Essay

A change can be a direct cause of someone's environment. In the novel, “The Help” three women go through different kinds of change: one woman learns how to trust, one woman strengthens her personality, and one woman starts off shy but grows self confidence by the end the novel. The changes these women experience are for the best because they learn to do what right for themselves and take chances they would not have taken at the beginning of the novel.

Minny learns to do what’s right for herself and take chances when she finally learns to trust in other people. Minny had the hardest life in the novel, she was accused of stealing and therefor no one wanted to hire as their maid. Minny had trust issues from the beginning and never trusted a white person, she also had a drunk and abusive husband who hit her every night. When Minny’s new employer, Mrs. Celia, is nice to her and talks to her she is convinced Mrs. Celia is playing a nasty joke and does not trust her. It is not until the end of the novel that Minny truly trusts Mrs. Celia and Mr. Johnny when Mr. Johnny says  “you will always have a job here”.  Minny takes a risk when she agrees to be in the novel, because her husband would kill if he found out, she also took a huge risk telling Skeeter about the pie and telling her to put it in the novel for security, because if Mrs. Hilly found out she would make sure no one would know where the book took place. Minny also took a risk by leaving her husband and going and living with her sister. Minny would have never trusted Mrs. Skeeter with her secret at the beginning of the novel, but by the end of the novel, and she never would have left her husband. Her change was for the better because Minny is now able to trust the people close to her and have enough trust in herself to know that she will be okay without her husband.

We first meet Aibileen when she is working for the Leefolt’s; she listens to her white family's friends talking poorly about their help, but says nothing. She is shy and stays out of the way of Mrs. Leefolt. Throughout the novel Aibileen changes from being shy to having a stronger personality. Mrs. Leefolt was convinced that Aibileen had black diseases, so she got a black bathroom put into her house. Which really was an outhouse in the garage. Aibileen takes a great chance talking to Mae Mobley about racism, she tells her stories about black and white children being best friends hoping that one day Mae Mobley wont turn out like her mother. Another chance she takes is talking to Mrs. Skeeter and agreeing to help with the novel Help, and trying to find others maids to help. After Aibileen gets fired she decides that Mae Mobley was her last white baby and that she will no longer be a maid, she takes on the job of doing the Miss Myrna columns and agrees that she will be okay. Aibileen's personality change for the better because she was able to come to peace that she would no longer have a stable job.

When Skeeter is first introduced into novel, her mother keeps trying to make her beautiful, her friends pay little attention to her and she has giving up on trying to find a man. She wants to become a writer in New York, but her mother does not support her dream, but she finds a job as a columnist at the paper. She seeks the help of her friend’s maid about the column and soon learns about the life of maids. Skeeter takes the biggest risk in the novel when she decides to write, “Help”, a novel about black maids living in Jackson, Mississippi and how they are treated. This was a big risk because her friends and other people from her town were in the novel, she also needed to sneak around so the police wouldn’t catch her. When Skeeter does find a man and he proposes to her, she decides to tell him about the novel, which was a risk to her relationship with him. Near the end of the novel “The Help” Skeeter had grown self confidence: she had confronted one of her best friends, she stood up for herself when her mother was trying to change her appearance, and she took a job in New York has a writer. Skeeter did the right thing by standing up for herself and the maids, she learnt she had more self-confidence then she thought she did, and finally persuade her dreams to becoming a writer in New York.

All these women took risks that changed them for the better. They all learnt how to be okay with themselves and all had better lives by the end of the novel.