Is Having Help a Valid Part of the American Experience?
The lifestyle of Jackson, Mississippi in 1962, compared to modern day, seems like a completely different world. There was an expectation for every white home to have a black maid and if a household did not have one, they were automatically lower on the social ranking. This idea did not only appear in Jackson, Mississippi- the focus city in Kathryn Stockett’s, The Help- but all around the south as well. Not only were the black women used as maids but then segregated while not at work- including eating at restaurants and using any public facility. One of the underlying themes of The Help, is that every American white family was expected to have a black maid and love them but also treat them unequally which is actually the opposite of the American Dream- to have everyone equal. The ideas about white being superior to blacks that are followed by society, which are portrayed in The Help relate directly to a famous Jack Kerouac quote which states “This is the story of America. Everybody’s doing what they think they’re supposed to do.” The southern white families all did “what they thought they were supposed to do” by segregating and verbally abusing the black population.
The storyline behind The Help by Kathryn Stockett is the introduction of the Home Help Sanitation Initiative. Hilly Holbrook introduces the initiative to her bridge club friends when she randomly changes the topic to “I’ve designed the Home Help Sanitation Initiative as a disease-preventative measure. A bill that requires every white home to have a separate bathroom for the colored help” (10). By introducing this new law, Hilly is giving new guidelines to how Americans are supposed to live and what they are supposed to do, if they’re living in the south especially.
A popular belief in the south of America during the Civil Rights Movement era was that blacks were dirtier and dumber than whites, just based off of the color of their skin. And all whites that weren’t taught differently by their role models, which was rare, grew up believing the same thing and that’s just how their juvenile minds functioned due to their surroundings. The expectation is that, as an American child, you will have that same mentality. Mae Mobley, Elizabeth’s daughter, at only three years old, is already hearing from her daycare teacher how horrible blacks are when Mae Mobley quotes her to Aibileen and says “Miss Taylor says that kids that are colored can’t go to my school cause they’re not smart enough” (461). These children of the south grew up being taught how they are “supposed” to think and behave, especially towards the colored population, which is something that each child should be able to decide for themselves.
One of the underlying themes of The Help, is that every American white family was expected to have a black maid and love them but also treat them unequally which is actually the opposite of the American Dream- to have everyone equal. The ideas about white being superior to blacks that are followed by society, which are portrayed in The Help relate directly to a famous Jack Kerouac quote which states “This is the story of America. Everybody’s doing what they think they’re supposed to do.” The southern white families all did “what they thought they were supposed to do” by segregating and verbally abusing the black population.Between the “Home Help Sanitation Initiative” and teaching young children how they are supposed to think and behave- that is everyone “doing what they think they’re supposed to do” as a American.