Authors of fiction often write about the human condition as a way to connect with a broad range of readers. Unlike factual textbooks, fiction gives characters feeling and emotion, allowing us to see the story behind the basic details. In many cases, readers gain a new perspective on a period of time by examining a fiction novel. In Kindred, by Octavia Butler, the near death experiences of Rufus Weylin transports a 20th century African American woman named Dana to the ante bellum South to experience exactly what it’s like to be a slave. Through her day-to-day life on the Weylin plantation, the reader begins to understand just how complex slavery is and how it affects both the slaves and the plantation owners; thus, giving new meaning and an added sense of realism to this 19th century practice of exploitation.
On the surface, slavery was a system in which Africans were bought and sold as property. However, by reading Kindred, the reader begins to realize that the system was much more complex. In other words, both plantation owners and slaves focused on retaining their property or staying alive, respectively. Butler illustrates this throughout the text.
Seen as inferior and subhuman by whites, slaves were often only able to trust and rely on each other. When Dana is transported to the 19th century, she realizes her need to escape. However, the only way she can do this is by allowing Rufus to lead her in the right direction. As he does this, she wonders whether he is setting a trap for her. She says, “I realized suddenly how easy it would be for him to betray me—to open the door and run away or shout an alarm” (32). In addition to illustrating a lack of trust for whites, this scene also depi...
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Work Cited
Butler, Octavia. Kindred. Boston: Beacon Press, 1979.
Hairston, Andrea. “Octavia Butler – Praise Song to a Prophetic Artist.” Daughters of Earth: Feminist Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century. Middeltown: Wesleyan University Press, 2006.
Works Consulted
Alaimo, Stacey. “’Skin Dreaming': the Bodily Transgerssions of Fielding Burke, Octavia Butler, and Linda Hogan.” Ecofeminist Literary Criticism. Chicago: University of Illinois Press,1998.
Francis Consuela, ed. Conversations with Octavia Butler. Jackson: University Press Mississippi, 2010.
Govan, Sandra Y. “Homage to Tradition: Octavia Butler Renovates the Historical Novel” Melus 13 Nos. 1-2 (spring-summer 1986): 79-96
Mitchell, Angelyn. “Not Enough of the Past: Feminist Revisions of Slavery in Octavia E. Butler’s “Kindred.”” Melus, Vol 26, No #, 2001
The book Kindred is about a women named Dana, a present day African American women. She ends up traveling from California, where she lives with her husband Kevin, who is Caucasian, back to the antebellum South. Dana only goes back in time when Rufus needs her help and each time she is there she seems to stay longer. Rufus is a white slave owner son. Slavery had previously existed throughout history, in many times and most places. What does it mean to be a slave or an enslaved person? To be a slave is to be owned by another person. Slavery to me seems like the imagery of hell. I imagine hell being something you cannot escape. A place where your soul burns internally. You might beg, cry, or even pray but nothing will help the predicament you
In 1995 Ms. Butler was awarded a MacArthur fellowship, she was the first science fiction writer to be so honored. That money she won from the award gave her enough money to offer a house for her and her mother. But her achievements didn’t stop there, she also received “two Hugo Awards from the World Science Fiction Society and two Nebula Awards from the Science Fiction Writers of America” ( ) On February 24, 2006, Octavia E. Butler died in Seattle at her house, she was only 58 years old. With her death, the literary world lost one of its great storytellers. But she will always be remembered as the author who show people what the world was really
To say that slavery only affects slaves is inaccurate; it dehumanizes the slaveholders too. Some of the slaveholders in the book were sympathetic, innocent human beings. They were not automatically corrupt just because they owned a slave. Rather, slavery changed their actions and characters from mercy into viciousness. In Douglass’ own book, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, he emphasizes how many dignified human beings turn into barbaric slaveholders. Douglass, through his first hand experiences as a slave, reveals how the presence of slavery turns slaveholders into imposters.
Slave narratives were one of the first forms of African- American literature. The narratives were written with the intent to inform those who weren’t aware of the hardships of slavery about how badly slaves were being treated. The people who wrote these narratives experienced slavery first hand, and wanted to elicit the help of abolitionists to bring an end to it. Most slave narratives were not widely publicized and often got overlooked as the years went by; however, some were highly regarded and paved the way for many writers of African descent today.
