Taylor Greer

Character Analysis

A Self-Made (or Self-Named) Kinda Gal

The Bean Trees' plucky protagonist may have been born Marietta Greer, but when she sets out on her own from her rural Kentucky home, she decides to get herself a new name. As she puts it: "I wasn't crazy about anything I had been called up to that point in life, and this seemed like the time to make a clean break. I didn't have any special name in mind, but just wanted a change" (1.54). Marietta decides that wherever her gas tank runs dry and she needs to fuel up, that place will provide her with her new name. As she says:

"I came pretty close to being named after Homer, Illinois, but kept pushing it. I kept my fingers crossed through Sidney, Sadorus, Cerro Gordo, Decatur, and Blue Mound, and coasted into Taylorville on the fumes. And so I am Taylor Greer. I suppose you could say I had some part in choosing this name, but there was enough of destiny in it to satisfy me" (1.55).

The Place Where She Was Borned and Raised

Marietta Greer was raised by a single mother in Pittman County, Kentucky—a fictional place that Barbara Kingsolver made up out of bits and pieces of other rural Kentucky towns.

As a child, Marietta spent a lot of time asking about her mysterious absent father, but later in life, she came to appreciate being raised by her Mama and her Mama alone.

Marietta and her mother weren't well off, but their home had a lot of love in it. Mama worked cleaning houses for the wealthier folks in town, and she would often bring Marietta along. These early experiences in the homes of other Pittman County people led to Marietta's first nickname, "Missy":

"Missy was what everyone called me, not that it was my name, but because when I was three supposedly I stamped my foot and told my own mother not to call me Marietta but Miss Marietta, as I had to call all the people including children in the houses where she worked Miss this or Mister that, and so she did from that day forward. Miss Marietta and later on just Missy." (1.5)

So we see that Taylor spunk coming out real early. Anyway, young Missy's experience of growing up poor in rural Kentucky shapes her for life, but it doesn't embitter her or make her cynical about the world. In fact, her experience is one of the things that makes it easy for her to relate to others—especially those who have fallen on tough times, or are struggling through difficult circumstances.

One Man and No Baby

As a teenager, Missy's determined to finish high school without getting pregnant. As she tackled her studies, she saw classmate after classmate get pregnant and drop out of school. As she puts it:

"I stayed in school. I was not the smartest or even particularly outstanding but I was there and staying out of trouble and I intended to finish. This is not to say that I was unfamiliar with the back seat of a Chevrolet. I knew the scenery of Greenup Road, which we called Steam-It-Up Road, and I knew what a pecker looked like, and none of these sights had so far inspired me to get hogtied to a future as a tobacco farmer's wife. Mama always said barefoot and pregnant was not my style. She knew." (1.9)

Just in case that doesn't make things clear enough for you, Taylor follows those words with this little gem of a simile:

"It was in this frame of mind that I made it to my last year of high school without event. Believe me in those days the girls were dropping by the wayside like seeds off a poppyseed bun and you learned to look at every day as a prize. You'd made it that far." (1.10)

When Missy reaches her senior year, a new science teacher called Mr. Hughes Walter changes her life. But not in the way you might be thinking, with all that steam-it-up stuff.

On Mr. Walter's recommendation, Missy gets a job at the Pittman County Hospital, "one of the most important and cleanest places for about a hundred miles" (1.13). As she soon tells us, this job becomes her ticket out of Pittman County. And in case you didn't get it, she can't wait to leave for good.

Greer's Anatomy

Although Missy doesn't exactly don scrubs and get steamy with any Dr. McDreamy, her job at the Pittman County Hospital is a step in the right direction—from her point of view, at least. When she first starts, she works in the lab where blood and other bodily fluids are tested and analyzed, and spends most of her time "filing papers in the right place and carrying human waste products without making a face" (1.29). Sounds gross. Glad she learned how to keep her grimaces to herself.

So it isn't exactly exciting stuff, but Missy's life at Pittman County Hospital has more dramatic moments too. Not long after she finishes her first week at the hospital, she witnesses a particularly bloody scene. Two former classmates of hers, Newt Hardbine and Jolene Shanks, are wheeled in amidst lots of shouting and noise. Jolene has been shot, but is still alive; Newt Hardbine, whom Missy has known since childhood, is dead.

This event gives Missy her first close-up glimpse of domestic violence, and it almost makes her quit. Eventually, though, she decides that since "I'd probably seen the worst I was going to see," "there was no reason to quit now" (1.44). Aside from being a gruesome and powerful scene, this is also the first moment in the novel when we see that Missy/Taylor is someone who doesn't let fear or disgust get the best of her. She may see some terrible things, but she presses on.

Missy keeps that job at Pittman County Hospital for five and a half years. After saving enough money to buy a beat-up old car of her own, she finally has what she needs to leave Pittman County for good.

