I came across this line in a review of The Help: The book is worth reading if for no other reason than the reminder that popularity and public opinion are bondage. It stopped me in my reading tracks. It’s not a new idea, but in this context, perhaps because of the word “bondage,” it seemed significant. At the very least, it’s something I want to think more about.

In terms of the book, I think every character can be called a slave to popularity and public opinion. Hilly has to work hard to maintain her place. Elizabeth and Celia can’t seem to alter their positions no matter how hard they try: they’ve been labeled, and they’re stuck with those labels.

In fact, Celia is kind of a slave to Minny’s opinion—or public opinion as Minny interprets it. Celia doesn’t seem to see herself as above Minny. Rather, she recognizes and acknowledges some of Minny’s strengths and abilities as superior to her own. She likes and respects Minny and wants to be her friend. But Minny won’t have it, even though she doesn’t disagree that her abilities are often superior. She refuses to accept a place on equal ground with her employer, even when it’s offered. I’d say she holds herself above her white employer.

Do you agree? What other ways are popularity and public opinion conveyed as bondage?

By some measures, I think I walked away from popularity and public opinion a long time ago by choosing this life I live, but my work is often slave to them. Is a writer/needleworker/designer successful if public opinion doesn’t favor her work? Can she earn a living if her work isn’t popular? Trying to make a living with my creative output means that it is judged publicly. There’s no way around that. If I want to make money, I have to produce things the public wants and deems valuable enough to exchange money for.

If I’m honest, having my work and income be a slave to popularity and public opinion bothers me greatly, but I can’t deny or ignore the fact that it is.

In what ways do you feel the bondage of popularity and public opinion?

Recently, on Facebook, a friend shared a note her daughter had left on her bed. The thirteen-year-old girl wanted my friend to consider an important matter, and rather than discuss it, she put her request in writing. This is not the first note the child has written. This is how she addresses important matters.

Through the comments, I learned that the daughters of another friend text their important issues rather than broach the subjects aloud.

I remember writing letters to my own parents about important things, and several female friends have admitted to doing the same, so this is not an unusual tactic.

Why do you suppose we choose to write about important issues?

There’s a saying, “I don’t know what I think until I write it down,” that I’ve seen attributed to several authors, so I don’t know the real origin, but I do know that it’s true for many people, myself included. Why do you think this is true?

For one thing, thoughts can be fleeting, but writing is slower; it takes time. Slowing the thought process down may be key to thinking more deeply.

Also, writing something down allows us to see it, to see all the different parts of an issue, literally and figuratively. Gaps are revealed. We can then rearrange the parts, which, when they first come out, are often muddled, and we can fill in the gaps. This rearrangement and filling in, I think, creates order and understanding.

The technique used in Teaching College Students to Read Analytically is to have participants write about what they read. Teachers respond to the writing, ask probing questions, and students rewrite. Writing requires thinking.

Surely research has been done on how the brain functions while writing, but I’m not familiar with it. I’d be interested to know.

Have you ever written about something or written routinely, the way Aibileen writes her prayers? Have you ever chosen to address an important issue in writing rather than through discussion? Has anyone around you chosen writing as a way of communicating something important to you?

She also suggested we each talk about whatever books we’re reading in May. I love this idea, too! I think everyone should write a post and email it to me at mail AT funkandweber DOT com so that I can post it here. Will you do it? Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease?

I think this will be a great way to get some suggestions for our TBR lists.

In the meantime…

One of the criticisms I’ve read about The Help is that the dialects used made for difficult reading. I wouldn’t know: I listened to the audio book.

I’m on the fence about dialects. On the one hand, people talk all kinds of different ways, and it’s both accurate and interesting to try to depict that in writing. The way a person talks is part of his/her personality. It seems like a valid literary tool.

On the other hand, it can be difficult to read. Sometimes, when Mike reads oddly-spelled words aloud, they don’t make sense to him. Looking at them, he doesn’t know what those words mean, and he has to stop and translate. Oftentimes, I can recite back to him what he’s said. It made perfect sense to me because the sounds, while technically incorrect, made sense, and I, as a listener, don’t have the added confusion of misspelled words to contend with.

Because I listened to The Help, the dialect problem was all on the heads of the readers–there were three–and they handled it superbly. For me, the dialects were definitely a plus. They seemed natural to the characters, appropriate, and were entirely enjoyable.

Writers are cautioned to use dialects sparingly. Sometimes, we’re advised to start with them and then reduce the usage with the expectation that the reader will take the cue and “hear” it without having it actually (mis)spelled out.

I don’t cotton to that fading-out approach because it feels like a dropped story thread, but I suppose the “use sparingly” advice is good. You don’t want a reader to have to stop and translate frequently.

