Ebookwormy1's Reviews > The Help

This was an enjoyable beachy type read. But, although it began as a Civil Rights scenario, it ended up having more to say about how women relate to one another, and what it had to say was rather shallow.

All the male characters have run off, been emasculated by their domineering women, or are too busy workin' (like Stockett's dad) to notice (or care) what is going on in the women's world, and the one that does notice is an abuser. I have to confess, I don't particularly like the dynamics of female dominated worlds. The cattiness, the nasty power struggles, the fashion, and inevitable focus on the losing battle with fading externals that cover dark hearts. The enforcing lines and rules that have more to do with individuals drawing power from societal norms than any moral compass. The author certainly does a good job of pointing out that for all men have done, women are not innocent in relationship to either their fellow females or their own offspring.

This is certainly NOT a book of the 1960's, though it uses good historical references to give you a backdrop of the time, what is going on center stage seems infused with 2010 perspective. Women, their roles, their relationships have changed from the 1960s. SIGNIFICANTLY. It struck me there are very few points in time where women would have the freedom and audience to publish such an examination of the female world... and this is one of those rare moments.

I suppose the message that there is more to unite us than separate us is good, in an all-I-need-to-know-I-learned-in-Kindergarten sort of way. Makes you feel like if women could just bond together and establish some unity, we could take over the world! Except that endeavor is not going anywhere good.

Is that what we are doing with our freedom? Creating a world in which female perspective is all encompassing and men and the role they play in our experience is either a threat or an afterthought? Feminism triumphs into a purely lesbian orientation (and I'm not speaking of sexuality here, but the orientation of perspective)? Where is the music of the complex symphony that comes from women moving beyond female-power exercised over and against each other to a place where they are enriched by the natural desire to live in relationship with the men in our lives?

Ultimately, the book was readable, and I wanted to know what happened, but there is too much the author is ignoring.

CAUTION: references to a flasher, homosexuality of children, abuse, alcoholism, smoking are covered in an 2010ish manner that I thought undermined historical perspective and gave the work a gritty feel inappropriate for young readers.

For a better of of the South, I loved Cold Sassy Tree.

Cold Sassy Tree, Burns, 1984
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