In Octavia Butler's historical time-travel novel Kindred, the protagonist, Dana, is repeatedly summoned back in time to ensure the continuation of her bloodline. This rests on Rufus Weylin, a white slave-owner, impregnating Alice Greenwood, who was born free, was a friend of Rufus as a child, and was later bought by him to be his slave.
Here are some similarities between Alice and Dana:
- Both women are physically similar: "tall and slender and dark," and they resemble each other as family would, even though they are far removed from each other. This similarity in appearance (and in personality—both women are strong-willed and stubborn) leads Rufus to consider them to be two halves of the same woman. Alice explains to Dana, "He likes me in bed, and you out of bed, and you and I look alike if you can believe what people say" (229). Rufus is physically (and perhaps romantically) attracted to Alice, while he relies on Dana to take care of him and to stimulate and support him intellectually.
- Alice and Dana are both women who were once free who are now unwillingly controlled by Rufus. Alice, who was born free, was later bought by Rufus so that he could keep her and "love" her in his own morally confused way. Dana remarks that "I was beginning to realize that he loved the woman—to her misfortune. There was no shame in raping a black woman, but there could be shame in loving one" (124). Alice is forced to submit herself to Rufus sexually and bear his children multiple times, even though she is not interested in him that way and in fact very truly fears him. Dana, on the other hand, came of age in the time after the Civil Rights Movement and yet is repeatedly summoned back in time (against her will) to save Rufus from deadly situations. In this past, she cannot be seen as the free black woman of the 1970s that she is; she is forced to masquerade as a slave (first Kevin's, then Rufus's) in order to get by, and she gets beaten, demeaned, and nearly raped as a result. After Alice's baby Hagar is born (the one who would continue Dana's bloodline), Dana expresses her feelings this way: "I felt almost free, half-free if such a thing was possible, half-way home" (234).
Here are some differences between Alice and Dana:
- The two women come from completely different social, racial, and historical contexts. Alice, even growing up as a free black person, knew that her place in society was tenuous and dependent entirely upon the unpredictable whims of the white people around her. As a child, Alice watched her father be brutally beaten and her mother knocked unconscious by a patrol group of white men outside her home. In contrast, Dana, who is coming from the 1970s and is married to a white man, has a very different context of race relations and no direct experience with the brutality of slavery....
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- Because of this difference, Alice holds a good deal of contempt for Dana. After realizing that her husband, Isaac, was mutilated and sold away, she yells at Dana, "Docter-n***** . . . Think you know so much. Reading-n*****.White-n*****! Why didn't you know enough to let me die?" (160) The two women's starkly different pasts keep them from ever fully understanding vital aspects of each other, especially their differing views on slavery and hope:
- Dana holds onto the belief that being alive means having a chance at freedom, while Alice mostly holds her mother's own bitter belief that death is better than slavery. After Alice explains to Dana that her mother said she'd rather be dead than be a slave, Dana says, "Better to stay alive . . . at least while there's a chance to get free" (158). She wonders if she's a hypocrite for saying that to someone like Alice and advising her to live with her pain while she herself knows that she will (hopefully) eventually return to a time without slavery. Alice ends up attempting to run away and escape slavery, but when she is caught, Rufus punishes her by saying that he sold her children away (which is a lie). As a result, Alice loses the small amount of hope she had, and she fulfills her mother's belief by killing herself.
Octavia Butler's Kindred tells the story of Edana (Dana) Franklin, a modern woman who is drawn back through time to live during the time of slavery in the United States. During her travels, Dana meets Alice Greenwood, her great-great-great-grandmother. Both women are around the same age when they meet.
Dana and Alice are so similar that Rufus Weylin, who is Dana's great-great-great-grandfather and a slave owner, thinks of them as two halves of one whole. They bond over their mutual imprisonment and protect one another whenever they can.
Dana has lived not in the time of slavery but rather during a time of freedom well after abolition. She knows what's possible and fights desperately for her life and Alice's. Alice, conversely, has lived her whole life around slavery. She's technically a free woman in the time of the novel, but Rufus treats her like she isn't. He rapes and beats her (at one point within an inch of her life).