Cherokee Heritage…Whatever That Means

Early in the novel, Taylor tells us that her great-grandfather on her mother's side was Cherokee. To Taylor, this doesn't mean much of anything other than that she's technically one-eighth Cherokee. Yes, that is how math works. When she was growing up, her Mama used to tell her that their Cherokee heritage could function as a sort of last-ditch effort. As she puts it:

"All my life, Mama had talked about the Cherokee Nation as our ace in the hole. She'd had an old grandpa that was full-blooded Cherokee, one of the few that got left behind in Tennessee because he was too old or too ornery to get marched over to Oklahoma. Mama would say, 'If we run out of luck we can always go live on the Cherokee Nation.' She and I both had enough blood to qualify. According to Mama, if you're one-eighth or more they let you in. She called this our 'head rights.'" (1.61)

Not that they'd really be that much better off. Or, come to think of it, that Taylor's Cherokee heritage tells us much at all about her character. The fact is, she doesn't know much about that heritage herself. But wait! The silver lining is that her lack of knowledge about her heritage does tell us something about her character—quite a bit, in fact.

In order for this to make sense, we need to interrupt this programming to get a bit of historical and political context under our belts.

First off: when Taylor talks about the historical Cherokee people being "marched over to Oklahoma," what she's referring to is the devastating forced removal that came to be known as the Trail of Tears. As tens of thousands of people were forced to leave their traditional territories, an estimated 15,000 were killed by the harsh journey west.

Given how casual Taylor's comments are, it's hard to tell exactly how much she knows about this history. We're willing to bet that she's sketchy on the particulars, and here's why. When Taylor echoes her Mama's opinion that "if you're one-eighth or more they let you in," she repeats inaccurate information. Neither Mama nor Taylor seem to know that federal laws and tribal laws approach these matters differently.

As Circe Sturm (2002) writes in Blood Politics: Race, Culture, and Identity in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma,the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) does use blood quantum "to manage tribal enrollments and determine eligibility for social services." However, the Cherokee Nation itself has enrollment procedures that aren't so strictly focused on blood. Sturm writes:

"According to tribal law, Cherokee citizens must be lineal descendants of an enrolled tribal member, but no minimum blood quantum is required. Not quite a century ago, blood degree varied among tribal members from 'full-blood' to 1/256. Today, the range is far greater—from full-blood to 1/2.048."

Why does this matter, and what does it tell us about Taylor? For one thing, it helps us understand at least one crucial fact about her: when it comes to her Cherokee heritage, there's a lot she doesn't know. That fact makes another one seem pretty likely too: Taylor doesn't seem to know much about Native American history, culture, or present-day politics either.

Taylor and her Mama may think of their Cherokee heritage as their "ace in the hole," but both women have a lot to learn about that supposed kinship. For Taylor especially, this lack of knowledge about Indigenous-colonial politics highlights the limitations of her rural—and, in some senses, impoverished—education. Which gets extra interesting when she picks up a Cherokee kiddo of her own…

Although Taylor starts putting some of these pieces together as the novel goes on, it isn't until Pigs in Heaven that her real learning begins. Just to remind you once more to pick up the sequel.

But for now, back to the kid.

Baby on Board

Taylor spent a lot of her adolescence avoiding motherhood, but after she decides to keep the young child who enters her life on the Oklahoma plains, she's suddenly faced with a whole new role she's got to play.

The gist? Taylor's first few weeks with the little girl tell us a lot about her total lack of preparedness for parenthood. At Jesus Is Lord Used Tires, Taylor asks if the child can "ride up on the jack" (3.40) while Mattie removes her car's tires. The patient and oh-so-wise Mattie has to explain that it wouldn't be safe. Just like getting into a pit of rattlesnakes.

Later, when Mattie gets Turtle a sippy-cup full of juice, Taylor wonders "if it was hard to fill it through that little spout" (3.72). It never even occurs to her that the lid might come off! Come on Taylor, how naïve can ya get?

In her defense, Taylor gets more knowledgeable and confident over the next few months, but when Turtle is attacked one evening in Roosevelt Park, that confidence is crushed completely. Faced with the reality that she can't possibly protect the child from all possible harm lurking out in the big bad world, Taylor sinks into a deep depression.

It's only when Mattie insists to her that "[n]obody can protect a child from the world" (13.55) that Taylor starts to recover. With Mattie's help, she learns that it's not wise to ask herself: "Can I give this child the best possible upbringing and keep her out of harm's way her whole life long?" (13.55). Instead, she learns to ask: "Do I want to try?" (13.57).

In the end, fears or no fears, Taylor decides that she does want to try. Just as in the Pittman County Hospital when she witnessed the terrible fallout of Newt Hardbine's domestic violence, and just as in the Broken Arrow Motor Lodge when she first finds evidence of Turtle's sexual abuse, Taylor's decision to press on and do her best is another sign of her resilience and her deep determination not to let her life be dictated by timidity and fear. That's our girl!