Exploring concepts of representation conveyed in and by
The Help
through the phenomenological approach of reader-response theory
– A bachelor thesis by Tania Havris Lind –
first published in 2013 – revised in 2020
What is representation but a response to representation?
To begin with, The Help may seem like just another Caucasian woman’s representation of African American women. There is no point in denying that Stockett has produced a ‘by and large’ fictional novel that portrays a silenced part of the South’s history without being part of that specific silenced group, and without having spoken to any African American maids, who worked in Mississippi during the 1960’s, herself.
However, it is my opinion that The Help is definitely not solely ‘just another white woman’s representation of black women’. The Help is a novel that depicts a variety of representational concepts through an ‘artistic’ structure that consists of different character backgrounds, different perceptions, plural layers of readers, and of how the layers of readers respond, when exposed to different versions of representation. The Help shows how the agency of African American silenced Southern women like Aibileen and Minny can take its hesitant beginning in the representational act of a Caucasian Southern young woman, even though at least one of them feel ‘sorry [for that] fact’.
Most importantly, a phenomenological reading of The Help gives rise to the idea, that concepts of representation are not limited to the actions of the author, who produces them: they are equally depended on the manner in which they are realised by the individual reader, and how this realisation results in an individual response that may or may not at some point produce yet another text, revert to the initial authorial act, only to be realised in a new manner by a new reader or perhaps by the author, who produced the initial representation, just like in The Help, when Skeeter realises that one of the secondary readers of Help had ‘understood the point of the book before she ever read it. The one who was missing the point this time was … [her].’
What the phenomenological approach by reader-response theory reveals, when used to examine the concepts of representation in a literary context such as The Help, is a constantly expanding network of response to representation, that in theory makes up for the way people perceive and respond to literary texts, and subsequently to the world.
Because what is a representation but an individual response to an experience? Arguably, some of the postcolonial critics’ approach to representation is likely to have been produced from the realisations and disapproving response that arose from the postcolonial critics’ reading of colonial history and the history’s depiction of the ‘Other’ and/or lack it. What is The Help if not a depiction of Stockett’s own realisation and response to the segregated South that she grew up in, her own childhood sense of belonging in the safe arms of her family’s maid and to the texts that she researched and read when producing The Help?
In regard to the issue of the authorial position embedded in the concepts of representation, The Help illustrates how the act of representation can produce an ‘awareness of existence’ that otherwise would not have been present, and its essentialness to the silenced subject’s act of claiming agency; if people are not aware of the silenced subject’s existence, then how are they suppose to know, that they need to listen to the voice of the silenced subject? The barriers that silence the subject might (in some cases) be bypassed by necessary acts of representation, that inspire the first step towards agency and self-representation.
If a reader’s representational response is not regarded as a representational issue, then to some extend neither should the position of the author. Instead, an author and his or her embodiment in literature shall be considered a valuable tool that eases the transition from the colonial mindset of ‘them’ vs. ‘us’ to a mindset of ‘we’ and ‘us’. In short, literary representation should be used precisely in the same manner that Phillips suggest that literature should be used in correlation with the transformation happening in Europe: ‘ … as a bulwark against intolerance, and as a force of change …’
In conclusion, what the concepts of representation in The Help simply do are to ‘formulate the unformulated’, resulting in an ‘awareness of existence’ about the represented subjects – both the African American and Caucasian, and thus create a space where ‘they are us’, ‘we’ are ‘them’; where ‘We are just two people.’
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PUBLISHING MY REVISED BACHELOR THESIS…
I wrote my bachelor thesis in the fall of 2013. I had become a mom for the first time in the spring, and my son was just a few months old when I started writing my paper with guidance from my lector Eva Rask Knudsen.
I fell in love with postcolonialism from the first time I was introduced to the subject during the second or third semester. The whole notion of how acts of colonialism have shaped (and still shapes) the world we live in today captivated my interest instantly. The infatuation arose when I was introduced to The Theory of Knowledge on the fifth or sixth semester, and I immediately felt the need to find a way to combine my two passions in my upcoming bachelor thesis – and so I did.
I have decided to publish my bachelor thesis on my blog, because the combination and understanding of both postcolonialism and reader-response theory is still very much a part of my professional foundation when I work with communication, as well as my personal interests for how we talk about people around us – on both a national and global scale.
Much have happened since 2013 when I first handed in my bachelor thesis, so I have used some time to revise the thesis to make it more contemporary. The core is still intact – I’ve merely brushed the exterior up a bit.
I hope you will enjoy the revised version of my thesis, and please leave any constructive thoughts in the comment box below.
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