The Politics of Irony in Kathryn Stockett’s The Help

Abstract

This thesis explores the politics of irony in Kathryn Stockett’s novel The Help. It explores the way of subverting high values and reinforcing marginalized ones and also explores the resistance of working-class people. Stockett presents problems of racial segregation and discrimination, combined with occurrences of unjust treatment and both verbal and physical mistreatment. This paper brings the theoretical concept from Linda Hutcheon and Wyne C Booth in order to investigate Stockett's politics of making radical use of irony. Hutcheon's trans-ideological and subversive functions of irony are applicable to this research. By using Hutcheon's concept, it finds out Stockett’s politics of irony that helps her to subvert the high discourse, values, and hypocrisy and at the same time to reinforce the marginalized discourse and values. Thus, it is concluded that irony helps Stocket to make marginalized people aware by unmasking the complexity and multiplicity of high culture. Keywords: Irony, trans-ideological, subversive, reinforcing, context, resistance