The Help, Post # 5: How Important Is a Toilet?

If someone had told me a year ago that I would be reading a book where one of the main conflicts revolves around a toilet, I would have said you were absolutely crazy. In Kathryn Stockett's novel, The Help, the toilets actually play a major role in the central storyline because they are actually used as a way of showing supperiority. The colored workers are no longer allowed to use the bathrooms in their white employers home. Their employers begin building them toilets for outside so that the colored workers don't share their supposed diseases with their employer's family. This idea still continues to baffle me. I can not even try to wrap my mind around how insulting and dehumanizing this would be to the black community. The biggest insult of all occurred when Hilly, the cruelest of all the white women in the town and the one who came up with this "colored bathroom" idea, forced one of the maids to actually thank her for the bathroom. That would be like someone punching you straight in the gut and then having to thank them for it. The conversation was painful even just to read because of how awful it must have felt for Aibileen. 

The conversation went like this: "Aibileen," Hilly continued, "how do you like your new bathroom out there? It's nice to have a place of your own, now isn't it." Aibileen stared at the crack in the dining table. "Yes ma'am." "you know, Mister Holbrook arranged for that bathroom, Aibileen. Sent the boys over and the equipment, too." Hilly smiled. Aibileen just stood there and wished I wasn't in the room. Please, I thought, please don't say thank you. "Yes ma'am." Aibileen opened a drawer and reached inside, but Hilly kept looking at her. It was so obvious what she wanted. Another Second Passed with no one moving. Hilly cleared her throat and finally Aibileen lowered her head. "Thank you, ma'am," she whispered."

This is such cruel and demeaning behavior and the fact of the matter is that these colored workers could not do a thing about it. If they stood up for themselves and spoke their minds about how they were mistreated, they would be fired, black listed from every place of employment around, and there is a good chance that they would be physically assaulted. This was the straw that broke the camel's back for Aibileen, however. After this incident, she finally agreed to help Skeeter with her novel and to give her interviews on what it was really like to work for a white family in Jacksonville. So it turns out, there is something people can do when mistreated to this degree. They can work together for change just as Aibileen and Skeeter decide to do.