The Help: #1

Overall I really liked the book The Help by Kathryn Stockett. I liked the multiple plot lines an stories that all intertwined and how it let you see the same event from each characters perspective. One thing I liked the most was reading about the different relationships with the maids and their employers. There was the relationship between the hard headed maid Minny and her employer Celia, the woman who has just moved to town and is desperately trying to fit in and gain acceptance from the other women. Celia uses Minny as a way to try and understand the other woman and how they live while also depending on Minny for guidance about how to fit into the group of women while Celia herself is going through tough emotional miscarriages while desperately trying to have a child. Another relationship that we see is between the progressive thinking Skeeter and her maid growing up, Constantine. Although we don’t actually hear Constantine’s point of view we do hear her voice through Skeeter. Constantine raised Skeeter but unlike the other people in the community she realizes this and remembers the fact that she loved Constantine more than her own mother. She recalls writing her every day in college while only periodically talking to her mother. But, throughout the book Skeeter tries to unravel the mystery of Constantine’s disappearance by writing a book of interviews of other maids to try to get a better understanding of how Constantine felt. Overall one of my favorite parts of the book are the different dynamics between the maids and their employers and trying to get a feel how each relationship and personal connection with the maids is deeper than it looks from the outside. It is very interesting to see how the women depend on their maids so much but desperately try to keep up appearances that they don’t matter at all. There is also the relationship between Aibileen and Elizabeth. Aibileen has raised many children throughout her life as a maid but through her we being to see the relationship between the maids and the children they raise. Her employer Elizabeth is the mother of Mae Mobley. When reading the book you really get a sense of how unclear the line is between race at that time. People refuse to trust blacks in almost all aspects but yet they allow them to live in in their house and raise their children to the point that they kids being calling the maids “Mom.” It shows the irony in the cause that the kids will, most likely, grow up to have a maid of their own one day even though they experienced how close the attachment is to the maid rather than the mother.