Belle, The Movie

It is rare that I get to be reflected, to see any part of myself, my story or my history on a big screen. Am I Dido Elizabeth Belle, an 18^th century biracial woman of aristocratic and slave lineage, reared by her Uncle, the Earl of Mansfield and Lord Chief Justice of England in Hampstead? No. I am a 21^st century Black American woman, reared by her New England school teacher mother and a longtime resident of New York City, who has just seen the movie Belle by director Amma Asante.

Belle is based on the true story of Dido, who was brought up in Kenwood House with her cousin Elizabeth Murray under the protection of Lord and Lady Mansfield, who had no children of their own. It deftly portrays the convoluted social rules that made her too high born to dine with the servants, but too low born to dine with family if guests were present. It also highlights the extreme oppression to my modern sensibilities, of a woman’s place and opportunities in society as defined by the man she was able to marry. This is an issue for both Dido and her white cousin Elizabeth. Not wanting to give the rest away and to encourage you to see it, Dido gets her prince.

Belle is that shimmering affirmation that my countless pubescent hours spent reading historical romances but re-imagining the milky bosomed heroine as brown and beautiful were not in vain. But Belle is also the bitter taste that our worthiness was and is still too often defined through the eyes of white society and not our own. That Dido lived and loved, means there were and are many of us who live and love, despite what we don’t see, or what is not shown.

I hope Belle is a beginning. A beginning to tell all of our stories with the passion, intelligence, grace and honesty they so richly deserve. A beginning without an end……