In the late 1900s, when the Civil Rights Movement gained its momentum in Jackson, Mississippi is the setting of Kathryn Stockett’s realistic fictional novel The Help. This novel is based upon the lives of the black men and women who made a living by cleaning, cooking, and caring for other peoples’ kids. The novel also entails the lives of their white employers. Demonstrated in the novel, is a stark contrast between the lives of privileged white people, and discriminated black people. Stockett provides an in-depth view of the two different worlds.
The world that black people lived in differed so much from the world that white people lived because of the discrimination they faced on a daily basis versus the privilege that their counterparts were …show more content…
They were supposed to have a nice appearance, and play the role of a house wife while their husbands did the work. In the novel, we see Skeeter being taunted and rushed by the other women to get a husband, and especially after she gets a job at the newspaper writing “Mrs. Myrna” letters. This is because it is unconventional for white women to be single for so long, and get jobs. We see the exact opposite in the world of black people. Both men and women have to work to sustain decent living condition. In some cases, as we see in Minnie’s case, even the children have to get jobs. Even with multiple incomes coming in to one household, black people still remained very poor. On top of maintaining a steady income, black women also had to do the housework and take care of the kids. A big difference we see in the novel is how white women were trying to conform to the societal norm. This fed into their obsession with “looking good”. Whether it was donating to charity, or building separate outside …show more content…
They led very comfortable lives, and never had to worry about putting food on the table, or keeping a job. They received the best of everything, and everything they wanted. They lived a true “silver spoon” life, because that is how society set things up. They made sure whites had better education, neighborhoods, jobs, and representation in the government, so they always had the power. Like, when Aibleen relises that when they were mad at them, instead of resorting to physical violence they would get them evicted, fired, shunned, or your car repossed. On the contrary, blacks represent the struggle that the standards of discrimination thrust upon them. They did the best they could for themselves, but because of the color of their skin they were severely limited in their day to day lives. For example, in the novel when Medgar Evers is shot by the KKK, the bus driver stops and forces all the black people off. Everyone on the bus was in potential danger, but only the white people were valuable enough to
The world that black people lived in differed so much from the world that white people lived because of the discrimination they faced on a daily basis versus the privilege that their counterparts were …show more content…
They were supposed to have a nice appearance, and play the role of a house wife while their husbands did the work. In the novel, we see Skeeter being taunted and rushed by the other women to get a husband, and especially after she gets a job at the newspaper writing “Mrs. Myrna” letters. This is because it is unconventional for white women to be single for so long, and get jobs. We see the exact opposite in the world of black people. Both men and women have to work to sustain decent living condition. In some cases, as we see in Minnie’s case, even the children have to get jobs. Even with multiple incomes coming in to one household, black people still remained very poor. On top of maintaining a steady income, black women also had to do the housework and take care of the kids. A big difference we see in the novel is how white women were trying to conform to the societal norm. This fed into their obsession with “looking good”. Whether it was donating to charity, or building separate outside …show more content…
They led very comfortable lives, and never had to worry about putting food on the table, or keeping a job. They received the best of everything, and everything they wanted. They lived a true “silver spoon” life, because that is how society set things up. They made sure whites had better education, neighborhoods, jobs, and representation in the government, so they always had the power. Like, when Aibleen relises that when they were mad at them, instead of resorting to physical violence they would get them evicted, fired, shunned, or your car repossed. On the contrary, blacks represent the struggle that the standards of discrimination thrust upon them. They did the best they could for themselves, but because of the color of their skin they were severely limited in their day to day lives. For example, in the novel when Medgar Evers is shot by the KKK, the bus driver stops and forces all the black people off. Everyone on the bus was in potential danger, but only the white people were valuable enough to