When the Jessamine Grows

Joetta McBride (née Bowen) is a farm woman, Ennis’s wife, Henry and Robert’s mother, Charlie’s adoptive mother, Rudean’s daughter-in-law, and the main protagonist of the novel. She is a compassionate, hardworking woman who values helping and caring for others, including her family. Joetta is strongly devoted to Ennis and still deeply in love with him and hardly ever argues with him, except when Henry leaves and Ennis initially refuses to go after him. Ennis’s presumed death sends her into a depression until she meets Charlie and then when Ennis is revealed to be alive, she is delighted. She concludes that their love was meant to endure the war. In addition, Joetta is a deeply maternal woman, wanting to be the best mother to Henry and Ennis that she can be and doing what she can to help them. This extends to others, including Charlie, whom she and Ennis later take in as a son. She explains to Robert that “it is a woman’s nature, if one is the mothering sort, to care for the sick and downtrodden” and that she “would not let anyone suffer, not if I can help them. It is against my beliefs” (250-51).