Well ladies, it's official. I finally got my lazy butt to finish reading chapters 3 and 4. After promising I'd have them done by Wednesday so that we could start talking. ;) This book is certainly much different from the Hunger Games. It is less about the excitement and action; much more about the conflict between people. Both individuals and groups of people.
Now... whenever I am reading something, I feel like I always focus on the wrong things. Like I get hung up on the details and I don't really see the bigger picture. So once again I'm hoping that you girls get something out of what I'm writing, and make the discussions even better with your comments.
Chapters 1 & 2 - Aibileen
This was our first look at the society in 1962 Mississippi. Where white women are more concerned about being society women than about raising their families. On one hand, I'd like to knock them down for not cleaning, not cooking, and not raising their own children. On the other hand, I'm still working out how to not be lazy about keeping my house clean, I only help Brad make most of our dinners...and I only have cats. Which are rather easy to take care of compared to children.
Aibileen is the first point of view that we see. She is taking care of the Leefolt place, and the Leefolt baby. During the Bridge game that Miss Leefolt has, only Miss Skeeter even almost talks with and treats Aibileen like more than just the black hired help. Miss Hilly goes on a separate-bathrooms rant, gets Minny fired. Minny gets back at her doing God-knows-what to that pie (my bet is a laxative). Aibileen helps Minny get a new job after Hilly has been spreading rooms about Minny stealing silver. BUT it is with Miss Celia...the lady that the other white women talk about as white trash. Talking about her almost as bad as they talk about the help.
Chapters 3 & 4 - Minny
When I dove into the book, I didn't pay much attention to the chapter headings (attention to detail... must work on that one). So it wasn't until I got to chapter 3 that I realized that the perspective was going to change. After that, I decided to see if there was a pattern. And it looks like it alternates every two chapters between Aibileen, Minny, and Skeeter.
We start off with Minny going to interview with Miss Celia. There is a flashback to when Minny first starts working for white people and her mother tells her to not sass back. Of course, from what we know of Minny already she sometimes has a hard time roping that in. She interviews with the job with Miss Celia; Miss Celia comes from a bad part of Mississippi. Not exactly the kind of society lady the rest of the white women are that we've met. You feel for her: she is just as much of an outsider but in a different way. Celia clearly feels inferior and inept. She wants to make good impressions, but her upbringing is kind of holding her back. She hires Minny to clean and cook and give Celia cooking lessons...but she is hiding something. She won't tell her husband she's got hired help because (so she says) she wants him to think that she is learning to manage the house on her own. She is certainly hiding something. I want to know what--sometimes I get the impression that maybe she has a medical condition. Either that, or a crippling fear of moving about in the community.
This first Minny section ends with Mister Johnny coming home early and taking the women by surpruse.
First impressions...
What are your first impressions? What do you think of the characters? The point of view? The way the book is written?
Sometimes it's hard for me to imagine all that prejudice. I mean... separate bathrooms for black people because they might carry disease? (Really because the white people don't want their help using their bathrooms.) It's unbelievable. That is such an ignorant thing to say and think... and pass off as the truth.
At first I was thinking about how isolated I am from That kind of thinking. Both in a "that was so long ago" way and in an "I don't encounter that in my every day life" kind of way. Then I was thinking about it more... and that kind of ignorant thinking still happens. We were at Thanksgiving with Brad's family a few years ago. His uncle (through marriage) was drunk and going off on rants about how gay people should have separate bathrooms. And that's just the thing, isn't it? Maybe some people think "oh, we've got that whole black/civil rights thing figured out now." But really it just moves on to a different group of people.
I realized that I don't remember much about the Civil Rights movement at all, so I did a google search and came across this timeline: http://www.infoplease.com/spot/civilrightstimeline1.html
I went down to 1962 to see what kinds of things were going on around that time. And wouldn't you know- the first black student enrolled at the University of Mississippi. President Kennedy sent 5,000 troops (5,000 federal troops) because rioting against that young man going to University got out of hand.
Oh, I can't wait for you to find out about the "terrible-awful" Minny did. I laughed so hard.
