The Help, a novel about civil rights, does not give African Americans credit for their triumphs and bravery in the fight against their own oppression through the use of white savior characters. In Kathryn Stockett’s The Help, the white savior trope can be seen and is heavily relied on for the plot of a novel about the oppression of African Americans. Our main white savior character is Skeeter, a college-educated woman who is pursuing her dreams of becoming a journalist. The Help takes place in the 1960s where Skeeter decides to write about the African American women who work in the households of Jackson, Mississippi. Skeeter is The Help’s white savior trope character who “saves” Aibileen and Minny by giving them a voice through her journals. In The Help, the reliance on a white savior trope in the stories of Black oppression is harmful because it denies both Black history and autonomy in the Civil Rights movement.

The Help's usage of the white savior trope focuses more on the white savior’s perspective and a white character’s fight against oppression than that of its Black characters and Black history. This trope is viewed as harmful due to the fact that African Americans had been fighting for civil rights without the help of people like Skeeter helping them along the way. The presentation of this idea is dangerous because it erases the history of American Americans fighting for equality. African Americans have been fighting against their own oppression in America since the 1700s through novels about their own experiences. The white savior trope’s use in The Help creates the narrative that white people were the face of the fight against oppression. The Help creates a specific narrative that says: without the kindness of the nice white people, African Americans would have never been granted equality. African Americans fought for their rights on their own. For example, Sojourner Truth was an enslaved woman who wrote her own books which described her enslavement (Micheals). African Americans have been doing what Skeeter, our main white savior character, did over a hundred before The Help is set. African Americans had been writing their own stories about their own struggles and experiences with racism and oppression for more than one hundred years before The Help is set. In 2020, during the Black Lives Matter Protests, the movie adaptation of The Help was in Netflix’s top 10 movies in America. Rather than movies like the 13th which were created by black creators and explain systemic oppression that did not end in the 1960s from the help of white people like Skeeter. The Help, while based on true events, does not do African American’s fight against oppression justice. The white savior trope receives attention because it is a feel-good movie so non-people of color can feel better about their ancestors' role in history. To suggest that women in Abelein and Minny’s position had to wait for Skeeter’s help dismisses the many African American authors who did what the maids did without the help of a white ally like Skeeter. Skeeter profits from the stories of the maids. While Skeeter sends the maids each a portion of the profits, there is no progress in the fight against their oppression and Skeeter gets her dream life of becoming a journalist in New York.. Minny and Aibileen are seen rejoicing that they were given a few hundred dollars. The Help simplifies racial injustice by making it seem like the maid’s problems were solved from a book. There has been no progress made by society from Skeeter’s stories that has not already been done in real life by black authors themselves. Gardner states that this novel simplifies the oppression that African Americans have gone through in this country to a caricature version. The Help uses its Black characters for a sort of tool for ?enlightenment for the housewives of Jackson, Mississippi, who are participants in this oppression. The Help also creates a false assurance that racial issues faced in this novel are far behind us along with the help of nice white people (Garner). The Help’s use of the white savior trope places Black characters in the background in their own oppression. Candice Mancine writes about the lack of autonomy in black characters when novels about black oppression uses the white savior trope: “They are robbed of their role as subjects of history, reduced to mere objects who are hapless victims; mere spectators and bystanders in the struggle against their own oppression and exploitation” (“To Kill a Mockingbird and Racism” 52). This quote gives further insight to specifically how Black people are robbed of their history and what they have done in their fight against oppression. 

