One of the most important characters in March, Grace, is a symbolic character who exists to demonstrate the unjust nature of slavery. While Grace functions primarily to illustrate the themes of the novel, her presence also evokes feelings in the reader that stem both from her treatment and her own feelings about her life.
Grace functions as a symbolic character; she's a slave who works in the house and appears to be better cared for than many others—but that clearly doesn't make her slavery just. She also serves to show clearly that despite what people like the Clements think, people of different races are equal. When John first meets Grace, Brooks writes John's thoughts:
There you are, I thought. A Negro slave, probably not even as old as I, yet with a style of address that would not shame a great peer. No one I knew at home talked like that, not even the minister. (23-24)
At first, John is only interested in Grace because as an upper-level slave, she can provide access to her master. He thinks "I learned, too, that winning over the upper servants was the first object for a gentleman of the road in pursuit of a sale" (23). She makes a positive impression on him while he's working as a traveling salesman, but that's the end of it. He's only 19 and hasn't married yet. Later, though, Grace comes to affect his life in important ways as he fights in the war and later returns home to his wife and daughters.
When Mrs. Clement, Grace's owner, describes her relationship with Grace, she indicates that she loves Grace more than her own recently-married daughter. Despite her proclaimed love for Grace, Mrs. Clement makes it clear that Grace is not a person free to pursue her own dreams or ambitions. She says:
I tell you, Mr. March, my Grace has a great deal more freedom than my daughter now enjoys. Not freedom to leave me, no; that she will never have. Grace is mine, here with me forever. She was born right here, you know. Mr. Clement gave her to me as a wedding present. Such a pretty infant. I suppose he thought I could practice my mothering skills upon her until our own children came. Who could guess that one's first essay could be so eloquent? (32)
Mrs. Clement goes on to explain that Grace is better with reading and poetry than her own daughter. Then she has a fit and makes John retrieve Grace; Grace tells John that the ailing Mrs. Clement needs to rest and sends him away.
When John speaks to Grace later, he says that Mrs. Clement loves her like a mother. Grace responds with doubt that makes the negative relationship between the slave and the slaveowner clear: "Her voice was low, her words clipped. 'Does she so? I wouldn't know. My mother was sold south by Mr. Clement before I was one year old.' She took the basket from me" (35).
After John is caught teaching Prudence to read, Grace is whipped by Mr. Clement for his actions. This serves to turn John away from any idea that slaveowners can treat their slaves well—despite Grace's seemingly privileged position in the household, she's brutalized for the actions of others. Brooks writes:
They had laid her facedown upon a bench, her arms stretched out above her head, her two thumbs bound together and fastened to a rope that then passed the full length underneath the table and came up to bind her ankles. A wide leather strap passed over the small of her slender back and pressed her flat against the table. Below the strap, the lower part of her body was exposed, in a complete state of nature. (48)
Grace's plight and the plight of all slaves is further illustrated when it's revealed that her father is actually Mr. Clement; she refuses to leave the plantation when John insists she should, saying that she needs to stay and care for the Clements. Grace is a symbol of the brutality of slavery not only to the reader but also to John, who cries as she is whipped and later joins to fight for the Union in the Civil War.
Despite Grace's function as a symbolic character, she still acts as a persuasive character as well. The scene where she is whipped is extremely sad and upsetting for a reader; it helps dispel the idea that the Clements are in any way kindly or misguided people. Brooks writes that "strip by strip, the lash carved into Grace's shuddering flesh" (50).
Grace's explanation of what happened to her half-brother also acts to persuade the reader to feel disgusted by slavery. She explains that he raped her—knowing they were related—and that she helped cause the accident that led to his death, saying:
"But you are not the innocent who arrived at the Clement house that long-ago spring. I think you have seen enough of evil now to understand very well how things stood. All I will say is this: that he, knowing the truth of my parentage, knowing he was my brother, committed a sin whose magnitude has ever been understood, even by savages. And do you know what the worst violation was? That I realized my father had intended just such a thing." (272)
She goes on to say that the negative things that stemmed from her defending herself against rape—her father's decline, the loss of the plantation, Annie drowning, Justice and Prudence being sold—weigh on her conscience. The reader experiences sympathy for her because those things clearly were not her fault and she was right to defend herself. Grace still lives with the guilt, though.
While Brooks undoubtedly included Grace in the novel as a symbolic character to represent the unjust nature of slavery and to give John a personal stake in the battle for the freedom of slaves, her secondary function as a persuasive character still exists. From her introduction as a learned woman to the conclusion where she tells John to go home and create sermons that "prepare [his] neighbors to accept a world where black and white may one day stand as equals," Grace functions first as a symbol—but is still a character who inspires emotion in readers (273).
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