http://mizparker.wordpress.com/2011/05/23/the-help/

You might also like Roy Hoffman’s ALMOST FAMILY (an autobiographical novel based on growing up with black household staff in the 1960s).

Another possible explanation: Stockett is fair-haired, pretty and poised. And especially with first novels, authors often go to great lengths to deflect the idea that a novel might be “autobiographical” because they want it to be read as fiction instead of nonfiction. So in making Skeeter gawky, Stockett may have been trying to head off comparisons with her own life.

Possibly what was going on here was a combination of your and my ideas. Thanks so for your comment!
Jan

So far, I find The Help a riveting read: I love the no-nonsense attitude of Minny but wonder if a black maid who wasn’t scared not to fear white people was realistic; I like the cool balance of Aibileen and how she acts as a mediator between Skeeter and Minny without forgetting to be conscious of her own survival and then the determination and perseverance of Skeeter. Even though you can’t help but feel at the end of the day, with Skeeter, ambition plays a greater part than her concern about Minny and Aibileen. But I also find it interesting that Stockett had to make Skeeter gawky and awkward in order to ‘place’ her with Minny and Aibileen. It makes you feel that as Skeeter is slightly flawed, it would have been the only way the author could have a rich white female complementing the black female characters. I just get the feeling that the author, for some reason, would not have felt comfortable if Skeeter were a pretty blue eyed blonde.

That’s a good question. I think that most readers will probably enjoy it for the same reasons I did: it’s well-written, the characters are engaging, and the setting feels vivid and authentic. Your average reader will pick up the book because of the beautiful cover or because it’s getting a lot of press and their book-club chooses it, and they’ll have no problems with it.

Then there are those readers who are impersonally turned off by certain stylistic and thematic aspects: they find dialect distracting or they’re tired of novels about the South. Or they don’t like “women’s fiction.” Those readers will probably skip the book, and rightly so. It’s not going to be their cup of tea.

Then there are the readers who might have personal reasons to be wary of its subject matter: some black readers, some Southern readers. Both groups of readers have had to put up with a lot of irritating misrepresentation that affects them personally. I think if they gave it a chance, most might be pleasantly surprised.

I liked it because I found it well-written and I found the details of Jackson, Mississippi to be so vivid. I value fiction that shows me a world (the Deep South in this case) that I’m unfamiliar with. Those details about the Junior League and about Skeeter’s cotton-farm upbringing (how she had to go on her date in a farm truck, towing a huge tractor) were priceless!

Plus, I had no idea that the Jim Crow laws/mindset were as detailed, engrained, and bizarre as the author showed them to be — I mean, the whole thing with the separate eating utensils and the white ladies’ beliefs as to why they had to do this? Bizarre! I agree with you that it’s worth reminding readers about it.

But I also described it to another friend (a white educated woman from the Deep South), and when I mentioned that much of it consists of an attempt to reproduce the maids’ speech, she said immediately, “Oh, I hate that.”

I can see both points of view. Stockett’s decision to write in the voices of the maids’ was a risk. But I can see why she took it. The cruelties of the Jim Crow era weren’t perpetrated only by sheriffs with bullhorns but by well-off women in white gloves. And it’s worth reminding people of it.

Jan

I did have a look at the Ms. Magazine review by Erin Aubry Kaplan — and, eeek, it might hold the distinction of being one of the most hostile reviews I’ve ever read of a book (and that’s saying something). I get the feeling that Kaplan labored long and hard over her review to achieve a tone of emotional “detachment”, knowing that an outright slam would be more easily dismissed by readers. Look at how every weak “compliment” she pays to the author (so that she can seem even-handed) is undercut by either a weasel-word like “somewhat” that negates the positive, or an outright negative. :: shudders :: It gave me the creeps to read it (her review, not yours which actually was even-handed).