Ratings

Content Ratings based on a 0-5 scale where
0 = no objectionable content and
5 = an excessive or disturbing level of content

Guide to Rating System

LANGUAGE

VIOLENCE

SEXUAL CONTENT

ADULT THEMES

Ratings Explanation

Language: Frequent swearing and profanity. Racial slurs. Several uses of the word “nigger”.

Violence: Very brief description of the murder of Medgar Evers. One of the characters is beaten by her husband. A naked man comes into the yard of a home and the maid goes out with a knife to scare him off. When she falls down, he advances on her and another woman hits him with a fire poker several times.

Sexual Content: Description of the naked man, he touches himself, dances and runs around, flopping.

Adult Themes:  1960s race relations and civil rights. Domestic violence. A couple breaks up because the girl slept with someone else. A character briefly considers going away for the weekend with her boyfriend, and what that would mean.

Synopsis

The Help is told in the voices of three different women in Jackson, Mississippi. Skeeter has graduated from Ole Miss and has moved back home. Her mother never stops criticizing her and nags her constantly to find a husband. Skeeter lands a job writing the housecleaning tips column at the local paper. Completely unprepared to tell anyone how to clean anything, she goes to her friend’s maid, Aibileen, for help.

Aibileen has raised 17 white children and loves Mae Mobley, who she cares for now. Her only son died in an accident at work and his white boss tossed his dead body on the curb at the colored hospital. Aibileen dreads the day when little Mae Mobley will “start to think that colored folks ain’t as good as whites” so she tells Mae Mobley secret stories about a Martian. “What’s his name?” Mae Mobley asks. “Martin Luther King,” replies Aibileen.

Minny is Aibileen’s best friend, but they couldn’t be more different. While Aibileen is reserved and polite, Minny is brash and sassy. Her uncontrollable tongue has cost her 19 jobs and when she sasses the wrong lady, it looks like she might not find work in Jackson again.

Very different on the outside, these three women come together to accomplish something that changes them on the inside. This secret project puts them all in danger, and eventually changes each of their lives, but it is something that must be done, because some risks are worth taking.

The Help is full of emotion. It is at times frustrating, funny, uplifting and heartbreaking, and I thoroughly enjoyed each page. The way the women of Jackson are portrayed is eye-opening, but the story feels balanced as well. The book is about social ideas in the south in the 1960s, but most of all it is about women and their relationships with each other.  Many relationships between women are explored, high school girlfriends who are now grown up, white women and their maids, mothers and daughters, girls and the maids who raise them, and the friendship that develops between Skeeter, Aibileen and Minny.  Skeeter sums up when she says, “Wasn’t that the point of the book? For women to realize, We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I’d thought.”

A wonderful lesson, if only we could all learn it.

©2009 The Literate Mother