So what did you think? Was the use of dialect a delight or a drag? Did it improve the book or weaken it?

Have you had any significant experiences, good or bad, with dialects used in other stories?

What do you think? Anyone up for it, or should we pick something else or maybe even take May off and prepare for June instead?

Anyone?

There is a response to this criticism of The Help here, but before you read it, what is your response to the ABWH’s open letter?

As a white woman, I wondered throughout the story what African American women were thinking as they read it. I would love to have a more diverse group of readers chiming in here. I have no doubt that different people will respond differently to the story, and plenty will resent and take offense at part or all of it. I can imagine white southern women resenting how shallow and mean their counterparts in the story are drawn. Everyone, of course, is entitled to an opinion.

As a writer, though, I think the criticism is weak. I think it expects too much of a single story. It seems to be asking that the story include a more complete portrayal of the life and times of black women in the service of whites in the 1960s and claiming that anything less is a disservice to those women.

If the book were claiming to be an exhaustive nonfiction portrayal of the people and subject, I would have to agree. But it’s not. It’s a work of fiction exploring and illuminating a small part of a time, a place, a situation, and people that have been explored many times before and will continue to be explored, from many perspectives.

People are complex. Personally, I think it’s impossible to fully understand all the factors that contribute to feelings and actions and situations. I certainly don’t expect a story to acknowledge or address them all. I’m not sure I’d want to read a story laden with such a burden. What a heavy, dense, and slow story that would be.

If a failure to include every contributing factor is reason to condemn a story, then every story ever written must be condemned.

I can see where omitting a factor can be problematic and worthy of criticism, but it would have to be an ever-present, highly-influential factor that is blatantly ignored, like ignoring the long hours of daylight when telling the story of a giant cabbage grown in Alaska. Sexual harassment of black female servants is certainly a highly-influential factor, but was it ever-present? Did every black female servant experience it? I don’t know, but I doubt it. I think it’s fair to show Aibileen and Minny as two women in service who were not sexually harassed by white men. I don’t think we get to know any of the others well enough to know if they were or weren’t. I would assume some were. In fact, when the story of Constantine’s fair-skinned daughter came up, I expected to learn that she was Skeeter’s half-sister. The story didn’t go that way, but it could have.

Or maybe this is precisely what Stockett wants us to think. Maybe that’s the background story, but it is never addressed directly because Mrs. Phelan refuses to acknowledge it. Maybe her dismissal of Constantine and her daughter is a ruse covering up an even more embarrassing situation. Hey, readers bring their own perspectives and imaginations to a story.

Instead of criticizing what the book doesn’t include, I think it’s more appropriate to ask whether what is included rings true. Are any claims or situations blatantly false?

The ABWH describes very well the bigger picture of the time and place and people, but to demand that a story encompass that bigger picture is wrong. I think it’s more appropriate to expect the book to fit within that big picture. Let other stories tell other parts.

In the final paragraph, the ABWH says, “In the end, The Help is not a story about the millions of hardworking and dignified black women who labored in white homes to support their families and communities. Rather, it is the coming-of-age story of a white protagonist, who uses myths about the lives of black women to make sense of her own.”

Even if this is true, so what? Is there not room for this story in the arsenal of literature about this time and place and situation? Isn’t the perspective of a white protagonist trying to make sense of her life by contrasting it with the lives of the black women around her valid? And not being a black woman herself, isn’t her perspective bound to be influenced by myths?

There seem to always be problems when writers attempt to write about a culture other than their own, but different cultures overlap and intertwine. I would venture to say that it’s impossible to write a story without writing from different cultural perspectives. Am I really supposed to write stories only about white middle-aged women? If I cannot write about another culture, then I probably shouldn’t write about men or children, either. Should African American authors be limited to writing about only black characters?

I think a sincere effort to be accurate and sensitive when writing about a different culture is necessary, and I think Stockett made that effort.

I think it’s great to bring these ideas up while discussing the book, and I’d love to hear in more detail where the ABWH finds flaws and how they’d choose to write the story differently, but I do not agree that “The Help distorts, ignores, and trivializes the experiences of black domestic workers” because of the “lack of attention given to sexual harassment and civil rights activism.”

I thought the maids risking their lives and livelihoods to tell their stories was, in fact, civil rights activism, and their experiences were anything but trivial.

What do you think?

I’m not very interested in the actual questions here; I think the answers are obvious and not especially thought-provoking. If you find them more interesting, please answer them. Force me to think differently. That’s why we’re here.

