The Personal Librarian

J.P. is a fictionalized version of the historical figure J.P. Morgan (1837-1913), a financier and industrialist who exercised great power during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era of the United States due to his wealth and economic influence. In the novel, J.P. is a relatively static character whose absolute power over the people in his life leads him to assume that he can exercise the same power over Belle.

J.P. is a wealthy man whose ego thrives when he dominates others and violates norms because his status allows. Hiring Belle in a role normally reserved for men and older people is just one example of how he uses his power. Collecting art, books, and relationships with attractive women all serve his ego. J.P. manages to maintain the illusion that he is all-powerful until he meets Belle. While Belle initially bows to his demands, she eventually begins exercising more control over the parameters of their relationship.

J.P.’s loss of control doesn’t become apparent to him until Belle begins rejecting his indirect and then increasingly direct efforts to violate professional boundaries by treating her as family and later propositioning her sexually. His ill-humor and verbal and psychological abuse of Belle reach their nadir when he tells her one night that he owns her. Her rejection of him shocks him because it is likely the first time that a person with less social status has told him no. Although there is no direct representation of whether this encounter changes him or not, he does leave Belle an inheritance that secures her future and leadership of what becomes the Morgan Library.

Genevieve Greener is Belle’s mother. Beautiful and white-presenting, she is based on the historical figure Genevieve Ida Fleet Greener (1849-1941). She is a foil to Richard Greener, Belle’s father, because she chooses to deal with increasingly racist laws by passing and forcing her children to pass. She is less interested in the traditional maternal role as comforter for her daughter because of her commitment to passing. Much of Genevieve’s characterization is revealed through how her ambition and harsh discipline of Belle creates conflict between the two women over time.

Genevieve creates Belle’s white persona in order to secure her family’s future. Even as she sees Belle struggle with the strain of passing and the real dangers if Belle is discovered, Genevieve is so focused on the benefits to be gained from Belle’s success that she mostly ignores Belle’s struggles and continues to hand out advice when she knows little about the society that Belle has now entered. Genevieve believes in the respectability and modesty that served her well as an affluent Black woman, so she advises Belle to present herself in that way.

As Belle spends more time as a white woman, however, Genevieve comes to understand that Bell’s unapologetic embrace of her femininity and boundary-breaking role as a career woman are assets in a world that Genevieve doesn’t understand. The conflict with her daughter only ends when Genevieve sees belle expertly navigate her professional and social world during a trip to London. The turning point in this relationship also comes when Genevieve shares how nearly being lynched in South Carolina at the start of her marriage with Richard led her to choose passing.

As the years go by, Genevieve seems more interested in her daughter’s emotional life, as when she tries to uncover why Belle is so depressed after the disastrous end to her early relationship with Bernard. The authors do not include what happens to Genevieve, but she presumably dies of old age. In the end, she represents a more conservative approach to gender, while her decision to force Belle to pass is a more radical approach to confronting the threat posed to her family by racism.

Bernard Berenson is based on the historical figure by the same name (1865-1959). Like Belle, Bernard Berenson is a person who constructs a persona to achieve his ambitions. Bernard is a mysterious figure who is on the one hand an erudite art historian and critic who moves in conservative, elite circles in Boston. He is also a man rumored to be Jewish, bisexual, and in an open marriage during a historical period when any of those identities would have been taboo among the New York elite. The authors primarily characterize Bernard through his words and actions.

Bernard initially presents himself as an outsider like Belle, but he implies that his outsider status comes from having been self-made in terms of economic class. He claims that his aim in life is to open up the world of art to common people. He also presents himself as a person who will meet Belle on terms of personal equality.

His character changes when he coldly rejects Belle and refuses to accompany her to London after she gets pregnant during their fling. This and the later revelation that he has been selling information about Belle’s work as a collector show that Bernard is not so much motivated by a desire to open the world art to the average person as he is by self-interest.

Bernard is a foil to Belle. Belle succeeds in her ambitions and passing because she maintains a ruthless focus on her career. She is willing to adapt as her relationships and the world of art change. Bernard, unable to accept the reality of a rapidly evolving world with the arrival of World War I, is unable to achieve his personal and professional ambitions.

Richard is based on the historical Richard Greener (1844-1922), a civil rights activist, the first Black Harvard graduate, the first Black professor at the University of South Carolina, and a man whose achievements are accurately reflected in the events of the novel. Richard is a foil to Genevieve in that his reaction to threats of violence against his family in South Carolina during his tenure as a philosophy professor is to become an activist instead of. Early on, Richard’s commitment to the ideals of racial equality trumps his personal commitment to his family. He believes in the possibility of Black excellence even in the face of Jim Crow laws, as evidenced by his careful nurturing of Belle’s interest in art. In Belle’s life, he represents direct confrontation with racism.

Richard is absent for much of the narrative. He returns as a direct influence on Belle’s life in the last third of the novel. His idealism has diminished over the years, and he advises Belle to continue passing since that is the only way for her to fulfill her calling. His acceptance of Genevieve’s choice shows the impact of the increasing racism of the US in the years leading up to World War I and beyond.