Convoluted Kinship in Kindred

kin·dred [kin-drid]

noun

1. a person's relatives collectively; kinfolk; kin.

2. a group of persons related to another; family, tribe, or race.

3. relationship by birth or descent, or sometimes by marriage; kinship.

4. natural relationship; affinity.

           As I was reading Kindred, I wondered why Octavia Butler chose this title for her book. There could have been so many different titles relating to slavery, to violence, to prejudice, or any number of other themes in the novel. So why Kindred? In the Reader’s Guide at the back of the book, this question was also brought up in number 17. Kinship is clearly a huge theme in the story, but most importantly Butler challenges our societal norms and conceptions about family and how kinship plays a role now. In our current world and society, family is viewed as a person’s rock and foundational support. Rarely is family seen as dangerous, and we have a very closed minded view of what we call the ‘nuclear family’. However, Butler challenges these ideals. In Kindred, Dana’s closest family becomes her ancestors from the days of slavery; she comes to know family members both oppressive and oppressed.

           There comes a strange selfishness based on necessity for Dana. She must preserve her ancestors so that they can produce offspring, eventually leading, years later, to her birth. Thus, Dana must protect and save Rufus, her family. “Still, now I had a special reason for being glad I had been able to save him. After all... after all, what would have happened to me, to my mother’s family, if I hadn’t saved him?” (Butler 29) In modern day, it would be expected that one would of course want to protect their kin. Yet what happens when your family is oppressive to you, as Rufus becomes to Dana? Are they still family, and how are you supposed to act towards them?

What IS family?

           Margaret Weylin is faced with this dilemma due to her husband’s sexual abuse towards his slaves. Mrs. Weylin is painfully aware of the slave children who her husband fathered, yet must turn a blind eye to them. “They had different mothers, but there was a definite resemblance between them. I’d seen Margaret Weylin slap one of them hard across the face. The child had done nothing more than toddle into her path” (Butler 85). Margaret Weylin dealt with this grey area of family through violence, channelling her hurt and anger at her husband into abuse toward children that perhaps could have been hers.

           I have come to the conclusion that the title "Kindred" is filled with challenging of societal norms, double meanings, and irony. Butler challenged what it means to be kin in this novel, and the lengths we sometimes must go to protect our family. The title is also literal, in that Kindred is a story about family ties, family history, and what the definition of family is. We place such importance on kinship in our current society that we often forget about the grey area it can sometimes be accompanied by. This book was full of convoluted interactions and ideas about family, and I believe that Butler did this to remind us that family is often larger than we might think. Dana began in Kindred with one family member; her husband. However, through her experiences in the past, she gained family members in her actual ancestors, however violent they may have been, as well as gaining family in the slave community on the Weyland plantation. Kinship does not have to be the nuclear family that we believe it to be in America today. Family can be, as shown in the fourth dictionary definition, a "natural relationship or affinity".

Are We a Product of Our Environment?

            One of the key issues that Octavia Butler formulates an argument on in Kindred is the idea that all of us are a product of our environment. One of the great philosophical and psychological debates is the role that the environment plays on our development and whether or not we are shaped completely or partly by nature. In the novel, Butler is making the argument that we are almost entirely shaped by our environment, which she portrays through Kevin’s reaction and adaptation to being transported back in time.

            Kevin is the most vivid example of this concept coming to life through the transformation of his character throughout his time spent in the nineteenth century. In the beginning of the story, we are presented with an image of Kevin that is very caring for his wife and is willing to go through almost any hardship for her. Kevin recounts his sister’s assertion that she “wouldn’t have you (Dana) in her house – or me either if I married you” (Butler 110). In this way, he is demonstrating the hardships that he is going through to be with Dana by forswearing his family. While we see that he can be as loving as he is, it is unclear as to whether or not this particular trait, or any of his other traits were a product of his environment or his nature. As the story progresses however, we start to see a different image of Kevin as he is trapped in the past. This transformation is most pronounced when Kevin and Dana return to the present after Rufus almost shot them. Dana runs after Kevin to try to reason with him and when she touched him, she described him as having “glared at me as though I was some stranger who had dared to lay hands on him” (194). While this could be taken at face value alone, she goes on to compare the expression as “something I was used to seeing on Tom Weylin. Something closed and ugly” (194). These statements taken in conjunction reference a far greater implication than a reaction to a simple stranger. There is a strong implication that Kevin has picked up one of the parts of the south that he seemed dead set against when he first set foot there. He has picked up racist tendencies which are embodied in his reaction to Dana’s touch. He did not react that way because she may have seemed a stranger, but because she was black. He had become so influenced by the superiority of the whites in the past that his previously held ideals of equality were overridden. In this way, we was shaped by his environment, not at all by nature.

What is the Law?

The question of the law is brought up in “Eli, the Fanatic” with Eli taking one view on it and Tzuref taking a second. Eli sees the law as simply the law, albeit one that can be bended to fit certain circumstances. On the other hand, Tzuref sees the law as an ever changing set of dictates with some constants, mostly religious terms, which are to be endlessly reinterpreted to find the correct meaning of them. However, the reality of the law is seen to conform to neither of these views. Instead, the law is simply the rules that are put in place by the people with the power to enforce them.

