Chapter 5-6: Skeeter

• Engels
• Middelbare school
• havo
• Leerjaar 5

Chapter 5: Skeeter

1. Writing style Skeeter

• more formal (than the voices of Minny and Aibileen)
• Minny, Aibileen: dialect, phonetic, informal language
  <-> Skeeter: grammatical rules, fewer contractions/figurative language 

2. background info Skeeter/Hilly

• college roommates
• Hilly left to get married
• Skeeter stayed on to finish her degree. 
• => very close friends for quite some time.

3. Eugenia/Skeeter

• (On the day she was born: Skeeter’s older brother Carlton saw his newborn sister and said she was not a baby, but a “skeeter.” )
• =>  “long and leggy and mosquito-thin” 

4. a. Skeeter/her mom/their maid

• difficult relationship with her mom
• -> Her mom is concerned that Skeeter will become a spinster -> tragic) + berates her
• positive relationship and a close-knit bond with Constantine 

4.b. Constantine - Demetrie?

• Constantine/Demetrie: confidante + friend
• Constantine/Demetrie: compliment + support

5. He look like my daddy...

• Constantine's father was white

6. letter by Constantine

• (When Skeeter returns from college after skipping her own graduation ceremony,) Constantine is gone. 
• Skeeter’s mother refuses to explain: Constantine has gone to live with her people in Chicago

7. irony?

• "I had to accept that Constantine, my one true alley, had left me to fend for myself with these people."
• these people = Skeeter's family
• => feels a better connection with Constantine

8. Skeeter as outcast

• her height and frizzy hair 
• talks to black housemaids

Chapter 6: Skeeter

1. Summarize the letter Elaine Stein sends to Skeeter. Include the advice that Stein offers to her.

• (Elaine Stein: before applying at Harper & Row or a similar publisher in New York,) Skeeter has to: 
• -> min. 5 y experience
• -> get entry-level job at local newspaper + practise writing.
  
• => Write about what disturbs you, especially if it does not bother anyone else

2. response

• Skeeter: list of items that disturb her + sends it
• -> asks for a job at a local paper -> Miss Myrna columns, answering domestic help questions

3. irony?

•  job requires domestic experience / expertise, which Skeeter doesn't have at all

4. Skeeter's mom

• Sh worries that the job won't help Skeeter find a husband 
• + asks her if she is attracted to men or women

5. help for the Miss Myrna columns

•  doesn't know her own maid well enough to ask her for help 
• => Aibileen

6. Elizabeth's response

• She reluctantly agrees, but insists that it cannot interfere with her work in the house. ( Aibileen: proprietary)

7. Treelore's project

• He wanted to write a book about his own experiences working for a white man in Jackson, Mississippi.
• -> wrote the first 50 pages (died)

8. info about Constantine

• Constantine did not quit—she was fired
• +  Constantine has a daughter
• ->daughter was born with pale skin described as “high yellow,” (mixed race)