What strikes me most about this is the claim that Hilly is “a wonderful mother.” Really? Did you think that? I did not. Quite the opposite, in fact. She was, perhaps, more interested in her kids than Elizabeth was in her own, but I didn’t note anything “wonderful” about her interactions with her kids. In fact, they were rarely present in the story, and when they were, she was having them looked after by The Help. Remember, Hilly invited Elizabeth to the country club pool only when Hilly’s maid had the day off. Aibileen concluded, as did I, that the invitation was motivated by a desire to have Aibileen watch Hilly’s kids in addition to Mae Mobley. She was more interested in pawning off her kids than having Elizabeth’s company. That doesn’t strike me as wonderful mothering.

I have to believe that Hilly was as demanding of her kids as she was of her Help and friends, and that she held her own wishes and needs in higher regard than those of her kids. That’s her personality, and while it might be possible to alter one’s personality in specific situations, I didn’t see any sign of that being the case with Hilly and her kids.

My thoughts drift to Elizabeth. I think we would all call her a fairly bad mother. She has little interest in or patience for Mae Mobley. Her greatest interest seems to be sewing and trying to strengthen her shaky role in society. But she provides fantastic care for Mae Mobley through Aibileen.

We wouldn’t criticize a parent for hiring out, say, an appendectomy or geometry tutoring. Is it right to criticize a parent for hiring out the raising of a child? Are we judging Elizabeth by standards that shouldn’t apply? There’s a saying, “You can’t judge history by modern standards.” I think we also shouldn’t judge different cultures by our culture’s standards.

My culture is one where parents raise their own kids and take pride in doing so. The kids’ needs come first, sometimes, I think, to a faulty degree.

Surely there can be good parenting within a culture where raising the kids is farmed out. Isn’t that the culture in the book? In that context, hiring Aibileen is great parenting, no?

But, then, there’s the matter of how Elizabeth acts toward Mae Mobley. She’s not loving or kind or patient, and, for that, I think we can fairly judge her a bad parent.

What do you think? Is Hilly a “wonderful mother”? Is she a better mother than Elizabeth?

Ziggy, you’re it! Pick a Funk & Weber pattern, any pattern.

Great answers. Kat, you cracked me up! Harriet, awesome poem! Although, I will argue strenuously about the claim that Ukulele Land has the best fish. Although, that depends entirely on the kind of fish we’re talking about. If we’re talking about fish we eat, I think Alaska’s fish are much better and more readily available than Hawaii’s. If we’re talking tropical fish to view while snorkeling and diving, well, Hawaii beats Alaska, to be sure, but what about, say, the Great Barrier Reef?

I know you weren’t thinking that hard about it. The claim was for descriptive purposes, and, as such, worked perfectly.

So, where were we?

In fact, we were here:
The Universe
Milky way
Solar system
Earth
Northern hemisphere
Pacific region
Hawaii
Kauai

Those are the Wailua Falls, and the cliff edge overlooks the Nualolo Valley on the NaPali coast. I loved that coastline and that hike.

Mike’s been editing over 2,000 images this past week, and I expect one or both of us will have an album on Facebook in the not-too-distant future. I’ll put a link to it here, so no worries if you’re not on Facebook.

And now back to our (ir)regularly scheduled program.

S4L Book Club – The Help

If they’re available, I read the canned questions from reading group guides before starting a discussion here. The first canned question for The Help is “Who was your favorite character? Why?” I immediately dismissed it as a lame question. But then I got to thinking. (And isn’t that the point? Which makes the lameness where? Ahem.)

My first response was that I liked Skeeter, Aibileen, and Minny equally. (Lame.) My thoughts were limited to the viewpoint characters for no particular reason. And then I thought some more. (Pushing past the lameness.)

After further consideration, I decided that Aibileen was my favorite character, probably because I relate best to her. I can see similarities in our circumstances, motivations, actions, and hopes.

I like Skeeter and Minny, and I’d want to be their friend, as Aibileen is, but I don’t relate to them in as many ways as I relate to Aibileen. Their circumstances and motivations are not as similar to my own.

And this leads me to another question: How important is it for you to relate to a character in a story? Do you need to see yourself in a character to enjoy the story?

For some reason, Ender’s Game comes to mind as a comparison. Did I relate to Ender? I certainly didn’t relate to his circumstances, and I don’t think I saw much of myself in him. But I enjoyed that character and book very much. I imagine that just having human feelings will always connect me in some way to a character (even animal characters) with human feelings.

Part of me thinks that relating to characters is what draws a reader into a story, but I’m not convinced that the more I can relate to a character, the more I’ll enjoy the story. I think other factors—interesting plot, language, structure—influence the experience, too, and can make up for a lack of seeing myself in a character.

