Who is Belle from The Kitchen House?

Answer 1

Belle is the daughter of Capitain Pyke and one of the house slaves in the book The Kitchen House. The Capitain marries a young wife who doesn't know that Belle is his daughter and mistakenly believes she is "his whore" because of all the attention he pays her. He truly loves his daugher but at this time in history things like this just aren't spoken of. Before the Capitain married Martha, Belle lived and worked in the big house where she grew up with the Capitain and his kind, very strong mother, Belle's grandmother. After the Capitain marries Martha, Belle is sent away from the only home she ever knew to go work and live in the kitchen house. She is understandably resentful. It is clearly difficult to feel that she has a place on either side of this black and white fence.