The Help Cover Image

The Help

by Kathryn Stockett

Start Free Trial

Editor's Choice

Describe the setting of The Help.

Quick answer:

The Help is set in 1962 in Jackson, Mississippi. The novel examines in detail how different Jackson is for its white and black residents.

Expert Answers

An illustration of the letter 'A' in a speech bubbles

The Help is set in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1962. Much of the action takes place in the houses of middle-class white people in a neighborhood called Belhaven, but as seen as from the point of view of the black maids.

Part one, for example, is told from the perspective of Mrs. Leefolt's maid Aibileen. She lays out the general Jackson setting for us early on, noting that the whites in this city of two hundred thousand have room to spread out and grow into the suburbs, while the segregated blacks are ever more crowded into sections that don't expand:

Six days a week, I take the bus across the Woodrow Wilson Bridge to where Miss Leefolt and all her white friends live, in a neighborhood call Belhaven. Right next to Belhaven be the downtown and the state capital. Capitol building is real big, pretty on the outside but I never...

Unlock
This Answer Now

Start your 48-hour free trial and get ahead in class. Boost your grades with access to expert answers and top-tier study guides. Thousands of students are already mastering their assignments—don't miss out. Cancel anytime.

Get 48 Hours Free Access

been in it. I wonder what they pay to clean that place. Down the road from Belhaven is white Woodland Hills, then Sherwood Forest, which is miles a big live oaks with the moss hanging down. Nobody living in it yet, but it’s there for when the white folks is ready to move somewhere else new. Then it’s the country, out where Miss Skeeter live on the Longleaf cotton plantation. ... But the colored part a town, we one big anthill, surrounded by state land that ain’t for sale. As our numbers get bigger, we can’t spread out. Our part a town just gets thicker ...

What gives the settings their energy is the black perspective: as we see in the quote above, Aibilene, for instance, is an acute observer of life all around her. Unlike the whites, she has a broad vision of what Jackson is like outside of a purely white enclave.

Further, we see the world from the subaltern point of view (that is, the view from below): the maids dodge being run over as they drag trashcans to the curb and describe themselves in grease up to the armpits as they stick their heads in the ovens to clean them out—or they dodge into the kitchens to stay out of the way of the whites. Aibilene, for example, evaluates the houses she works in based on the number of bathrooms they have, foreshadowing the theme to come when the white women start building separate bathrooms for "the help." The fewer bathrooms, the better, is Aibilene's point of view:

I’m used to working for young couples, but I spec this is the smallest house I ever worked in. It’s just the one story. Her and Mister Leefolt’s room in the back be a fair size, but Baby Girl’s room be tiny. The dining room and the regular living room kind a join up. Only two bathrooms, which is a relief cause I worked in houses where they was five or six. Take a whole day just to clean toilets.

Beyond the houses where the black "help" work, the growing civil rights movement becomes an important backdrop to the novel.

Approved by eNotes Editorial