The Help and African American Women, Essay Example

Imagine if you had to work for people who treated you unfairly, who paid you less because of the color of your skin,and you had to spend more time with their children than you did with your own. The author of The Help, Kathryn Stockett, grew up in Jackson, Mississippi and graduated from the University of Alabama with a degree in English and creative writing. After graduating, she moved to New York and lived there for 16 years. While there she worked in publishing and marketing. Growing up in Jackson, Stockett, had firsthand experience with much of what her novel entails. In the novel, Skeeter, the main character, is a young girl who was raised by an African American maid in the 1960s. The maid mysteriously disappears and her family hires another maid while Skeeter was away at college. The novel was published in 2011 anddetails some of the struggles that African American women endured working as maids in the segregated South. Stockett, uses the novel, The Help, to convey the evils of segregation from the perspective of black maids working in the segregated south during the 50s and 60s.

During this time, black maids were subjugated to racism and degradation on a daily basis. In the novel,The Help, Abilene, is subject to many forms of racial abuse. She was constantly faced with racial disparities on the job. The family she worked for valued their Southern beliefs and sought ways to keep blacks segregated and inferior to the white population. Abilene, like most other black of her time, had limited education which limited job possibilities. African Americans throughout the South were limited on choices due to the lack of education they could acquire.Abilene is segregated in Skeeter’s household because she is an African American and they view her as inferior to them. Abilene deals with rudeness and other forms of racism while working for Skeeter. On several occasions, Abilene does not stand up for herself because she is in fear that she will be fired. During this time, black maids endured many difficult situations because they were afraid they would lose their jobs. If one white person fired them, it was very unlikely that another one would hire them. One of Abilene friends experiences this in the novel. She is fired for talking back and has a very difficult time finding another job. When the lady come back to her previous employer, the employer believes she has come back to beg for her job. She replies, “See, not one person in this whole city has asked for a Negro to work for him” (Williams). This is a prime example of how maids were viewed. They were tolerated to work for their white families, but they were not seen as human beings. Johnson points out how the racial system works in the South by making the following comment: “The real barriers are met by women who have had average education-girls who have finished high school, or perhaps only eighth grade. These girls, if they were white, would find employment at a clerical and office work in Chicago’s department stores, mail order houses and wholesale stores.”(Johnson). This is a clear view of the double standards that were present in the South. If a maid stood up for herself or voiced her opinion, she was subject to isolation. For example, “The isolation which is forced upon the Negro, both in her social and her business life, constitutes one the principal difficulties which she encounters.”(Johnson). In the novel, the family that Abilene works for  puts in a separate bathroom for their help. Abilene’s family  is adamant about making sure that all white families who have colored help participate in this. She says, “A bill that requires every white home to have a separate bathroom for the colored help. I’ve even notified the surgeon general of Mississippi to see if he’ll endorse the idea.”(Stockett).

The maids loved the children they cared for just as they loved their own. For example one of the maids said, “I worked for Miss Margaret thirty-eight years. She had her a baby girl with the colic and the only thing that stopped the hurting was to hold her. So I made me a wrap. I tied her up on my waist, toted her around all day with me for a entire year. That baby like to break my back. Put ice packs on it ever night and still do. But I loved that girl. And I loved Miss Margaret” ( Stockett).  Abilene had a son of her own and she loved him very much. After he died, she putall her love into the babies she cares for. African American Women regard family very highly by the children that took care of. Abilene loved her employer’schildren as much as she loved her own son. The children she cared for seemed to love her more than they loved their parents.  However, Abilene knew this would change as soon as the children were old enough to understand the social order in the South. . For example, “The family customs that evolved during slavery did not allow enslaved people to maintain their dignity” (Miller). The maids could not have dignity because the children they raised would very likely become their bosses some day.For example, a maid recalls, “I want to yell so loud that Baby Girl can hear me that dirty ain’t a color, disease ain’t the Negro side a town. I want to stop that moment from coming – and it come in ever white child’s life – when they start to think that colored folks ain’t as good as whites. … I pray that wasn’t her moment, Pray I still got time.”( Stockett). Near the end of the novel, when Abilene is fired, it is very traumatic for her because it’s as if she is losing another child. For example, “African Americans valued family members and daughters and sons very highly” (Jackson). African Americans had very strong bonds within their families and valued and loved their children dearly. Consequently,  “African American parents and elders imparted values that upheld the authority of all elders in the slave community”(Jackson)Yet, black families were viewed differently by whites. Many whites felt that blacks were incapable of loving and producing lasting family ties due to the racial ideologies in the 1960s. Skeeter’s colored maid’s mother was never allowed to marry her chosen mate.  “I knew he wasn’t married to Constantine’s mother, because that was against the law.”(Stockett). This is yet another example of how whites viewed black’s ability to love and maintain family.

