Bethia

Bethia is the book's protagonist, its central character and narrator. Her name comes from her Christian faith, and means servant. Over the course of the narrative, Bethia ages from fifteen in Part 1 to seventeen in Part 2 to seventy in Part 3. In all three parts, and apparently throughout all the ages of her life, Bethia is strong willed and opinionated. She struggles constantly to find the balance between what she believes to be right (i.e., equal treatment to that received by her brother and other males in her community) and what she knows to be reality (i.e., that women are generally held to be both inferior and submissive to men). Only when she is with the one person in her life who is as much of an outsider as he is, the native boy Caleb, does she feel as though she can be truly everything she is...