McKenzie Templeton

03/11/2013 | MP#2
The White Imagination: The Historical Narrative & its Literary Manipulation in The Help
In Kathryn Stocketts The Help, the civil rights movement is trivialized in the domestic
sphere and black agency is rendered invisible in the dominance of the white perspective and the
serviceability of the African-American characters that surround the white female protagonist
Skeeter. The Help ultimately struggles with the representation of race and history in the Deep
South, who has the right to represent it, and how literature reflects the power structure of our
society and enforces certain conceptions of race, including the feebleness and helplessness
of blacks, through language.
The sacrifice of African-Americans during the civil rights movement and the volatile
environment of Mississippi, such as in lynching, are relegated to the periphery of The Help. By
overlooking these events and focusing on the domestic realm, the importance of the AfricanAmerican struggle for integration and civil liberties are reduced to gossip and bridge club.
Momentous events and protests appear only to be mentioned for historical context, as Elaine
Stein establishes, The marches in Birmingham, Martin Luther King. Dogs attacking colored
children. Darling, its the hottest topic in the nation (Stockett 124). This statement is one of the
few that even acknowledges the heightened tension of the nation, the hostility, and the
unpredictability of success of the civil rights movement. This entire struggle is condensed into
one remark, and is a sentence that only serves to establish the historical setting of the novel and
situate the community of Jackson, Mississippi, its race relations, and rigid social structure. By
cutting out powerful illustrations of racial violence, as Rosenberg from The Atlantic observes
in her critique on the softening of segregation in The Help, the novel fails to recognize the

difficulty with which equality for blacks was achieved. Equality is not defined in political or
social terms, as in the rights for equal education or the right to vote. Rather, Rosenberg declares
that in The Help whether youre black or white, liberations just a matter of improving your
self-esteem. For example, this definition is evident as Aibileen describes her new selfconfidence in the conclusion of the novel. She defines independence as attainable through a
process of self-realization and pride in ones livelihood, while she defines restriction as social
expectation. She asserts that she is freer than Miss Leefolt, who is locked up in her own head
and freer than Miss Hilly, who will spend the rest of her life trying to convince people she
didnt eat that pie (Stockett 522). By associating the pettiness of social rules with prison,
Stockett avoids discussion on the real prison as an African-African woman in the Deep South
working as a domestic maid during the civil rights movement: facing daily discrimination, being
barred from political participation and equal educational opportunity, and forced into a separate
public sphere through segregation as the other. Furthermore, Skeeter understands the purpose
in compiling interviews with domestic maids as merely as humanizing the black individual for
her society. Southgate confirms this in Entertainment Weekly, stating that to suggest that Aibileen
and Minny are only opposing the refusal on everyones part to believe that were all the same
underneath is to simplify the horrors of Jim Crow to a truly damaging degree. The novel fails
in examining how the white identity is constructed as superior. Instead, The Help only relies on
the hackneyed premise of demonstrating to narrow-minded whites the fact that we are all equal
and have the same capabilities. Therefore, it renders the inequality between blacks and whites
and the prejudice engrained within the consciousness of American society as utterly solvable.
The abuse faced by African-Americans and their participation in sit-ins, marches, boycotts, and
campaigns of civil resistance, according to The Help, can be replaced with the publication of a

book that reveals the cruelty of the Southern white woman and the feelings of her black domestic
maid. Racism is ultimately defined as an easy fix.
The Help also perpetuates the serviceability of African-Americans by using black
characters to propel Skeeter to success, while rendering Skeeter the white savior in her efforts to
liberate them. The publication of the book was only inspired by Skeeters ambition and her
belief in herself as a great benefactor, and not by the will of the black domestic maids that
surround her to rise and liberate themselves. Southgate of Entertainment Weekly notes that,
although many white figures participated in the civil rights movement, it was not their struggle,
and crucially, not even their idea. She asserts that, in reality, individuals like Minny and Aibileen
were the heroines, but they didnt need Skeeter to guide them to the light. They fought their way
out of the darkness on their ownand they brought the nation with them. The Help disregards
this legacy and instead leaves Minny and Aibileen entirely dependent on the actions of Skeeter,
who conceals her self-interestedness and exploitation of the maids by understanding herself as
benevolent.
This ambition and her use of the maids as mere pawns are evident in Skeeters escape
from Jackson. She asks, even though she is expecting the answer, Are you sure its alright?
and Aibileen replies, Go to New York, Miss Skeeter. Go find your life (Stockett 513).
Aibileen and Minny are only vehicles for her flight, and are expected to suffer the repercussions
of Skeeters accomplishment in publishing Help, as Minnys husband Leroy is fired from his job
and Aibileen is dismissed for supposedly stealing silver (Stockett 514). They are compelled to
remain in the Jackson that Skeeter has reformed for them, as Tami observes in her blog, She
(Skeeter) has outgrown Jackson, Mississippi, and its cageShe liberates no one but herself.
The underlying purpose of writing this book and conducting interviews with black domestic

