Maids and ladies (Maeva, 2009) is the novel with which writer Kathryn Stockett debuted. It's a bestseller about the discrimination and racial segregation that existed in the United States in the 60s. It has been translated into several languages and has been sold in more than thirty countries. Having become a global phenomenon, it came to the cinema in 2011 under the direction of Tate Taylor and starring Octavia Spencer, Viola Davis and Emma Stone.
This is the story of three women who give voice to the grievances and daily situations of an entire group limited by racial or social issues. Aibileen and Minny, along with Skeeter, will say enough is enough and each one in her own way will charge against an established order that constrains and ignores them. Maids and ladies It is a fun story of united southern women.
Maids and ladies: a fun story of united southern women
Skeeter, the white woman
Triangular is how this story begins to be told. Through Skeeter, Aibileen and Minny a painting of the 60s in the southern United States is shown and what things were like for oppressed groups, like women. Although even more so, for black women who also worked as maids for wealthy white families.
Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan thought she had it difficult as a young, southern, newly graduated woman in the early 60s.. After returning from Alabama, where she attended college, she returns home to Jackson, Mississippi, to follow her dream of being a writer. But when she discovers that her beloved Constantine, the black woman who raised her, has disappeared, she will not rest until she discovers the true reason for her mysterious departure. From here is when she learns about the situation in which the domestic service, mostly black women, lives.
Skeeter becomes aware of what it means to be a woman and empathizes with all those who have it worse than her. Well, after all, she has no financial need and has lived comfortably, in addition to having had access to university. She, after all, has been a privileged. Although now her family, a rich cotton lineage, is determined that she find a good husband. But Skeeter throws herself into a project that could have serious consequences for her and the women he wants to help. These women are people like Aibileen or Minny.
Making union
Aibileen and Minny are two black maids who have had the opposite life of Skeeter. Skeeter is precisely from the ladies' group. His family has cotton crops, she was raised by a black servant, and her friends are some of those married women who make life impossible for their domestic servants, whom they treat with contempt or, in any case, with cruelty. paternalism. But Skeeter is not like other women of her condition; She is a girl who is awake, intelligent and aware of the reality that surrounds her. She is the speaker that women like Aibileen or Minny need.
Aibileen has cared for almost twenty white children, raised them and watched them grow up. While his own son died in the prime of life in a work accident for which no one was responsible and whose causes they try to silence. Disillusioned, she finds comfort in the girl she is currently caring for and whom she tries to protect from the insensitivity of her own mother. On the other hand, she is Minny, her best friend, who has been fired countless times for having as little discretion as a good hand in the kitchen.
One of the points of the novel that will be talked about the most, as well as one of the drivers of the different conflicts, will be the urgency of the ladies to install a separate bathroom to prevent black domestic help from spreading diseases to the gentlemen. Aibileen and Minny will not sit idly by and with the help of Skeeter they will start their own revolution to change things.
What to highlight about the novel
The characters in this novel are its heart. It is a book, in fact, very direct and daring that makes its readers smile due to the biting humor it displays. It is clear and enjoyable and both Skeeter, Aibileen and Minny, exemplify very well the social context, as well as the hierarchy that governed the southern United States in a decade so crucial for civil rights in that country. And all this despite having such different origins and such disparate problems.
About the author
Kathryn Stockett was born in Mississippi in 1969.. She studied English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Alabama. He moved to New York where he spent a decade working in the publishing world. Maids and ladies It is her first novel, although it is also the only one known by the American author.. However, this single work of hers has taken her to the peak of success in her career as a writer, a work that was published in 2009 after multiple attempts by Stockett. Millions of copies of the novel have been sold and critics and the public applaud it and place it at the top of its genre within the contemporary novel.