Alice, Sarah, and Dana As Three Stills of a Life.
Three women who all faced rape or the threat thereof on the plantation. Sarah lives through rape at the hands of Tom Weylin, and recounts her experiences to Dana. All of her children are sold off except for Carrie, who is disabled. Recalling this fact makes her display a “Quiet, almost frightening anger” (p76). Dana views Sarah as an Uncle Tom, or a Mammy, earlier in the book. The young Rufus calls her “Aunt Sarah” (p86) which Dana reflects on as being better than Mammy. Sarah is considerably more perceptive of the more vile aspects of Rufus’s personality than Dana is, at least at first.
Ironically, although Dana accuses Sarah of having been cowed into submission, she in turn is seen as being too white by Alice, who calls her “white [n-word],” in an outburst. Dana’s knowledge and what is perceived as preferential treatment by the whites also leads more generally to people disliking her (such as in Lisa’s case) or, later on, the assumption that Rufus is raping her. Although Dana is initially rejective of being a slave, and tries throughout the novel to influence Rufus for the better, she is not successful and spends a large part of the book in denial about the fact that she is enslaved and the extent to which Rufus is willing to abuse her. She also becomes more submissive to the whites throughout the book, as seen when the now-older Margaret Weylin comments that she was “‘Impudent before.’” Still, Dana is made complicit by Rufus, as seen in how the latter treats Alice and coerces Dana to treat Alice, and how Dana blames Alice somewhat for her own situation because she cannot handle her own guilt.
Dana has had an easier life than the other enslaved people and she has an easier time, by and large, while she is enslaved, even easier than the other house slaves. This is despite the fact that her parents died at a very young age, her aunt belted her, and she worked long hours at an exploitative temp agency with very little sleep. Dana has already had a very hard life, and yet she is definitely not prepared to stomach much of slavery, something she herself says near the beginning of the book, on page 51: “To survive, my ancestors had to put up with more than I ever could. Much more.” When she initially sees Alice’s father being whipped, her reaction is very much like that of the young girl’s, because she has not yet been de-sensitized to real world violence. She, unlike Alice, unlike Sarah, physically defends herself from Rufus attempting to rape her by killing him, although it should be noted that Alice also briefly contemplates this possibility when Dana first tells her that Rufus intends to coerce her into sex. While Sarah or Alice might not have had the chance to physically defend themselves, they also have the holding bar of knowledge that defending themselves will just result in everyone being sold off, likely permanently separating everyone on the plantation from many of the people they know. Dana knows this, but she still kills Rufus. This is in part due to her finally, finally reaching a line she cannot cross, and in part because she knows Rufus is her ancestor. She notes that it would be so easy to let it happen, and “so hard to raise the knife, drive it into the flesh I had saved so many times.” Dana loves Rufus against her better judgement, and she doesn’t want to undo all her work she spent saving him.
Alice is, like Dana, rejective of the system of slavery. She tries to escape, first with her husband while she is still free, and then with her children. Alice and Dana were both born free, but the threat of slavery never dangled over Dana’s head like it did Alice’s. Alice is between Sarah and Dana, but she has given in both less and more than either of them. She fears bending as they have bent. Alice is raped by Rufus, having no other real choice (despite what Dana says on the surface) and she is accorded a separate position from the other enslaved people, because Rufus is under the delusion that he loves her. This repeated trauma at the hands of Rufus affects her: Dana notes that “Like Sarah, she looked older. She also looked harder. She was a cool, bitter older sister to the girl I had known.” (p208) upon her return to the plantation in the penultimate chapter of the book. Once Alice she is aware what has been done to her, she hates Rufus, in contrast to Dana who still tries to delude herself, drawing lines in the sand that she then allows him to cross every time but the last. There is some hypocrisy in her: she ends up not preventing Rufus from assaulting Alice, although she kills him to prevent him from doing the same to her. She could have fought him earlier, but she wanted to preserve herself and Hagar, her ancestor resulting from their union. For Dana, it is a necessary evil and an impossible choice.
Like Dana, Alice cannot survive under slavery. She and Dana both adapt and harden under the whole of slavery, and there is much of it they have to change to weather, but Dana cannot live with knowing her interacting with other people makes Rufus become so possessive that he will sell them off, she cannot live with the betrayal of Rufus hitting her, and so she risks her life to return home. Even when she arrives she brings sleeping pills so that she will have the free choice of killing herself, or almost killing herself in an attempt to go home. But while Dana refuses to be raped and ultimately defends herself from Rufus, Alice does not do so. She, having witnessed slavery from birth, witnessed how patrollers sexually harassed and threatened her mother (her mother was also sexually assaulted, but it is unclear whether she saw this. She probably did) is more accustomed to this, and this likely makes it easier for her to fall into the pattern of Rufus physically and sexually abusing her—as seen when Dana notes that she is bruised after she spends a night with him while he is drunk. Unlike Dana, Alice’s lines in the sand are the selling of her children and the threat of her growing to love Rufus despite his systematic abuse of her.
