The White Savior
Using a white and black paradigm, the black maids are the narrative subjects of The Help, yet many black readers such as myself, viewed Skeeter as the centralized protagonist and voice. The harshest yet powerful woman in the novel was white socialite Hilly Holbrook, the evil antagonist, was portrayed in a negative light in order for readers to identify Skeeter as the “white saviour”. She terrorizes, isolates, and dehumanizes her domestic workers, specifically Minnie, throughout the novel. The catalyst that drove the domestic workers to rebel was when Hilly organized a campaign for white families to build separate toilets for domestic workers to avoid “black diseases” (Stockett, 2009, p. 8). This campaign is the catalyst for …show more content…
There was hardly any room for storylines for real human connectedness between the black and white women. The author could have acknowledged racism as a vehicle of white privilege rather than espoused hatred throughout the book, yet the appeal of this fictional narrative would have not met critical acclaim or popularity. The novel did not capture the core of life in Mississippi in the 1960’s, where women endured and resisted inequality without the help of a “ white saviour” to rescues them, worked in their employers homes and raised their children alongside their own, wishing those children would not fall victims to lynch mobs or racist acts of violence. Skeeter’s role as the appointed saviour to the alienated maids demonstrates my argument that white characters will often become a more central theme in novels involving black characters. If literature or films such as the “The Help” are going to include people of colour as main characters, than their voices should not be ignored in order to appease mainstream audiences by throwing in a white character and focusing on their voice. The two black characters are portrayed as challengers the social norms that oppressed yet stay within the drawn racial lines and hierarchy of Jackson, Mississippi. This is the essential problem that the novel prevents as it focus on involving empathy for black characters that are barely represented or known, which is why the text became lost in as it emphases more on Skeeter experiences rather than the personal stories of Aibileen or Minny. Needless to say, white authors should take caution when writing people of colour as in literary fiction to avoid stereotypical tropes. The Help would have angered less black readers and audiences such as myself had she wrote a ‘coming of age’ story about a young white woman eager to escape Jackson, Mississippi in the
Using a white and black paradigm, the black maids are the narrative subjects of The Help, yet many black readers such as myself, viewed Skeeter as the centralized protagonist and voice. The harshest yet powerful woman in the novel was white socialite Hilly Holbrook, the evil antagonist, was portrayed in a negative light in order for readers to identify Skeeter as the “white saviour”. She terrorizes, isolates, and dehumanizes her domestic workers, specifically Minnie, throughout the novel. The catalyst that drove the domestic workers to rebel was when Hilly organized a campaign for white families to build separate toilets for domestic workers to avoid “black diseases” (Stockett, 2009, p. 8). This campaign is the catalyst for …show more content…
There was hardly any room for storylines for real human connectedness between the black and white women. The author could have acknowledged racism as a vehicle of white privilege rather than espoused hatred throughout the book, yet the appeal of this fictional narrative would have not met critical acclaim or popularity. The novel did not capture the core of life in Mississippi in the 1960’s, where women endured and resisted inequality without the help of a “ white saviour” to rescues them, worked in their employers homes and raised their children alongside their own, wishing those children would not fall victims to lynch mobs or racist acts of violence. Skeeter’s role as the appointed saviour to the alienated maids demonstrates my argument that white characters will often become a more central theme in novels involving black characters. If literature or films such as the “The Help” are going to include people of colour as main characters, than their voices should not be ignored in order to appease mainstream audiences by throwing in a white character and focusing on their voice. The two black characters are portrayed as challengers the social norms that oppressed yet stay within the drawn racial lines and hierarchy of Jackson, Mississippi. This is the essential problem that the novel prevents as it focus on involving empathy for black characters that are barely represented or known, which is why the text became lost in as it emphases more on Skeeter experiences rather than the personal stories of Aibileen or Minny. Needless to say, white authors should take caution when writing people of colour as in literary fiction to avoid stereotypical tropes. The Help would have angered less black readers and audiences such as myself had she wrote a ‘coming of age’ story about a young white woman eager to escape Jackson, Mississippi in the