Character Sketch - Bean Trees - Marietta Greer

In Barbara Kingsolver’s first novel, The Bean Trees, Marietta Greer is the gutsy and practical protagonist and narrator. Clear-eyed and spirited, Marietta Greer is the daughter of an single mother raised in extremely modest circumstances in the small Kentucky town of Pittman Country. Marietta nevertheless resists the pitfalls that befall many of the girls of her status in her small town. Where families "had kids just about as fast as they could fall down the well and drown," and a boy with a job as a gas-meter man was considered a "high-class catch." Marietta realized early on that she needed to get out and to get ahead, and when she goes, she leaves almost everything behind, including her name.

Marietta Greer's mama called her Missy, because, according to family legend, when she was three, she stamped her 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 tha...