How are Scout and Skeeter similar?

But then I realize, like a shell cracking open in my head, there's no difference between those government laws and Hilly building Aibileen a bathroom in the garage, except ten minutes' worth of signatures in the state capitol. (13.92)

You can hardly find a page in this book without some reference to toilets and bathrooms. In some ways, toilets and bathrooms symbolize all that is wrong with the society depicted in the novel. The prevailing belief among most white people here is that black people carry diseases. Apparently the main way to get one of these diseases is to use a toilet a black person has used.

This obviously false claim is used to justify segregated bathrooms, which become a huge issue in the novel. Robert Brown is beaten and blinded when he accidentally uses a white bathroom. Her mother beats Mae Mobley when she uses Aibileen's bathroom. Hilly Holbrook's major project is to have a law passed requiring white families to build outside bathrooms for their black employees to use.

When Skeeter encounters the Jim Crow laws in the public library, she begins to grasp all these different discriminatory and racist practices she sees. Kathryn Stockett uses toilets and bathrooms to symbolize the dirtiness of the tactics used to maintain a racist status quo in this Mississippi community in the early 1960s, and to inject wicked comic relief into a sometimes heartbreaking book.

Poo Pie and an L-Shaped Crack

Sounds like the start of a very dirty joke, no? Actually, these are the two biggest clues that Help (the book within The Help) is set in Jackson, Mississippi. The fact that Minny baked a poo pie that Hilly ate is left in Help intentionally, to keep Hilly from spreading the word that the book is about Jackson. If she admits the book is about Jackson, she admits she ate Minny's poo…and lived. (The big irony, of course, is that Hilly claims to believe that white people will come to harm if they use the same toilets and dishes as black people. If a white person can eat a black person's poo and not even get sick…we'll leave you to finish that sentence.)

By contrast, Aibileen's inclusion of the fact that the Leefolts' dining room table has an L-shaped crack in it is totally unintentional, and a sign of Aibileen's attention to detail (at least in her descriptions, though perhaps not her editing). But, the inclusion might have an unintentionally beneficial result. We could look at Aibileen getting fired as a good thing – after all, she gets the Miss Myrna job and income from Help. Moments after she's fired, she frees herself to begin planning her new writing career.

The inclusion of the L-shaped crack might also have benefits for Elizabeth. Until Hilly points out the detail of the crack, Elizabeth somehow doesn't recognize herself in Aibileen's story. Now she'll be forced to deal with Aibileen's vision of her. Perhaps this will help her with some of her problems and issues. This detail also gives her some power over Hilly – something she's never had, or never felt she had before. When Hilly clues in Elizabeth that she's featured in the book, Hilly, by implication, admits that she too is featured, as the woman who ate Minny's special chocolate pie. Seeing Hilly as fallible might help Elizabeth stop idolizing and following the woman, and learn to think for herself.

White Ladies' Tools

No, white womans like to keep they hands clean. They got a shiny little set a tools they use, sharp as witches fingernails, tidy and laid out neat, like the picks on a dentist tray. They gone take they time with them. (14.63)

Several black characters in the novel suggest that the white women in general might be more harmful to them than the white men are – a white man might use violence, but a white woman will ruin your life. Hilly Holbrook, in all her villainy, is the symbol of this type of woman.

Aibileen's chilling passage quoted above dramatizes a certain type of violence. She uses "witches fingernails" and dentist tools to symbolize such violence, which often consists of using power and influence to have people fired, evicted, imprisoned, fined, or even subjected to physical violence. (We discuss this issue more under the "Themes: Gender.")

By contrast, through her relationship with Skeeter, Aibileen learns sees that some white women use nicer tools for nicer purposes. Skeeter uses books, writing, conversation, speech, and pranks to counteract the tools of vicious women like Hilly. Of course, the tools Skeeter, Aibileen, Minny, and the women who contribute to Help use also incite Hilly's wrath, and strict penalties are paid. But all of the women seem to feel it's worth this risk.

November 8th

Three years ago today, Treelore died. But by Miss Leefolt's book it's still floor cleaning day. (7.100)

November 8th is the date of Treelore's senseless death. For Aibileen, it symbolizes the lowest day in her life, and the months of depression that followed. It also symbolizes the beginning of a change in her. After Aibileen loses her son, her vision of her society sharpens, and she becomes more critical. This change in vision makes her receptive to Skeeter's idea for a book about the lives of the black women who work in the homes of white families. Aibileen sees the book as a chance to speak the truth, and, perhaps, make things better for people in her community.

For Elizabeth, the date symbolizes (ironically) nothing but approaching Thanksgiving. She doesn't consider giving thanks for Aibileen, or how it must feel to be working oneself to the bone to cook food for people who take the cook for granted. Somehow, this moment brings home the complete disconnect between Elizabeth and the woman who cares for every aspect of her home and family. It highlights Elizabeth's blindness, her numbness, and her view of Aibileen as less than human.

To Kill a Mockingbird and Boo Radley

To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee's classic novel about a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman in a Southern town in the 1930s, was published in 1960, two years before The Help opens in late 1962. Basically, in this novel, reading To Kill a Mockingbird is a hint that a character is one of the good guys. Skeeter finishes it while she's getting her hair defrizzed with the Shinalator, as she gets all dolled up for her first date with Stuart. At Aibileen's request, Skeeter gets her a copy of it from the library. Minny notices that Johnny Foote is also reading it, and admires the fact, because it's a book in which black people are represented in a time and place where that was pretty rare.

Kathryn Stockett is definitely paying homage, crediting Lee's work with influencing her and paving the way for her and many other writers.

Interestingly, Skeeter specifically identifies with Boo Radley, a character in Mockingbird. After being fired from her position as editor of the Jackson Junior League newsletter, she's driving around upset. She knows she was fired because she's suspected of being in favor of racial integration, and because she decorated Junior League president Hilly Holbrook's lawn with toilets. She thinks, "I've become one of those people who prowl around at night in their cars. God, I am the town's Boo Radley, just like in To Kill a Mockingbird" (27.101).

Boo Radley is a mysterious character in Mockingbird who stays in his house all the time and is an object of frightened fascination for the young people in Maycomb, Alabama. Scout Finch, Mockingbird's narrator, relates some of Boo's back-story to readers (which she heard third- or fourth-hand) early in the novel.

Here's the quick and dirty version (or head to Shmoop's plot summary for the longer, meatier version – up to you): Apparently, when Boo was a teen he started hanging out with the wild kids, riding around in cars, acting crazy, drinking, and whatnot. One night, he and some other kids resisted arrest and charges were brought. Boo's dad was so embarrassed that he brought Boo home and basically permanently grounded his son – for fifteen years and counting... Rumor has it, Boo stabbed his dad in the leg with scissors, too. Hmm.

So how does this connect with Skeeter? (Nope, not the scissor part.) What happens to Boo is maybe Skeeter's worst fear of what could happen to her. She could be ostracized because of her unacceptable actions (exposing secrets). She could somehow wind up living at home permanently, locked away from the outside world, making mad swings at people with sharp objects. Boo is basically a symbol of the consummate outsider.

Like Skeeter, Boo crosses the line of what's acceptable behavior for a person in his Southern society and his family. But he pays for his action (which weren't necessarily noble, but not that awful either) with his freedom. Skeeter, by contrast, leaves town before something bad happens to her. Interestingly, even after the death of Boo's father, Boo stays in the house.

It's interesting that Skeeter would identify with Boo, rather than with Scout's father Atticus Finch, an awesome attorney, or with Scout herself. Like Skeeter, Atticus tries to defend black people against the injustices of southern society, even when it puts him and his family at risk. Like Skeeter, Scout learns to value and respect African Americans through the black woman who cares for her, Calpurnia. So, why does Skeeter feel more aligned with Boo?