ReplyDeleteYou're completely right about how civil rights works. In the 60's there were actual LAWS that basically let whites say whatever they wanted about blacks, yet they almost ALWAYS got away with it. Society seemed to be a lot more on the white's side, so they could say whatever hateful things they wanted. So many murders and violent acts were made towards black people, and because they had no rights, the white people could get away with murder (literally). In TODAY'S society, you obviously can't. In the south where I'm from, it's almost like the racism didn't change much between the 60's and now. Only thing that's different, is black people have equal rights. So more people were scared to say their opinion on black people out loud. My distant family (great aunts, uncles, etc) are very, VERY racist people. My immediate family actually has nothing to do with them because of that reason. I can remember when I was eight driving down the road one night with my mother, and we actually saw the KKK. One of THE scariest moments of my life.
Back to the story, my first impression was how much it still felt like today's society, with a few major tweaks. It's sad. We don't have bathrooms for separate skin color, but you can still see the grudge sometimes when a black person walks INTO a public bathroom. Just the other day, I saw a white lady raise her nose to a black women who walked into the public restroom, and I just shook my head at the old white lady and walked out. I literally thought "some things never change."
Skeeter and Celia are pretty neck and neck based on who my favorite character would be. Later on in the story, I will give my reasons for each. Although, I love Abileen. And Minny. Yeah, I basically love them all.
Minny can't seem to keep her mouth shut, and I give her applause for that. I'd probably be the same exact way. And Abileen is just so caring! She's always thinking of others, whether they're white or black. She prays for them all. You really can't help but love her.
I love the way the book was written! The way it pans from three different point of views, and goes into detail on how each person thinks and how the segregation affects their lives. I personally think it was an amazing idea, and without it the book wouldn't have been SO good. If it only focused on Minny or Abileens POV, then everyone would have thought ALL white people were cruel like that, and we'd have a hard time suddenly seeing Skeeter being any different from the others. But with Skeeter's POV added into the mix, you realize how there were a lot of good white people who wanted to help the black people, and you start to learn WHY she's so different from them. And you also learn why a lot of the good white people couldn't/wouldn't try to help the black people the way Skeeter is trying to.
So long story short, I love the book. :)
I'd also like to say, I would read the heck out of a book written from CELIA'S point of view, wouldn't you?? I just wanted to hug her! Haha
DeleteYES! I love Celia! :)
DeleteMost of what I know of the Civil Rights movement is the general kind of stuff that you learn in school. Rosa parks, sit ins, peaceful protests. And of course the violent backlash against those protesting segregation and the lack of rights for black people.
DeleteI don't want to give the impression that in the north we were immune to that sort of hate. My dad was growing up on the East Side of Buffalo when the race wars were going on. On the other hand, when my dad was in college, one of his roommates was black. He told me that when him, my mom, this other guy and his girl went out, they actually got turned away from restaurants because the one guy was black.
That is just crazy to me. But it does make me wonder what I would do. Prejudice and just being mean like that doesn't sit right with me... But would I have the courage to stand up and say something? I get tongue-tied when it comes to things that aren't important.
I love this book. And I love the characters in it.
ReplyDeleteI think there's going to be a lot of difference in perspective for this book, because of the different raisings we all had. I can't wait to hear how everyone else reads it. : )
Anyway, y'all know that I'm Southern. I've never in my life been out of Dixie. And as much as I love where I'm from, and am proud to be Southern, I didn't share Sarah's difficulty imagining prejudice. I didn't have to imagine it at all, as a matter of fact. (When we were little, Tara, Ty, and I loved to play a game called "Shark", where someone was IT, and you had to run through a set area, without getting caught by the shark. If the shark caught you, you became a shark, and had to try to catch and eat your former teammates. Well, Momma told me one day when I was about 7 that she and her friends in school loved the same game, only when they played it, it wasn't a shark catching you, but a black man!!!) So the racism didn't surprise me much. I even expected it, since we're reading about the 60's in Mississippi (which is still thought of as the most hateful state in the South). But I was still blown away by the meanness of the Bridge Club women, discussing diseased Help, and separate bathrooms, smack in front of Aibilene. Even if Hilly really, truly, honestly believed that her stupid bathroom bill was one that would protect people, it was still plain evil of her to do that talking where and how she did.