Slavery is one of the worst human tragedies of all time. People were subjected to forced labor and inhumane treatment as a function of their appearance and origin. The subjection was independent of the parentage. Even children fathered by whites were subjected to the same treatment as the rest of the slaves. Slaves were the property of the owners. As such, slavers did with the slaves what they desired. Cruelty was used to create submission and send the message that slaves were only valuable provided they offered valuable service to the masters. The life of a slave was dependent on the willingness to follow the orders. The narration of the life of Frederick Douglas creates the impression that slaves lived in total submission to their masters;
Nussbaum, Felicity. “Risky Business: Feminism Now and Then.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 26.1 (Spring 2007): 81-86. JSTOR. Web. 11 Mar. 2014.
Slavery is a term that can create a whirlwind of emotions for everyone. During the hardships faced by the African Americans, hundreds of accounts were documented. Harriet Jacobs, Charles Ball and Kate Drumgoold each shared their perspectives of being caught up in the world of slavery. There were reoccurring themes throughout the books as well as varying angles that each author either left out or never experienced. Taking two women’s views as well as a man’s, we can begin to delve deeper into what their everyday lives would have been like. Charles Ball’s Fifty Years in Chains and Harriet Jacobs Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl were both published in the early 1860’s while Kate Drumgoold’s A Slave Girl’s Story came almost forty years later
Bartholomae, D., & Petrosky, A. (2011). Ways of reading: an anthology for writers (9th ed.). Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's. “Judith Butler; Beside Oneself: On the Limits of Sexual Autonomy.”
I recommend Ar’n’t I a Woman? to anyone, of any race, of either sex, and with any interests, because I believe this book has something to offer everyone. White’s writing has the power to totally transform her readers’ understanding, emotions, and opinions. After reading the novel, I will never again view the institution of slavery the same way. If this book does not completely change your opinion of slavery and leave you with a richer appreciation for the resilience demonstrated by the female slaves, then you have not really read it! Alexandra the Great has spoken, therefore, it is official, Deborah Gray White’s Ar’n’t I a Woman? is a literary masterpiece!
The issue of Slavery in the South was an unresolved issue in the United States during the seventeenth and eighteenth century. During these years, the south kept having slavery, even though most states had slavery abolished. Due to the fact that slaves were treated as inferior, they did not have the same rights and their chances of becoming an educated person were almost impossible. However, some information about slavery, from the slaves’ point of view, has been saved. In this essay, we are comparing two different books that show us what being a slave actually was. This will be seen with the help of two different characters: Linda Brent in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Frederick Douglass in The Narrative of the life of Frederick
...present powerful characters, while females represent unimportant characters. Unaware of the influence of society’s perception of the importance of sexes, literature and culture go unchanged. Although fairytales such as Sleeping Beauty produce charming entertainment for children, their remains a didactic message that lays hidden beneath the surface; teaching future generations to be submissive to the inequalities of their gender. Feminist critic the works of former literature, highlighting sexual discriminations, and broadcasting their own versions of former works, that paints a composite image of women’s oppression (Feminist Theory and Criticism). Women of the twenty-first century serge forward investigating, and highlighting the inequalities of their race in effort to organize a better social life for women of the future (Feminist Theory and Criticism).
Margaret Cavendish’s Blazing World qualifies as both a precursor to science fiction and an exploration of utopian literature. Cavendish redefines customary representations of women through challenging the boundaries of gender whilst eradicating conventions of the genre. In her essay Gender, Genre, and the Utopian Body, author Marina Leslie suggests that Cavendish realigns three of the dominant modes of discourse which are employed in the representation of women in literature; misogynistic narratives of women-on-top, literary conventions of romance and finally the evolving textual practices of philosophy.
Viramontes, Helena. "Miss Clairol." Literature and Gender: Thinking Critically through Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Eds. Robyn Wiegman and Elena Glasberg. New York: Longman, 1999. 78-81. Print.
In Beloved, Toni Morrison sought to show the reader the interior life of slavery through realism and foreshadowing. In all of her novels, Toni Morrison focused on the interior life of slavery, loss, love, the community, and the supernatural by using realism and vivid language. Morrison had cast a new perspective on the nation’s past and even suggests- though makes no promise- that people of strength and courage may be able to achieve a somewhat less destructive future” (Bakerman 173). Works Cited Bakerman, Jane S.
Cain, William. “Editha” Pearson Education Inc., American Literature Volume 11. 25 April 2004. 21 March 2014.