The Help

Setting

Shelby Conine

English 8-6

March 11, 2010

The time is during the Civil Rights Movement, the place is Jackson, Mississippi, the season we go for about a year so all seasons. If you know anything about Civil Rights and Jackson, Mississippi, you know this isn't the place to be writing a book in support of black maids. The setting is important because if it were almost anywhere in the Northern half of the United States not many people would've made quite such a big fuss about this book. If I were in Skeeter's position and writing this book, that is precisely where I would not want to be. The danger was too great, your best friends had turned against you, you are no longer accepted in any clubs or public places, and you are living in social rejection. If the story had been set in the present day, in any place, the circumstances would have been drastically different. She would've been under any pressure, the book would not have been such an amazing success, and it would've hardly been noticed. At first she doesn't realize how bad it is in Jackson after being "in the padded room of college" (107), but nows she nows that "things are a little dangerous down here right now" (107).