Grace Character Analysis

Grace is Hattie’s mother and Joseph Rydendale’s wife. She grows up not knowing her father, Wolde’s, identity, and this haunts her for her entire life. After Grace’s mother dies of tuberculosis when she is still young, Grace is later shipped off to a home for girls where she’s educated by people who teach her that she must tone down her Blackness if she wants to succeed in white society. Grace always remembers how her mother taught her to never be ashamed of her Ethiopian roots, though, so Grace holds tight to that cultural identity regardless. Racism prevents Grace from working at a local department store like she dreams, and instead she’s offered a job as a maid. Her life changes one day when she meets Joseph Rydendale, a white man, who sings her praises but also objectifies and exoticizes her due to her Ethiopian roots. When she and Joseph marry, she moves onto his family farm, Greenfields. Joseph is determined to have a boy who will inherit the farm, but Grace bears two children who die shortly after birth. Impatient, Joseph doesn’t allow her to recover before making her try again, and soon Harriet is born. She sinks into a deep, postpartum depression that leaves her completely uninterested in Harriet, though she later recovers and strives to raise Harriet to be a strong, independent woman.