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Situational Irony
Style
Explanation and Analysis:
The Help is told in the first person, with three narrators: Aibileen, Minny, and Skeeter. All three narratives are quite plainspoken. The novel's style aims to emulate the natural speaking voices of three different women in 1960s Jackson, Mississippi. As a result, dialect is a major part of the novel's style. Minny and Aibileen both speak in African American Vernacular English with heavy southern accents. Their dialect is depicted to be slightly different: for example, when taking God's name in vain, Minny always says "Lord" while Aibileen says "Law." Skeeter, like the other White people in the novel, also has a strong southern accent. But while Stockett changes spellings of words to depict Minny and Aibileen's accents, the spelling in Skeeter's chapters is mostly standard.
Note that this focus on spoken dialect, the fundamental feature of the novel's style, reflects the book within the novel, which records the stories of Black domestic servants. Very little of Skeeter's book is actually shown in the novel, outside of quotations from Aibileen's written response in her first interview. Aibileen decides to write this because she does not feel comfortable speaking ill of her white bosses out loud. Aibileen's careful, erudite style in this writing contrasts her voice as it is depicted in other chapters. This shows how speech, even though it is central to the style, remains a contested issue under the oppressive racism in Jackson.
Related Themes:
