter; Aibileen and Minny provide much needed commentary on what their lives and jobs are like. It’s an important bit of storytelling to show their sides and tell their stories. Though, as a reader, I would have loved to see Constantine’s version of the events as well.

The main antagonist, Hilly, is bored and power-hungry. She is a sweetly manipulative queen bee whose peers are outgrowing their need to be cajoled into doing her bidding. That time of her life is well behind her so she decides to use pseudo science and arm-twisting to retain her delusion of social status by trying to convince everyone that they need a separate bathroom for their colored help. She ends up talking so much shit that she ends up having to eat her words…

The Help is entertaining if not languidly paced. I was left wanting more—more of the story, more of these women’s lives, and more of Minny’s tale of revenge upon a certain housewife.