Saturday, April 2, 2011

The Help....An Alternate Twist

I loved The Help. I have many thoughts but I'll limit myself to just one. This is a huge SPOILER ALERT. (Consider yourself warned.) It comes from this storyline:

"Remember I told you Constantine had a daughter. Well, Lulabelle was her name. Law, she come out pale as snow. Grew hair the color a hay. Not curly like yours. Straight it was." Aibileen to Skeeter (Pg 358) If Kathryn Stockett tells me in her fiction book that Lulabelle's father was as black as Aibileen who am I to question her? I'm no Geneticist. But after spending 2 minutes googling 'maids from the South' I found a possible explanation in which the story could have taken a whole different turn.

Apparently, in the South it was common for white wealthy males to take advantage of their black maids. Since black women were very poor and didn't have a lot of job opportunities, as we saw from the book, some gave into the advances (or didn't quit when they were "mistreated") in order to keep their job to feed their family. It sickened me to read that some white males even went as far as to have their white family in the big house and their "family" with the maid in a shack in the back!! Now, I'm not trying to imply anything about Skeeter's dad, I liked the guy, but I'm just saying its one possible explanation.

I started reading the help on the plane to Maui. I read it at night with my too bright book light that attracted gnats which are now squashed around chapter 10. And here I am reading and soaking up some rays by the pool.

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