Social/ Marxist Theory in ‘The Help’
Literary criticism is the evaluation and interpretation of a piece of writing. There are many ways of understandings and interpreting of piece of writing. There are numerous techniques which are used to criticize a text. A text is criticized by using one particular criticism it may be biographical, feminist or even social/ marxist criticism. Social criticism is the practice on economic and cultural theory of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles. Social class criticism also known Marxist criticism and focuses on a power and money hierarchy within a society. There are three main classes; lower, middle and upper class, usually the upper class look down on the lower classes whereas the lower class are looking up at the other classes and depend on them. It is the analysis based on political correctness and goes against capital exploitation and the dangers of a market structure that is not controlled by the government. Therefore social theory looks at the overall economic structure and observes its outcomes. When interpreting social criticism the critic relates the text to the social reality which may be race, gender or religion at the time and place. A primary factor that shapes the social structure is social-class membership. Social theory touches upon the conflicts between social classes and has huge impact on our beliefs, values, ways of thinking and feeling. In ‘The Help’ by Kathryn Stockett social theory is shown throughout the movie. The movie is set during the civil rights movement in the 1960’s were a person’s social class has an impact on their beliefs, values and perspective. This as a result, social classes always find themselves in conflict with each other due to different beliefs and ideals. A good example of this is when the four white women are sitting around the table playing cards gossiping that concerns the separation of bathrooms for the coloured people because they carry a different disease. Miss Hill, one of the women at the table who brings up the topic represents the upper economic status. The result of possessing this status, Miss Hilly tries to preserve her upper class degree of economic, political, and social power through threats, blackmails and hatred of others. The audience witnesses this because she doesn’t like the concept of black people using the same bathroom as her, according to her she believes that since she has the overruling power she has the right to use a different bathroom than coloured people and feels a sense of disgust. She is upset