Mattie

Mattie is one of the story’s two central characters. As the story begins, Mattie is a field slave, tending the crops of the large, wealthy plantation that owns her. As a new mother, she is taken from her daily routine to become a house servant – specifically, the wet-nurse to the plantation owner’s newborn daughter Lisbeth. Initially, she is resentful that she is being forced to give her milk and her time to a white child instead of her own; however, over time, Mattie finds herself also giving her love to that white child, while still keeping her own child and the rest of her family in her heart. When Mattie has a second child of her own, she realizes that she wouldn’t be a good mother if she allowed that child to be raised in the same environment in which she was raised. She decides...