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Jackson, the author of best-selling book, Gods in Alabama praised Stockett and her novel,
Set in the rural South of the 1960‘s, The Help is a startling, resonant
portrait of the intertwined lives of women on opposite sides of the racial divide. Stockett‘s many gifts – a keen eye for character, a wicked sense of
humor, the perfect timing of a natural born storyteller- – shine as she
evokes a time and place when black women were expected to help raise white babies, and yet could not use the same bathroom as their employers.
Her characters, both white and black, are so fully fleshed they practically breathe
– no stock villains or pious heroines here. I‘m becoming an evangelist for The Help. Don‘t miss this wise and astonishing debut.
The Help is written in multiple narrations of three women, one white
American named Eugenia ‗Skeeter‘ Phelan and two African American women named Aibileen Clark and Minny Jackson, her best friend. Working as maids for
white families in segregated Southern America, they experience many unequal treatments and injustice accusations of crime from the employer. While most of
white Americans discriminate against their African American maid, there is
Skeeter Phelan, the only sympathetic white American in the story who is willing to help the African American to fight against discrimination. As a result, these
three women work together in a secret project that may be influential to change the life in a small town, or maybe to the world. They write, in secret, a book that
tells everything about what is really like to work for white families as an African American maid. Despite the dangerous risks and troubles they have to get through
during the book writing process, they all have the same hope for a better future life.
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B. Approach of the Study
The writer chooses socio-historical approach in order to fulfill the objectives of the analysis. Wellek and Warren 1949
state that ―much the most common approach to the relations of literature and society is the study of works of
literature as social documents, as assumed pict ures of social reality‖ p.102.
There are three classifications of problem on how literature determined by society: ―the sociology of the writer, the social content of the works themselves, and the
influence of literature on society ‖ Wellek Warren, 1949, p.96. Literature and
society are inseparably linked. Society influences the process of literary works and once the works are completed, they might influence the society. Socio-
historical approach is used because ―this approach can lead to an ethical judgment
concerning the truth of an author‘s statements‖ Rohrberger Woods, 1971,
p.10. Socio-historical approach is used to examine the social and historical background of the novel setting in order to find out the connections between
Skeeter Phelan‘s society and its influence towards the intention of her book, Help, and influence of the book to the society.
C. Method of the Study
The writer uses library research to answer the problem formulation. It is an appropriate method to be used in this kind of study. The primary source for this
study is the novel itself, The Help by Kathryn Stockett. The secondary sources are taken from several books such as Reading and Writing about Literature,
Literature and Gender, American Ethnicity, Equality and Liberty, Theory of
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Literature, Teaching Literature, Mastering English Literature, A Glossary of Literary Terms,
and The Race Question and the Negro. The writer also uses journals and latest studies; Authors, Intentions, and Literary Meaning, Intention in
Intentionalism, The Fallacy of Equating Meaning With the Human Author’s
Intention, Three Kinds of Intention, Egalitarianism, and Egalitarianism in
Kathryn Stockett’s Novel The Help. The writer also uses online journals and references. Those sources are useful in completing
the writer‘s knowledge throughout analysis progress.
There are several steps that the writer conducts in order to analyze the matter of subject. First, the writer reads the novel several times to master the
primary source. From reading the novel, the writer finds several questions to be researched.
The writer formulates the problem into three questions. The problem formulation is made from the early analysis of the way Stockett depicts the
character of Skeeter and people around her; the socio-historical background of the life of African-American and white American in Jackson, Mississippi and the
influence of those factors to main character ‘s intentions in writing Help.
In the third step, the writer finds the expert theories related to the topic of the study to be applied as theoretical frameworks. The theories are character
– characterization in novel and theory of author‘s intention. To support the
background knowledge, the writer also reviews the history of African American who lives in Southern America during 1960s.