In the novel, Abilene doesn’t have any other options because of the racial prejudice of the time period ; she is stuck in the maid profession,. McDans adds, “But these positions are absolutely closed to the Negro girl. She has no choice but housework.”( McDans). This quote shows that just because Abilene is African American she is stuck with a job as house work because of the racism in the 1960s. “African American women were restricted from coming into contact with white customers and thus regulated to behind-the-scenes work.” (Williams).Laws like these ensure that African Americans were limited in the workplace in the 1960s. It was more difficult for darker skinned African American women to get a job than lighter skinned women. (Williams). This unwritten rule maintained division among the black race. Abilenewould have had an even harder time getting a job because she has a darker pigment of skin than some other African Americans. This also shows the true racism of the 1960s and how hard it was for African American Women to make there place in the workplace. ”Broad-Based racial discrimination continued to set tight limits on the opportunities for African American women to enjoy the benefits of their education.” (Williams). This depicts just how grounded Abilene is due to the fact that she can’t further her education nor get a higher paying job. African American women were not aloud in white schools and forced to go to colored school which was highly inferior in terms of educational equality. All in all, this shows how hard it was for African American Women to get a job in the 1960s.

African Americans also are labeled by a lot of stereotypes by the white community. They were believed to lack understand and knowledge equal to that of whites. Yet, they were given the task of raising little white babies. One scene from the novel that really conveys the importance of black maid is when Constantine is having a conversation with one of the white babies she is raising. For example:

“The first time I was ever called ugly, I was thirteen. It was a rich friend of my brother Carlton’s over to shoot guns in the field.’Why you crying, girl?’ Constantine asked me in the kitchen.I told her what the boy had called me, tears streaming down my face.
‘Well? Is you?’I blinked, paused my crying. ‘Is I what?”Now you look a here, Egenia’-because Constantine was the only one who’d occasionally follow Mama’s rule. ‘Ugly live up on the inside. Ugly be a hurtful, mean person. Is you one a them peoples?”I don’t know. I don’t think so,’ I sobbed.Constantine sat down next to me, at the kitchen table. I heard the cracking of her swollen joints. She pressed her thumb hard in the palm of my hand, something we both knew meant Listen. Listen to me.’Ever morning, until you dead in the ground, you gone have to make this decision.’ Constantine was so close, I could see the blackness of her gums. ‘You gone have to ask yourself, Am I gone believe what them fools say about me today?’She kept her thumb pressed hard in my hand. I nodded that I understood. I was just smart enough to realize she meant white people. And even though I still felt miserable, and knew that I was, most likely, ugly, it was the first time she ever talked to me like I was something besides my mother’s white child. All my life I’d been told what to believe about politics, coloreds, being a girl. But with Constantine’s thumb pressed in my hand, I realized I actually had a choice in what I could believe.” (Stockett)

This is one of the most influential scenes from the novel because not only does it convey how much the maids cared about the children they were raising, but it also shows how they were able to endure the years and years of degradation and kept their sanity.

The Novel, The Help, conveys the hardships that black maids endured during the 50s and 60s in the segregated South. This book showed the treatment of African American Women, from their own perspectives, in the 1960s. It mirrors the treatment that they encountered at the hands of their white employers.This book was very affective in showing the treatment of African American Women in the 1960s in such a way that have never been attempted before-the perspective of the maids. This book appeals to all audiences looking for a story about women getting the respect they deserve; it has a very satisfying endingbecause Abilene finally receives the respect she deserves by symbolically walking away from the house she had been working in for years. This signified the beginning of a new image of black women in the South. It also symbolically represents the end of a culture that had maintained an environment that kept African American in inferior situations. This novel parallels the lives of many black maids and the quiet triumphs they were able to accomplish through perseverance and sheer determination to take their place in a world that had secluded them for so long.

Works Cited

“The African-American Family.” The African-American Experience. Woodbridge, CT: Primary Source Media, 1999. N. pag. American Journey. U.S. History in Context. Web. 5 Dec. 2014.

“Employment of Colored Women in Chicago.” The African-American Experience. Woodbridge, CT: Primary Source Media, 1999. N. pag. American Journey. U.S. History in Context. Web. 5 Dec. 2014.

“The Negro Working Woman.” American Decades Primary Sources. Ed. Cynthia Rose. Vol. 3: 1920-1929. Detroit: Gale, 2004. 74-77. U.S. History in Context. Web. 4 Dec. 2014.

Stockett, Kathryn. The Help. New York, NY: Berkley, 2011. Print.