Directly before Dana tells her that she is enslaved, Alice says that “‘Mama said she’d rather be dead than be a slave.’” (p 157). Alice, unlike Sarah, cannot survive the betrayal of her children seemingly being sold into slavery. Nothing she does can reunite her with them, because she has no idea where they are, even if she successfully escape, something that seems very unlikely given that all four non-outwardly suicidal escape attempts depicted in the novel fail, and Alice herself has barely survived and been severely traumatized by her two escape attempts. Therefore she turns to her last recourse. She dresses herself up in the best clothes that Rufus got for her, and she hangs herself. This dressing herself up can either be read as a reclaiming of dignity, or as a way of saying that, in becoming what Rufus has wanted her to be, he has killed her. It is done to save herself—she is not abandoning her children if they have already been stolen from her, meaning she has no more reason to suffer through living with Rufus. It is also meant to hurt him, because she is the only “thing” Rufus cares about—and she is a “thing” to him, more than a person—that she can destroy.
Overall, Dana, Alice, and Sarah represent three different positions, three different slices of time, both in terms fo their rebellion, and how much anguish they have stomached and survived. Both Dana and Alice have their limits, although Alice’s is higher than that of Dana. Alice and Dana broke before they bent, at the end, but Sarah bent all the way, over and over until her spirit was crushed and she can see nothing better in store. The similarities between Dana and Alice are repeatedly highlighted over the course of the novel, but one has to ask: if Dana and Alice had continued living on the plantation, would they have had to become more like Sarah, in the sense of losing hope, in order to survive?
Ironically, although Dana accuses Sarah of having been cowed into submission, she in turn is seen as being too white by Alice, who calls her “white [n-word],” in an outburst. Dana’s knowledge and what is perceived as preferential treatment by the whites also leads more generally to people disliking her (such as in Lisa’s case) or, later on, the assumption that Rufus is raping her. Although Dana is initially rejective of being a slave, and tries throughout the novel to influence Rufus for the better, she is not successful and spends a large part of the book in denial about the fact that she is enslaved and the extent to which Rufus is willing to abuse her. She also becomes more submissive to the whites throughout the book, as seen when the now-older Margaret Weylin comments that she was “‘Impudent before.’” Still, Dana is made complicit by Rufus, as seen in how the latter treats Alice and coerces Dana to treat Alice, and how Dana blames Alice somewhat for her own situation because she cannot handle her own guilt.
Dana has had an easier life than the other enslaved people and she has an easier time, by and large, while she is enslaved, even easier than the other house slaves. This is despite the fact that her parents died at a very young age, her aunt belted her, and she worked long hours at an exploitative temp agency with very little sleep. Dana has already had a very hard life, and yet she is definitely not prepared to stomach much of slavery, something she herself says near the beginning of the book, on page 51: “To survive, my ancestors had to put up with more than I ever could. Much more.” When she initially sees Alice’s father being whipped, her reaction is very much like that of the young girl’s, because she has not yet been de-sensitized to real world violence. She, unlike Alice, unlike Sarah, physically defends herself from Rufus attempting to rape her by killing him, although it should be noted that Alice also briefly contemplates this possibility when Dana first tells her that Rufus intends to coerce her into sex. While Sarah or Alice might not have had the chance to physically defend themselves, they also have the holding bar of knowledge that defending themselves will just result in everyone being sold off, likely permanently separating everyone on the plantation from many of the people they know. Dana knows this, but she still kills Rufus. This is in part due to her finally, finally reaching a line she cannot cross, and in part because she knows Rufus is her ancestor. She notes that it would be so easy to let it happen, and “so hard to raise the knife, drive it into the flesh I had saved so many times.” Dana loves Rufus against her better judgement, and she doesn’t want to undo all her work she spent saving him.