However, I do think that in the case of The Help, seeing myself in Aibileen contributed significantly to my enjoyment of the story.

So, who was your favorite character and why? How important is it to you to relate to a character in a story? What impact did relating or not relating to a character in this story have on your overall enjoyment? Was some other factor more significant?

The canned questions ask, “Do you think Olive is really oblivious to how others see her, especially Christopher? Do you think she found Christopher’s accusations in ‘Security’ shocking or just unexpected?”

My answers are that I don’t think Olive is oblivious; I think she chooses to ignore or deny her understanding. And I think she found Christopher’s accusations both shocking and unexpected, not to mention immensely difficult to accept. She and Henry kept such observations, accusations, and admissions mostly to themselves. There were some passing jabs at one another perhaps, but they certainly didn’t confront them head on as Chris does in this story. She was ill equipped to handle Christopher’s approach.

If we’re calling this book a novel, I would say this is the climax. This is where Olive is forced to look at herself, her life, and her relationships honestly. It is the final turning point for her. We see the result of this life-change in her relationship with Jack Kennison, and I, for one, extrapolate from that an improvement in her relationship with Chris after the book ends.

What did you think? Did you place such importance on the relationship between Olive and Christopher? Did you like that story, find it believable? Do you think it would have the effect I claim it does?

If this is a novel, what would you say the climax was?

Did you consider Olive’s relationship with Jim O’Casey an affair? Though Jim drives Olive and Chris to school daily, and Olive and Jim have lunch together, they never otherwise act on any feelings of love or attraction. It doesn’t even sound as though they share much in the way of secrets or offer special support to one another. I didn’t consider it an affair.

How about Henry’s relationship with Denise in the first story? Henry offered Denise a lot of support. They discussed and shared their personal lives, their secrets. Did Henry have an affair with Denise?

In your opinion, what constitutes an affair?

How are these two relationships—Olive and Jim’s and Henry and Denise’s—different from relationships with very close friends with whom we share secrets and seek support?

I felt it was unfortunate that Henry and Olive had to look outside their marriage for these kinds of relationships, but they had set the parameters of their relationship, and they seemed comfortable with them, if not completely fulfilled. They both sought to fill certain needs by other means. I don’t think they broke the essential marital contract they had made with each other: they just didn’t include all their needs and desires in their contract.

Do you think in real life people make similarly incomplete marital contracts with their partners? Do they honor them the way Henry and Olive did?

My answers to those questions are yes and no, respectively. I think the modern real-life definition and expectation of marriage is different from what it was to Henry and Olive. I think people don’t always have a clear idea of what they want and expect when they enter into a marriage contract. And I definitely don’t think people are willing to honor their contracts as Henry and Olive did. Between a sense of entitlement and a lack of stick-to-it-iveness, people today are much quicker to throw in the towel when times get tough or a relationship is less than fulfilling. Like so much else in our modern culture, relationships are temporary and disposable.

What do you think?

In “A Different Road,” Strout writes about Olive and Henry: “No, they would never get over that night because they had said things that altered how they saw each other” (p. 124). What is it that Olive and Henry say to each other while being held hostage in the hospital bathroom that has this effect? Have you experienced a moment like this in one of your close relationships?

“A Different Road” might be my favorite story in the book. It’s really hard to choose.

I don’t want to be the first one to answer the question about what it is that Olive and Henry say to each other that alters how they see each other. What do you think?

Can you think of moments or comments that permanently altered your vision of someone or something? I can think of a few, but I’m not willing to share any of them here. I’m wondering, though, if any of these things really changed the relationship. I don’t think they did. They’re scars, perhaps, dings in the finish, nicks in the drywall, but they didn’t destroy the relationship. Maybe the continuation of a relationship, in spite of the scars and dings, actually makes it stronger. Scar tissue can be tough.

Here’s another line from that story that I really like:

But after a certain point in a marriage, you stopped having a certain kind of fight, Olive thought, because when the years behind you were more than the years in front of you, things were different.

So true! But not necessarily because there are more years behind than in front of you. I think it’s a natural process of spending time with someone, and it happens in all relationships, not just marriages. We come to terms with our own and others’ flaws and weaknesses. We compensate for them, deal with them.

Mike doesn’t tell me to calm down when a bee buzzes near me. Whenever possible, he takes action before it gets near me! Likewise, I take care of all the spiders in the house. And that HUGE one in the Galapagos right by the light switch–it’s best he never hears about that one. He doesn’t argue about how he has to keep his ground moose way far away from the edge on his half of the pizza. I don’t fight the sports.

What are some things you’ve come to terms with in your relationships?