The white savior trope can be seen in the character’s of Skeeter and the Foote household. Celia Foote is an outcast from the Junior League because she is thought of as “white trash.”. She is hated by the housewives in town because of her marriage to Hilly Holbrook’s ex-boyfriend and the fact that she grew up poor. Mrs. Foote is one of the only non-racist women in Jackson because she is lonely and wants to be Minny’s friend. While she is not a main white savior trope character, there are themes of this trope in the Foote household. Minny's happy ending is that the Foote family will let her sit and eat with them for dinner. The book’s happy ending for this character is that she is treated with more respect from one white family she serves than the last. While the plot is not based on the Foote’s white savior generosity, readers can once again see how the small gestures from the good non-racist white family go a long way. Being treated with respect is Minny’s hHappily ever after. While this is a major contrast from the cruelty of the Holbrook household, is this all that there is to be done for a happy ending? This should not be a happy ending that we are satisfied with because this is not where black oppression ends. The happy ending in a novel about civil rights should not be a black woman going from a rude oppressor to a nice oppressor By implying that women in Minny’s position’s only problems in life were that their white employer was rude to her, Stockett creates a narrative that African American women’s oppression was solved and satisfied because of the kindness of nice white people. This creates a caricature version of the oppression Black women endured in this period. Skeeter is the main white savior of The Help. Stein writes that while Skeeter is not in the wrong by doing her part as an ally, the way her character is written creates controversy: “The problem isn’t that Skeeter is against racism and is willing to support these women, the problem is that the story is told in a way that seems like the reason Aibileen and Minny ever overcome their obstacles is because of Skeeter” (Stein). Stein expresses that Skeeter’s kindness is not the issue. Skeeter is an anti-racist white woman who goes out of her way to help these women. The issue is that the way that Skeeter’s character and the plot of the book are written give Skeeter the label of a hero who saves helpless Aibileen and Minny. Aibileen, Minny, and the other women’s stories were only heard because of Skeeter's heroism (Stein). In the end, it is Skeeter’s happily ever after. The “successful ending” is Skeeter’s success. Skeeter also has to hide the fact that she is helping the maids from the people around her. The book depicts that she needs acceptance from others to help the African Americans. Skeeter is also in need of acceptance from her mother as well. This is another example of the novel focusing on Skeeter’s character development more than addressing oppression. After Skeeter is confronted by Hilly Holbrook, Skeeter’s mother reveals that she knows and is supportive of her daughter’s writing. The way that this movie portrays the struggles that Skeeter faces is problematic. The plot of a story with a white savior character can often depict this character’s struggles as equal to that of a Black character (“The Issue of Heroism” 190). Skeeter’s fight against Black oppression causes her character to be portrayed as a victim of racism as well. Implying that as an ally and non-racist woman, Skeeter’s character is a victim. Skeeter's character is made to be just as much of a victim and faces as many struggles as the black women. A novel which serves the purpose of telling a story about black oppression should not focus on the struggles that white people face for simply not being racist. Skeeter is victimized and simultaneously seen as a hero for being non-racist. Seeing that this novel was written in 2009, there was not a need to drag out how hard it was for white people to not be racist. In the twenty-first century, the message of being a non-racist and a supportive ally in the fight against black oppression should be normalized, not victimized.

In conclusion, the white savior trope can be seen throughout the storyline of The Help in the environment it creates and the characters who can be defined as white saviors. The environment of the play creates the narrative that African Americans were hapless victims who had to wait for a white person to save them. Even enslaved men and women were writing and publishing their own stories over a hundred years before someone like Skeeter could have published the maid’s voices. Skeeter is our main white savior character and white savior characteristics can be seen from the Foote family. The happy ending that everyone seems to get leads the reader to believe that all of the problems of oppression were solved after the anti-racist white people made everything all better. Skeeter gets to go to live her dream as a successful writer while Minny is seen getting her happy ending from being treated with respect by her oppressors. This creates the false idea that as long as the white employer was nice, racism and oppression was not happening. 

A quote by Viola Davis, the actress who played Aibileen in The Help’s movie adaptation, sums up the novel and movie’s use of the white savior trope perfectly: “At the end of the day, it wasn’t the voices of the maids that was heard.”

-Citations-

Gardner, B. “Please stop watching ‘The Help’: 5 white savior movies to   

skip-and what to watch instead.” Retrieved December 01, 2020, from decorahstories.com/please-stop-watching-the-help-5-white-savior-movies-to-skip-and-what-to-watch-instead/

Michals, E. (n.d.). Sojourner Truth. Retrieved December 01, 2020, from 

womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/sojourner

-truth

"The Help." Novels for Students, edited by Sara Constantakis, vol. 39, Gale, 2012, pp. 110-132. Gale eBooks,

“The Issue of Heroism.” Understanding To Kill a Mockingbird: a Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historic Documents, by Claudia Durst. Johnson, Greenwood Press, Westport, Conn, 1994, pp. 190–195. 

“To Kill a Mockingbird and Racism.” Racism in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, by Candice Mancini, Greenhaven Press, Detroit, 2008, pp. 50–53.

Stein, Frankie. “Here's Why 'The Help' Is an OG of the ‘White Savior’ Movies.” Film Daily, 17 July 2020, filmdaily.co/news/the-help/.

Stockett, Kathryn. The Help. Amy Einhorn Books, 2009.