The Help
Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step. Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone. Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken. Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's business, but she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own. Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project t
Themes & atmosphere
What you might want to know about The Help
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter Phelan returns to Jackson, Mississippi from college in 1962 wanting to be a writer. She begins meeting in secret with two Black housekeepers, Aibileen Clark and Minny Jackson, to record what it is like to raise white children and clean white houses in their town.
The Help is fictional but Kathryn Stockett drew on her own upbringing in Mississippi and conversations with her family's African American maid. The novel has been critiqued for its white-savior framing of Black domestic workers' experiences.
Yes. A 2011 film adaptation directed by Tate Taylor and starring Emma Stone, Viola Davis, and Octavia Spencer was released. Spencer won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Both the book and film have faced ongoing critique.
The Help was written by Kathryn Stockett, published in 2009 by Amy Einhorn Books.
The Help is 498 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Help takes most readers 7 to 11 hours to finish.
The Help is a standalone novel by Kathryn Stockett, not part of a series.
The Help is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.