Alice is, like Dana, rejective of the system of slavery. She tries to escape, first with her husband while she is still free, and then with her children. Alice and Dana were both born free, but the threat of slavery never dangled over Dana’s head like it did Alice’s. Alice is between Sarah and Dana, but she has given in both less and more than either of them. She fears bending as they have bent. Alice is raped by Rufus, having no other real choice (despite what Dana says on the surface) and she is accorded a separate position from the other enslaved people, because Rufus is under the delusion that he loves her. This repeated trauma at the hands of Rufus affects her: Dana notes that “Like Sarah, she looked older. She also looked harder. She was a cool, bitter older sister to the girl I had known.” (p208) upon her return to the plantation in the penultimate chapter of the book. Once Alice she is aware what has been done to her, she hates Rufus, in contrast to Dana who still tries to delude herself, drawing lines in the sand that she then allows him to cross every time but the last. There is some hypocrisy in her: she ends up not preventing Rufus from assaulting Alice, although she kills him to prevent him from doing the same to her. She could have fought him earlier, but she wanted to preserve herself and Hagar, her ancestor resulting from their union. For Dana, it is a necessary evil and an impossible choice.
Like Dana, Alice cannot survive under slavery. She and Dana both adapt and harden under the whole of slavery, and there is much of it they have to change to weather, but Dana cannot live with knowing her interacting with other people makes Rufus become so possessive that he will sell them off, she cannot live with the betrayal of Rufus hitting her, and so she risks her life to return home. Even when she arrives she brings sleeping pills so that she will have the free choice of killing herself, or almost killing herself in an attempt to go home. But while Dana refuses to be raped and ultimately defends herself from Rufus, Alice does not do so. She, having witnessed slavery from birth, witnessed how patrollers sexually harassed and threatened her mother (her mother was also sexually assaulted, but it is unclear whether she saw this. She probably did) is more accustomed to this, and this likely makes it easier for her to fall into the pattern of Rufus physically and sexually abusing her—as seen when Dana notes that she is bruised after she spends a night with him while he is drunk. Unlike Dana, Alice’s lines in the sand are the selling of her children and the threat of her growing to love Rufus despite his systematic abuse of her.
Directly before Dana tells her that she is enslaved, Alice says that “‘Mama said she’d rather be dead than be a slave.’” (p 157). Alice, unlike Sarah, cannot survive the betrayal of her children seemingly being sold into slavery. Nothing she does can reunite her with them, because she has no idea where they are, even if she successfully escape, something that seems very unlikely given that all four non-outwardly suicidal escape attempts depicted in the novel fail, and Alice herself has barely survived and been severely traumatized by her two escape attempts. Therefore she turns to her last recourse. She dresses herself up in the best clothes that Rufus got for her, and she hangs herself. This dressing herself up can either be read as a reclaiming of dignity, or as a way of saying that, in becoming what Rufus has wanted her to be, he has killed her. It is done to save herself—she is not abandoning her children if they have already been stolen from her, meaning she has no more reason to suffer through living with Rufus. It is also meant to hurt him, because she is the only “thing” Rufus cares about—and she is a “thing” to him, more than a person—that she can destroy.
Overall, Dana, Alice, and Sarah represent three different positions, three different slices of time, both in terms fo their rebellion, and how much anguish they have stomached and survived. Both Dana and Alice have their limits, although Alice’s is higher than that of Dana. Alice and Dana broke before they bent, at the end, but Sarah bent all the way, over and over until her spirit was crushed and she can see nothing better in store. The similarities between Dana and Alice are repeatedly highlighted over the course of the novel, but one has to ask: if Dana and Alice had continued living on the plantation, would they have had to become more like Sarah, in the sense of losing hope, in order to survive?
Great post! I think it's interesting to include Sarah with Dana and Alice, since the latter two share so many similarities. However, I think you're completely right. They all faced similar threats and similar scarring experiences, all from different perspectives. Looking at all of their experiences adds complexity to our understandings of racism and sexism at this time in a really interesting way.
ReplyDeleteNice job! I do find it interesting that though so different, the 3 have faced such similar situations when on the plantation, just from different and clear perspectives. It really does help us understand the story and how difficult some parts truly are.
ReplyDeleteIt's a profoundly disturbing thought, but Alice's suicide--like Dana's attempt--can be seen as a paradoxical way of her asserting her agency or power in a situation where she has no agency or power. One of the more disturbing aspects of the arc of Alice's story, as seen by Dana, is when Dana is eager to see evidence that maybe Alice is "happy" in some way with Rufus, that he has been "softened" by Dana and treats Alice in a way that is not so bad, so maybe they can have something like a normal family. (As when Dana is eager to see evidence that Rufus actually cares about Joe, presumably so he won't enslave him when he reaches maturity.) But Alice makes clear that she is just doing what she needs to do to survive, that she is just putting up with Rufus until she has the opportunity to escape *with her children*. So when Rufus tries to manipulate her emotionally by pretending to sell their children (as his father has manipulated Sarah), she makes the *choice* (in some ways the only choice she is really capable of making) to deny him HER body, her labor, her fertility. In a twisted way, Alice claims her own agency by taking her own life, following her mother's edict about rather being dead than enslaved.
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