MovieChat Forums > The Help (2011) Discussion > I missed something about the book

I missed something about the book


I was working while I was watching this and though I caught most of it, I'm wondering, as far as the book goes;

I'm guessing skeeter actually wrote it, but Aibileen was writing at the same time - why was that?

Was it published in Aibileen's name, or someone made up?

Did the publisher (or whoever Skeeter was in contact with on the phone) know that it was Skeeter who wrote it, or did they think that Skeeter was just acting as a go-between for Aibileen (or made-up black author)?

I wish I'd watched it more closely now, it looked so good, but sadly it's been erased.



...then whoa, differences...

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It's sort of like Skeeter is a compiler and editor of the stories. Some of the maids likely lacked more than basic literacy skills and would need someone to write the stories they told Skeeter orally, but some, like Aibeleen were capable of writing their own sections.

The stories were a majority those of the women who told them, but Skeeter would probably helped to write them and structure the portions of individual stories as well as the chapters and entirety of the book.

It didn't go into too much detail about the writing itself. The publisher knew that Skeeter was using the stories of actual maids, she even told Skeeter to find more people to tell their stories to fill out the book.

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Thanks!

And also, who was the credited Author for the book? I get the idea it wasn't Skeeter, but surely it wouldn't have been any of the maids.

Oh, and while I'm being a pest, was it revealed what became of the young maid who was arrested after taking the ring from behind the couch?

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From the film, it looked like it was not credited to a specific person, not even Skeeter. In the shots of the book from the movie, there's no author's name written on the cover. Skeeter was probably credited as an editor.

The maids were likely given pseudonyms for their portions of the book so they wouldn't get in trouble and so the citizens of Jackson wouldn't be able to name it as their town since they all seemed to know the situations and names of everyone's maids.

It reminds me of a collection of essays by Studs Terkel called "Working: People Talk about what they do all day and how they feel about what they do". It's a collection of a few hundred essays that were created from conversations Terkel had with working class Americans in the 60s and 70s.

Each person is credited and given a brief description before their essay, but Terkel is the name on the cover.

I haven't read the book, so I don't know if there is any more on the arrested maid than the movie showed. It would probably have been difficult for her to have gotten work after that.

I want to know if her sons were able to go to college at all or if they made the choice to send one over the other.

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Thanks again, if it comes on again I'll pay more attention lol.

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Many of the maids donated their portion of Skeeter's signing bonus to the sons of the maid Hilly had convicted. IIRC, both sons were able to go to college.

As for the credited author of the book... My assumption was that Skeeter used a pseudonym, both for herself and for the contributing maids on each of their individual stories. I'd have to re-read the book to be sure, though. After all, no one realized at first that the stories were all set in Jackson, which would've been obvious if Skeeter had used her real name.

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About the maid... she went to prison. What they failed to mention in the movie, the other maids helped pay for the rest of the money she needed for her twin sons to go to college.

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Nice, thankyou

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You're welcome! 😊

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Awwww, that's so sweet! I'm glad I know that now.

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I have no idea why no one noticed or mentioned this but the author was credited as Anonymous and it was important that no one knew it was Skeeter because then they could find out who the maids were and who the white families were, that was the whole point of including the "terrible awful story" so even though Hilly knew Skeeter and the maids were talking she couldn't tell everyone because they'd all know she ate Minnie's sh!t pie.

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I assumed it was written as anon or a made up name. Otherwise everybody would have been at Skeeter's door complaining.

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