Character itself is a product of place and culture. We need to know in what atmosphere a character operates in order to understand the significance of the action. Scarlett O’Hara of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind operates as she does because she grew up in heat, damp, and luxury, surrounded by slaves whose loyalty she counts on without examining their lives. Sethe of Toni Morrison’s Beloved behaves as she does because she grew up enslaved in the same heat and damp, in perpetual terror of the master who comes for her and her babies after she reaches freedom.

Janet Burroway, Writing Fiction, Tenth Edit…, loc. 331