            When talking trying to convince Tzuref to move, Eli argues that “‘It’s a matter of zoning…we didn’t make the laws’” (Roth 251) In this case, the law that Eli is arguing is truly the law because the American government had the power to force Tzuref to either move or be arrested if the case was brought up in court. When Tzuref queries “When is the law that is the law not the law” (Roth 251)? He is telling Eli that he believes that such a thing will not come to pass. Tzuref is saying that while that is the law in wording, it is not the word in truth because all laws are changing. In a way this is true, but that is because the law changes as those in power change. In this case, the zoning laws were not going to change in such a short period of time.

            The main problem with Tzuref’s arguments about the law was that he attached an ephemeral quality to them, saying that they do not really apply in the way that it seems they will and that they will not always be there. I think that this puts too much store into his religious teachings where the Talmud is created, but only creates laws that God has the power to exert over its breakers, particularly in Woodenton. While it is not wrong to abide by those rules, it is foolish to believe that they apply to all rules that are made by man.

Roth, Philip. Eli, the Fanatic. Goodbye, Columbus. Toronto: Bantam, 1969. N. pag. Print.

Divided Between Two Worlds

In The No Name Woman, Maxine Hong Kingston illustrates her Chinese heritage through a story regarding her aunt’s banishment from the family. The story is told through two different points of view, beginning with the cautionary version of the narrator’s mother. The narrator then imagines her aunt’s ordeal, including taking orders from a rapist and primping in order to lure in her man. However, Kingston’s best and most vivid fantasy is that of her aunt deciding to take her and her child’s life in order to spare them both a life without purpose.

The No Name Woman

Kingston depicts the No Name Woman wandering to a pigsty and giving birth to the child there; a symbol of her complete and utter banishment from her family and former life. After a brutal birth, the woman vows to “protect this child as she had protected its father” (Kingston 15). The logical conclusion of this vow is that she will take care of the child and raise it even without a family. However, in a strange twist of events “she picked up the baby and walked to the well” (Kingston 15). By taking her newborn daughter with her to the plunging depths of the well, the No Name Woman believed that she showed the utmost care as a mother. “Carrying the baby to the well was loving. Otherwise abandon it. Turn its face into the mud. Mothers who love their children take them along.” (Kingston 15) Kingston’s aunt truly believed that she was taking care of her daughter, so that she would not be forced to live a life without family and full of disgrace.

This idea of loving mothers taking their children along, whether it be to their death or not, draws a parallel to Kingston’s relationship with her own mother. Attempting to fit in to the American life that her mother brought her to, Kingston struggles to find the common ground between her heritage and her current society. “I have tried to turn myself American-feminine.... my aunt used a secret voice, a separate attentiveness” (Kingston 11). Like her aunt, the narrator also uses a ‘secret voice’, one voice of two mixed cultures trying to find her way. This is partly why the suicide scene is the most important of Kingston’s fantasies; it relates directly back to her experiences and struggles. Just as her aunt was torn between two worlds-- that of tradition and that of lust-- Kingston was divided by her American life and her Chinese heritage.

Torn

Due to the fact that everyone in her family refuses to tell her any details about her aunt, the narrator of “No Name Woman” has to imagine several possible scenarios behind the ruination and subsequent suicide that befell the young women. Given the setting, a Chinese village in the late 1920’s, both the narrator and reader can surmise that the aunt had no rights as a woman. Therefore, it is not surprising that she was to be severely punished for any indiscretion that the village witnessed. The question that the narrator wishes to answer is what the circumstances of her aunt’s life were prior to becoming pregnant. By imagining different ways in which her aunt’s life may have played out, the narrator reveals various societal injustices that made it nearly impossible for a woman to live her own life. Whether her pregnancy was the result of a rape or a romantic affair, the young woman in the story was never anything but a victim. The interpretation from the narrator that had the biggest impact on me was that in which her aunt was raped, probably repeatedly, by a man in the village and that that man was not only protected, but also free to chastise her the same as everyone else. In a gross contradiction, the “No Name Woman” has no choice but to obey orders given to her by men and that is what leads her to commit the adultery that causes her ruin.

This interpretation is powerful because it shows the extent to which a woman can be trapped by her conflicting roles, a feeling that can span across time as well as distance. First, the aunt knew her place below men, and second, she knew her duty to the husband whom the narrator imagines she had only known one night. Given the possibility of a man other than her husband requesting and/or demanding sex from her, there was no right answer; she had no power to say no to other men, despite that meaning her infidelity. As the narrator describes, “The other man was not, after all, much different from her husband. They both gave orders: she followed” (7). This line shows the complete lack of power that her aunt had. Furthermore, once the act of adultery was committed, the only one at fault was the aunt herself. Sadly, women are all too often seen as having some level of responsibility in being raped. Despite the extremity of the aunt’s situation, one can see how her story can parallel women from all different times and places. The feeling of being torn between opposing roles is relevant to every woman to some degree. As the narrator goes on to discuss her own dueling roles and identities as a Chinese-American girl, her aunt’s story in the context of having no clear choice is even more fitting. The narrator’s mother tells her stories with the purpose of teaching her or warning her, and she is able to take the stories and make them applicable to her own struggles.