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
PART III – ISSUES EMBEDDED IN THE CONCEPTS OF REPRESENTATION
The representational issues surrounding the artistic text and the author of it still remain.
In The Help, the issue of authorial representation constitute one of the most significant obstacles between Skeeter and the maids; there is a lot of mistrust towards her in the beginning of the novel, because ‘her kind have been representing colored opinions since the beginning a time’. It is the African American main character Minny, who points out this distortion of representation – and it is definitely not restricted to the artistically setting of The Help.
The long history of colonialism, the suppressing colonisers, the history of segregation and the centuries used to fabricate misleading information about the notion of race have led to an unnatural racial awareness that has been thrust upon the minds of millions, resulting in both a conscious and unconscious mistrust between one another, as well as an expansion of the colonial-made gap between people all over the world. Ultimately, these actions and occurrences have brought forth the colonial and somewhat devastating humanistic aftermath categorised as ‘postcolonialism’.
However, despite the obvious postcolonial presence embedded in The Help, the carefully constructed artistic framework made by The Help’s author Kathryn Stockett shows how a collaboration across the gap of segregation can emerge through an extraordinary coincidence: if Skeeter had asked another maid for help with her Miss Myrna column, she would never have been introduced to the ‘idea’ of ‘write[ing] down what [it is] like to be colored [and] working for a white man in Mississippi’.
Additionally, without the agency of Aibileen from whom she receives the inspiration, Skeeter would never have gotten any interviews and thus the novel Help would never have been written. But Skeeter happens to ask the one maid, who has ‘a bitter seed planted inside’ of her, which has left her less ‘accepting’. Metaphorically, this seed within Aibileen acts as a beanstalk that reaches over the gap and creates a connection between her and Skeeter despite their different backgrounds and colonial-grafted positions.
The gap still remains, but an opportunity to cross it has presented itself through the cunning limits imposed on the text by Stockett. Skeeter’s outreach illustrates how the act of representing the silenced subject might prove to be a troublesome, but in some cases necessary action that helps the silenced subject claim and gain agency and thus self-representation.
In short, if someone reaches out over the gap and receives a response, a connection is formed; whether it is the connection between the author and the reader, the reader and another reader or between Skeeter and Aibileen.
Nevertheless, the forming of connections does not solve the possibility of misrepresentation. As Minny correctly points, when Skeeter talks about taking on the project of representing the maids: ‘it’s a sorry fact that it’s a white woman doing this’.
For many critics, especially the postcolonial ones, this is an undisputable fact that applies to both the writing of Help, as well as The Help. However, if the beanstalk metaphor made above is applied to the representational act performed by Skeeter as well as Stockett, the outcome of this could be that their acts can be viewed as necessary measures taken in order to shrink the gap between the colonial-made concept of ‘them and us’ by rewriting the minds of their respective readers, when these readers read Help and The Help respectively.
As mentioned previously, Aibileen is the one who introduces the idea of writing from the perspective of the help to Skeeter; an idea which she originally got from her deceased son Treelore, who himself had become inspired to write such a book after reading Invisible Man – which as a side note, illustrates that a reader’s response to another person’s story might inspire this reader to act and claim agency.
Aibileen is in a situation that restricts her from publishing her perspective due to the colour of her skin, as well at the enslaving effect that the history of the South has had on her mind. Fortunately, the latter part has slowly begun to unwind itself from the enslaving bands through the simple process of reading; Aibileen tells Skeeter that she read Invisible Man herself and that she ‘liked it alright’, underlining the fact that Aibileen is a reader herself – which in return astounds Skeeter, who has never before ‘thought of Aibileen as a reader’. The mutual outreach forms a space in which the voice of the silenced African American woman can be brought into existence through a combination of representation and agency; Skeeter cannot make a book about the South seen from the perspective of the maids without Aibileen’s agency and Aibileen cannot voice her perspective without Skeeter’s representational position as well as her connection to the publishing firm.
Much the same circumstances apply to the representational act performed by The Help’s author: if Kathryn Stockett had not written The Help, many readers would still be oblivious to the existence and role of the African American domestics of the South in the 1960’s – myself included. But without the presence of her family’s maid Demetrie throughout her childhood, as well as the real-life stories of African American domestics and their employers collected and published by Susan Tucker , Stockett would never have been able to write The Help.
This does not change the ‘sorry fact that [she is a] white woman doing it’ and it certainly does not automatically grant her the right to represent ‘the voice of a black [..]’ maid, but it stands to reason that without the artistic part of The Help, the esthetic part as well as the awareness attached to it will seize to exist and lead to the voice of the maids* (e.g. the maids outside the artistic text – the real ones) remaining silenced to many potential readers.
In short, the possibility of misrepresentation can never be fully removed from the concept of representation, but representation can produce an important awareness that would not have existed otherwise.
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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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