maids was to ensure Skeeters elevation in society as journalist, taking advantage of the racial
tensions of her community and the complacency of her surrounding black maids to free herself.
The unconscious construction of Skeeters white savior complex and the invisibility of the
agency of blacks is indicative of an enduring power structure in modern society involving white
manipulation of the historical narrative. Toni Morrison explains this circumstance in two
assertions: that what she identifies as the Africanist presence in literature is reflexive; an
extraordinary meditation on the self (17) and that the linguistic strategy of dehistoricizing
allegory exists to exclude historical events in literature. (68). The Help epitomizes how
American literature advances the white identity by constructing it as authoritative, powerful, and
compassionate through the nobility of Skeeters actions, the acceptance of black maids of her
will, and the illusion that Skeeter is liberating them in the process. This effect is achieved
through the distortion of history through the device of the novel and historical fiction, as The
Help attributes the outcome of the civil rights movement and black equality to the efforts of
white individuals. Literature and its popularity appear to be regulated by the socio-economically
dominant group in society and the interests of this group, according to the reader-response
literary theory. As the majority of Americans are white and have no direct connection to the civil
rights movement, they will overlook historical inaccuracies and opt for a book that features a
white character as the main protagonist. This power is exercised through literary works like The
Help, in which the white majority depicts itself as superior and as the essential protectors.
Kathryn Stockett appears to distill her own white savior complex in writing The Help
and creates a feel-good, self-congratulatory novel in order to avoid re-examining race and
observing how our conceptions of race apply to our own lives. Stockett admits that she wrote the
book as the answer to her question to Demetrie, her own black domestic maid, what it felt like

to be black in Mississippi, working for a white family (530). Her own narrative seems parallel
of Skeeters in applying a psychoanalytical literary approach, as her mission is to liberate her
own maid Demetrie by attempting to understand her life and share what she believes to be her
story. With this theory, it is apparent that Stockett unconsciously inserts her own internal struggle
with relating to her black maid. Yet this literary experience of attempting to understand the
other is problematic in representing history, for Stockett cannot fathom what it was like to be a
black domestic maid in the 1960s, and writes with an inherent bias in depicting other white
characters as she distances herself from their exaggerated prejudices. Hilly is the malicious white
lady, who controls all the other simple, machinelike white women that surround her, as in the
crusade of her Home Help Sanitation Initiative (Stockett 10). From this representation, the
audience cannot relate to or understand the subtler forms of racism that exist in their society.
Rosenberg from the Atlantic observes that characters like Hilly are so cartoonish that (the
audience) wont risk recognizing themselves or echoes of their behavior in them. This bigoted
behavior is juxtaposed with the open-mindedness of Skeeter, who represents the rescuer, the
individual that brings Jackson, Mississippi out of its backwardness and into the acceptance that
defines modernity. The reader is encouraged to recognize the progress our society has made in
establishing racial equality and defeating the divisions of Jim Crow, while ignoring the fact that
it was our society that had first determined them. This reveals race as a subject that many do not
wish to rehash, exposing the white refusal to confront deeper prejudices. It is the audiences
fear of recognizing their own discrimination that drives the outcomes of The Help, as it moves
towards the conclusion of whites acknowledging the feelings and sentiments of the black maids
that work in their homes and the presumed pleasantness and concord between them that follows.
As a result, literature may serve as an outlet for the writers imaginary and the society from

which he or she emerged in that it is utilized here to reconstruct history and side-step racial
issues that endure in the present. Literature is only its authors unconscious perceptions of his or
her society or the underlying desires of the author, who is influenced by cultural, social, and
political factors, to alter this society. The Help avoids critical reflection on how its complex
relations between races continue in contemporary times and allows a young white woman to
resolve racism in her community, thereby absolving whites of their past offenses and excusing
their current privilege. The masses of readers are not concerned with Stocketts historical
accuracy because she offers a renewal, and creates a refuge in literature from segregation and a
past of white oppression.
The Help ultimately represents how literature reflects the leading ideologies of a society
and how the power-holding factions of this society utilize literature and the historical fiction
genre to control narratives of the past. This is demonstrated in Skeeters central role in liberating
black domestic maids, who were fundamentally incapable of liberating themselves. Her role
allows readers to believe in the importance, even the necessity, of white involvement in the civil
rights movement while defining racism as easily resolvable and already overcome.

Works Cited

Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1992. Print.

Rosenberg, Alyssa. The Help: Softening the Segregation for a Feel-Good

Flick. The Atlantic. The Atlantic. 10 Aug. 2011. Web. 2 March 2013
Southgate, Martha. The Truth About the Civil Rights Era: Martha Southgate on
The Help. Entertainment Weekly. Entertainment Weekly, Mag., 8 Aug. 2011.

Web. 2 March 2013

Stockett, Kathryn. The Help. New York: Penguin Group, 2009. Print.
Tami (Username). This Is Why I Worry About The Help What Tami Said.
Google Blogger. 9 Aug. 2011. Web. 2 March 2013