The three main characters in “The Help” are Skeeter Phelan, Aibileen Clark and Minny Jackson. The book focuses chiefly on Aibileen. She is a very round and believable character. She is a fifty-three year old, black maid working for a middleclass white family, the Leefolts. She speaks quite unsophisticatedly as she dropped out of school in the seventh grade to start working. Her teacher told her, “You’re the smartest one in the class, Aibileen, and the only way you’re going to keep sharp is to read and write every day”pg 2 . She writes down her prayers every day for the practice. Her own son, Treelore died before she started working for Miss Leefolt. She loved him so much that she said “it weren’t too long before I seen something in me had changed. …show more content…
Constantine made her question many aspects of her life, “But with Constantine’s thumb presses in my hand, I realized that I actually had a choice in what I could believe.”pg 63 . This refers to the racist issues that Constantine was scared Skeeter would become indoctrinated by just like many other white children. She is willing to oppose the opinions of her exceptionally strong-willed and racist school friend, Elizabeth Leefolt, whom Aibileen works for. She gets a job at the Jackson Journal for a column where she needs Aibileen’s help. They have a rather uncomfortable, hard friendship as Elizabeth doesn’t like the idea of her white friend and black maid having too much contact. Aibileen once acknowledged, “”Hey Aibileen,” Miss Skeeter say, cause she the kind that speak to the help.”pg 4 She wants to write a book to challenge the racism in Jackson as it has never been done before and she tries to conduct interviews with black maids and slowly and slightly reluctantly people start telling her their stories. Skeeter is extremely brave to do this and during the interviews she is shocked at how little she really