Skeeter Phelan is one of three narrative voices in Kathryn
Stockett's novel The Help. She is a single woman who has graduated
from college but finds herself living back at home with her parents because jobs for
women are scarce in Jackson, Mississippi. During the course of this story, Miss Skeeter
becomes independent and strong.
Though it takes her some
time to figure it out, she wants to write and she wants to make a difference. In a world
of white women who take their black maids for granted, Miss Skeeter becomes an advocate
and a voice for the black women in service to white women in Jackson. This must be done
in secret because there is great danger involved for all of them; however, she and a few
others are brave enough to tell the stories of the help. Unlike so many of her
colleagues and friends, Skeeter does not think black maids carry diseases or should have
to be relegated to a bathroom in the garage--and yet there is a bathroom in her own home
into which she has never been. It belonged to Constantine, the maid in her home as she
was growing up.
It is only as Skeeter loses her friend
Constantine and begins to see some injustices done by her white friends that she begins
to change herself and then desire to change others. Skeeter begins as a rather naive
girl who does not have much of a plan for her life. Through the course of the novel she
becomes a woman determined to right whatever wrongs she can and give a voice to those
who have never had one.
No comments:
Post a Comment