Lawrence and Lee use a romance motif, a conventional subplot, to portray the conflict between bigotry and enlightenment. Rachel, the daughter of a fundamentalist preacher, falls in love with Cates, an evolutionist. Rachel is torn between her own fundamentalist beliefs and love for her father and her love for Cates. At first, she wants Cates to change his plea, to admit he was wrong.
At the welcome picnic for Brady and at her father's prayer meeting, Rachel is confronted with situations involving devout fundamentalists causing her to question her own fundamentalist beliefs. Brady, a man whom she respects and trusts, manipulates her into revealing confidential conversations she had with Cates and forces her to testify against Cates in court. Later, during a prayer meeting, her father condemns Cates, and Rachel as well, when she speaks out in support of Cates.
Rachel knows Cates is not a bad person because he has different beliefs. She reads Darwin's evolutionary theory and draws her own conclusions. As she tells Cates and Drummond, "I was always afraid of what I might think — so it seemed safer not to think at all . . . now I know . . . if (an idea) dies inside you, part of you dies, too!" Rachel becomes enlightened and leaves Hillsboro with Cates.
