Nel

When Nel is laying in she is realizing that she is her own person she doesn't have to be her mother or her grandmother but merely who she is. At the same time she isn't sure exactly who she is, she just knows that she is her own person. That she can make her own choice and live the way she wants her life to be.
She doesn't feel she has to accept the inferiority that her mother demonstrates in the presence of white people and that they are not a superior people. She is beginning to understand this about her self, and that she wants more than anything to be wonderful. To be free of the oppressive feeling that white people have over them. To be unyielding and unlike her mother.