At the end of Kathryn Stockett’s very popular novel The Help, Skeeter heads to New York to begin her writing career at a national magazine with her $25,000 family trust fund, which in 1963 would be sweet. Skeeter negotiates with her old boss at a Jackson Mississippi newspaper and secures Aibileen a job doing what she really did all along as Skeeter’s ghost-consultant for homemaking tips. Aibelene receives $10 a week to write Skeeter’s old column. Before she leaves, Skeeter gives Aibelene a blue cloth notebook with all of her past articles about how to remove stains, iron pleats, and clan bath tubs. Nice, eh?
Aibileen walks into a new sunrise with her pencil and paper…
Skeeter flies to New York with her Smith-Corona typewriter and her trust fund…
All along in this story, scenes describe Skeeter at Aibileen’s kitchen table typing away as twelve domestic servants tell their stories. In many places, Stockett shares that these maids have received an elementary school education or a bit better. In particular, Aibileen writes daily in her notebook. She is a writer…
In a few scenes we learn how Skeeter gets to go shopping to buy a new frock at the cost of her domestic servant’s monthly salary.
I think Skeeter missed an opportunity to teach Aibelene how to type. How different this book would have been had Skeeter “taught others how to fish”. Instead, she used the compelling oral narratives of these amazing women to foster her own upward mobility; upward literally to New York City. I picture her showing up in Richard Yates’ writing class at the New School, taking a night class or two (for he taught there at this time). Is she really a writer or just a typist? Think about it, Skeeter’s writing career after college at Ol’ Miss consisted of taking dictation...
How ridiculous. She was a writer. (a fictional one at that!)She wrote. She convinced the editor to read her material. She presented it in a way that it was publishable. The book contributed to changing the face of an entire nation.
ReplyDeleteThere were typing teachers, you know, and the black women could have learned to type, if they were so inspired. It's not rocket science! Many a famous writer wrote longhand, in those days, by the way! Sheesh!
Well, if this is the most negative comment you could come up with, I'd say you loved the book as much as the rest of the world did. : )