Chapter 11-12: Miss Skeeter

• Engels
• Middelbare school
• havo
• Leerjaar 5

Chapter 11: Miss Skeeter

1. 1st meeting at Aibileen's house

• both: nervous
• Skeeter: uncomfortable driving into the neighborhood/ at Aibileen’s house => novice in interviews. 
• Aibileen: never had a white guest in her house -> worries that they will be caught. 
• The interview does not go well. (awkward)

2. Aibileen's responses 1st interview

• Aibileen: agitated and very nervous 
• => rushes to the restroom to vomit. 

3. Elizabeth envies her sister in California who has live-in domestic help.  

• When Elizabeth was visiting her older sister, she “hardly had to see Mae Mobley at all.”
  
• => Elizabeth is a selfish person and a bad mother

4. metaphorical significance the hair product called Shinalator 

• Skeeter is at a crossroads when she goes on the date with Stuart. 
• =>  results of the Shinalator end after one washing. Nothing will change her forever; 
• She has decided to follow the path that Elaine Stein outlined, the one that will lead her to become a writer

5. What idea does Aibileen come up with to help the interviews along? 

• Aibileen decides to write down her comments by herself, without Skeeter and then read them aloud while Skeeter types them. 

6. Aibileen’s first story goes well, but is not finished.

• white child getting his fingers cut off in a fan. 
• Aibileen took the boy to a hospital that would treat only black citizens of Jackson and needed to lie about the boy’s race due to racial prejudice.

7. Aibileen uses a metaphor to tell Skeeter that she has found a way make the interviews work.

• “I know how to make the teapot stop rattling.” 
• => has found a way to calm down enough to

answer Skeeter’s questions and move on with the book project.

Chapter 12

1. What story does Skeeter use to get her mother’s car without explaining

•  volunteer work at a church. 
• irony here:  she needs to lie in order to pursue the project. 
• The book project begins and remains a secret to everyone in Skeeter’s circle.

2. Skeeter offers

to do something to help Aibileen improve her writing.

• Skeeter offers to check out books from the library in town for Aibileen.
• library: follows the Jim Crow laws and do not allow black citizens to come in and checkout books
  

3. examples of the power of writing

• Aibileen’s written prayers are believed to have more power than the prayers of other people, which are verbal.

  • Writing answers to Skeeter’s questions helps Aibileen overcome her nervousness and stops the teapot from rattling.

  • Skeeter writes with success to Elaine Stein in an effort to find her own identity as a writer.

  

4. What does Skeeter notice about how Hilly speaks to African Americans? 

•  Hilly raises her voice three octaves higher when speaking to Aibileen.
  
• Hilly also smiles as if she is speaking to a child. 

5. What does the text of the initiative suggest about Hilly?

• 99% of diseases are carried in the urine; white people can become disabled by many of the diseases supposedly carried by African Americans, and that the urine of white people can be harmful to black people.
• Hilly: bigoted, non-scientific way of thinking. 

6. What is Skeeter’s frustration, and what is Aibileen’s response? 

• Elaine Stein: needs a dozen interviews to complete the project. 
• Aibileen: has already asked 31 maids to do interviews, and they have all declined. => worried

7. When Minny challenges Skeeter to defend the book project, what is Skeeter’s response?

• intended to help change things. 
• => The point of the book is to share the perspective of the maids. 
• => The hope is that by giving them a voice, things might

change in Jackson and elsewhere.

8. End of chapter...

•  Minny ends the interview and leaves because explaining her life to Skeeter is “giving me the heart palpitations.”