Belle Monologues

The biracial daughter, Dido Elizabeth Belle (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), of Royal Navy Captain Sir John Lindsay (Matthew Goode) is raised by aristocratic Great-uncle Lord William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield (Tom Wilkinson) in 18th century England.

M'lord! If you find for the traders, you will be formalizing in law the concept of insuring human cargo.

Then know that when you are gone, your legacy will be to have left Miss Lindsay in a world where she may be worth more dead than alive.

By the very grace of God!

Of course it is. It's about all of us. It's about everything… everything that's important.

No. No, that your feelings for me are so? That you would be my wife? Because - because I cannot conceive of a life without you.

Religion cannot be the only guardian of our morality. Of course not. There is self-responsibility. And failing that, does the law not have a duty? Does the bench and parliament not have a duty to uphold and create the laws that progress our morality, not... not retard it, if not to protect us from others, then to protect us from ourselves? Laws that allow us to diminish the humanity of anybody are not laws. They are frameworks for crime. And, quite frankly, I really do not care if you, as an individual, are without character or conscience, but a land whose laws sanction, not control, the barbarous among its citizens, that is a country whose hope is lost.

To provide certainty where otherwise there might be none.

'Tis pitiful. Such inability to simply know what value to put on another's life.

You utterly misunderstand me. I am saying that no man may have the value of cargo. Human beings cannot be priced since we are priceless - free men and slaves alike. I am with others here. All students in law, applying pressure on the insurance companies to refuse from hereon to insure slaves on any ship.

How can we expect to be civilized when we live in such a barbaric world? It is the utter injustice.

You are above reducing yourself for the sake of rank. I pray he would marry you without a penny to your name, for that is a man who would truly treasure you.

Well, unless she marries her equal. Her true equal. A man who respects her.

I take great offense at your summation of my character without ever even taking a moment to know me. Where is your right?

That you will never have. Not until you cease from judging the entire world as those above and those below, and begin to see people as people. Human beings who think and feel no more or less than you do.

No, I have an ambitious aunt in Belsize, who like you, assume that wealth and reputation are all that life depends on, and despises love as though it were the devil's own creation!

Yes! Yes! I love her! I love her with every breath I breathe!

Permit me to ask, why do you not dine with your family ever?

Forgive me, but twice now I have seen you separated from the gathering. I am confounded.

Should not any lady be flattered to be such a subject?

Quite. Though one should be forgiven for thinking he is in the presence of a lady, when she is in fact still a juvenile.

With due respect, I should question whether human life should be insurable as cargo at all.

My greatest misfortune would be to marry into a family who would carry me as their shame.

I have been blessed with freedom twice over, as a negro and as a woman.

I have a tongue, madam. Though yours explains well enough why I may not marry your son. You view my circumstances as unfortunate, though I cannot claim even a portion of the misfortune to those whom I most closely resemble. My greatest misfortune would be to marry into a family who would carry me as their shame, as I have been required to carry my own mother - her apparent crime to be born negro, and mine to be the evidence. Since I wish to deny her no more than I wish to deny myself, you will pardon me for wanting a husband who feels forgiveness of my bloodline is both unnecessary and without grace.

I remember my father's eyes. They were kind, gentle, a little like yours.

I mean in colour.

Must not a lady marry, even if she is financially secure? For who is she without a husband of consequence? It seems silly - like a free negro who begs for a master.

Papa, how may I be too high in rank to dine with the servants and too low to dine with my family?

How should any male know the ways of a lady when he has not even mastered the ways of a gentlemen?

And what if there were not a rule, Papa? What if the rule that allowed you to take me did not exist? Would you have returned me to the slums? You *are* courageous. When it comes to the matters you believe in, society is inconsequential. You break every rule when it matters enough, Papa. I am the evidence.

It is not in my repertoire to keep company with beasts!

Bette, you shall feel no such sentiment, for you shall either end poor or broken-hearted.