Alice is desperate to escape Rufus and determines that the only way to be truly free of him is to end her life. Dana tries to talk her out of this plan, insisting that life is worth fighting for. Alice ultimately succeeds in taking her own life. Dana travels back to the present one final time, losing an arm but regaining her freedom.
The major difference between the two women is that Dana is coming from a totally different perspective than Alice. Dana is a modern woman who has only read about slavery, while Alice, although a free woman at the beginning, has grown up in a society that condones slavery. Alice feels death is better than slavery, but Dana disagrees with her. She thinks survival is the better option as long as there is a chance to escape to freedom. Again, I think this difference lies in the pasts of the two women. Dana knows what real freedom is, while Alice knows as a black woman, a white man or woman can do anything to her he wishes. As Rufus abuses Alice more and more, she gives up, seeing no hope for her future. Dana is willing to do more to regain her freedom, while Alice feels death is her only choice, especially after her children are taken away.
Both women are alike in several ways. They are both strong characters who desire freedom in the worst way. Dana and Alice are both alienated from the other slaves because of their relationship with Rufus and his family. They are drawn to each other, and Rufus thinks they are two halves of the same woman because they are so much alike. Their relationship is much like that of sisters who fight one moment and hug the next. There is an unexplainable connection between them that is more than being family.
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What are the similarities between Dana and Alice in Kindred?
Dana and Alice have a cosmic connection. (Time travel just has a way of enhancing bonds like that.) They may come from different time periods and points of view, but they're both African American women navigating their way through an unjust world—and I don't just mean in 1815. Even in Dana's home timeline of 1976, race relations had a long, long way to go.
If we focus on 1815, though, both Dana and Alice are strong-willed women who start out free and are later enslaved. Both are tormented by Rufus and hated by Liza. Dana and Alice are each driven by their pain, too. Alice, for example, resents Dana and her relationship with Rufus, and that motivates her to attack Dana's character and paint her as a disloyal white sympathizer. Dana uses her physical pain to make it through each day; the other slaves can hate on her all they want, but she'll even be Margaret's personal slave if it means avoiding another whipping. At the end of Kindred, Dana uses her emotional pain, as well. Her anguish over Alice's suicide drives her to kill Rufus. Then she can finally heal.
What are the similarities between Dana and Alice in Kindred?
Both Dana and Alice are African American females who get married to white men; Dana to Kevin, and Alice to Rufus. Both women are slaves and suffer and endure great brutality at the hands of their masters at the Weylin plantation. Dana, during her journeys to the past, assumes the role of a slave and in one instance even pretends to be Kevin’s slave. On the other hand, even though Alice had been freed and had a slave husband, Rufus manages to enslave her once again and forces her to be his mistress.
Both their husbands are slave owners; Rufus, through his father, owns a large plantation with slaves in antebellum Maryland. Kevin, during one of Dana’s journeys back to the past, gets stuck for five years, during which time he owns slaves.
Rufus threatens to rape both of them; first, he threatens to rape Alice if she refuses to accept to yield to his advances. Then, he threatens to rape Dana, after Alice commits suicide, simply because of their physical resemblance.
What are the similarities between Dana and Alice in Kindred?
Butler writes Dana and Alice almost as mirror images of each other, and in many ways, Dana's ancestor, Alice, is like her in many more ways than simple physical appearance. Both women are disliked by Liza and loved by Rufus, over whom both women have a certain amount of sway, but to whom both will usually submit in the end. Both women are freeborn but become enslaved over the course of their lives, with Dana becoming entangled with white men by her own choice and Alice because of circumstantial pressure.
However, the generations between them mean there are also many differences between the women. While Dana has received an education and been allowed a degree of control over her own existence, Alice is uneducated and has been treated as subhuman, which naturally has diminished her natural spirit and the fight within her. Her depression and broken will are indications of what Dana might have been if she had endured the suffering Alice has endured. We see this further as the harshness of the past begins to take its toll on Dana, rendering her ultimately less able or willing to fight.
What are the similarities between Dana and Alice in Kindred?
Dana and Alice are alike in many ways. They are genetically linked, since Alice is Dana's ancestor. They look alike. They are both intelligent African-American women, and Rufus desires both of them. He gets angry at both of them because he can't have as full a control over them and their desires as he would want.