I also think I need to admit right off that I've got a housekeeper. She doesn't work every day the way Aibileen and Minny do, and she doesn't take care of Aary, but she comes 3 times a week to help me to catch up on the cleaning and sometimes helps me to learn something new in the kitchen, too. Which makes me wonder how in the world these women are getting away with being so terrible to their maids?? These women are front and center for all the most private parts of your life. Your home, your children, your secrets. How can they feel like they can treat them like diseased garbage and not have it come back to bite them in any way?? I just don't understand.
Natalie, I know exactly what you mean. For me, I didn't have to imagine any of the racism. I was so used to seeing it all around me growing up. I lived in Florida, and then eventually stayed half a year in Florida and the other half in Tennessee for most of my life.
DeleteThere's nothing wrong with having a housekeeper! And the fact that you seem to be pretty close to her is awesome as well!
There isn't anything wrong with having a housekeeper, and I don't think that there is anything shameful about being a housekeeper. At least two of the ladies at my church work as cleaning ladies. And heck... They are so hard working and know exactly how to clean things. They can do 'chores' at least three times as fast as I do.i just wonder how they clean for other people all day and then come home and clean their own houses! Heck. I get frustrated after just a half hour in my own home. Damn dirt ring in my tub...staring at it does NOT make it get any cleaner.
DeleteOk.. I thought of something real to actually add to the discussion here.
DeleteWhen I was in my freshman seminar class, we were talking in a section about diversity. The woman who was a higher up at the college came and talked with us for one of the lessons. She showed us a movie as part of this, as part of a demonstration. In this movie, it was basically a video of a 'class' of people getting educated on why people with blue eyes are actually inferior to people with dark eyes. It was because their eyes are lighter, somehow sun rays or some other kind of thing go through their eyes and affect their brain. Make them dumb or something.
I was actually sitting there thinking, ya know, that almost makes sense. After all, everything was being presented in a very logical, seemingly factual way. Shameful to admit. But this woman was demonstrating that-you've got to question what people are telling you. Here Miss Hilly is. At the very least she knows she doesn't want those inferior black people in her bathroom using her toilet. Does she actually believe they are diseased or is it that she is just so racist and she needs an excuse. Either way... She has got it in her head for separate bathrooms in a house. Say she gets that into the public. That black people carry disease. Well people in the ommuniity are going to start believing that it is true because it was presented like fact to them.
Just like if you start telling people, like it is fact, that blue-eyed people are less intelligent because the sunlight comes through their eyes and deteriorates their brain they might start believing that.
That is what I like about Miss Skeeter. So far it seems like she doesn't quite buy into black people being inferior. She treats them certainly with much more respect than the other white ladies.
I am dying to know what Minny did! Haha. I think she is hilarious, mainly because I'm so loud-mouthed and outspoken about my feelings, maybe I feel like I relate to her somehow.
ReplyDeleteMy first opinion of the book was "where is Kat and Peeta?!" :( But I quickly stuck my nose in the book and refused to come out until I had found a connection of the sort. I'm better now. :)
Sarah, my first thought was that Celia has a medical condition also. I sort of feel its related to the children they keep mentioning...?
At first, I didn't think I was going to like the writing style, and then I know noticed (and felt like an idiot for having not noticed sooner) the headings to the chapters. Sheesh. That made it much less confusing!!!
Unfortunately, growing up in the south, you witness a LOT of racism. It's so sad that people are so archaic and set in their ways. One of my very, very, best friends is black and I love him like a brother. Really. His kids call me "Aunt Mandy!" I've never been one to see color or differences, I simply love all people the same. However, I have some family members that still use the "N" word and I cringe every time I hear it. It's such an ignorant, uneducated thing to say. Ashleigh, I still I'd probably FAINT if I saw the KKK. SCARY!!!!!
I really like Skeeter a lot. I'm anxious to see her character develop. But that prissy Mrs. Leefolt, I despise her.
Hahaha, I'm going to hear you girls laughing so hard all the way up here once you find out about the "terrible-awful." TEAM MINNY!
DeleteI can't wait to hear Sarah's reaction to that!!
DeleteOh gosh... Now you all have me even MORE curious about this terrible thing that happened even more than before.
DeleteI think a medical condition related to children makes a lot of sense. Your almost think she was assigning herself bed rest the way she lays up all the time. I don't really like Celia all that much just yet. She feels very sneaky to me. She has hired Minny to keep her house...but it can't be done perfect or else her husband would find out. The way they talk about 'Mister Johnny' kind of scares me.