Kindred

After reading Kindred by Octavia Butler, I was very moved about the abuse and sexual assault the women slaves had to endure. They had absolutely no power, and were victims of rape by the white slave owners, and then the hired help, when the master no longer had any use for them. They were considered possessions, without any feelings at all, and that is difficult to absorb. One example is when Jake Edwards had told Dana she was going to be doing the wash, and that Tess was going to the fields. “Poor Tess. Weylin had tired of her as a bed mate, and passed her casually to Edwards. She had been afraid Edwards would send her to the fields where he could keep an eye on her.” And Tess crying with fear, “You do everything they tell you, and they still treat you like an old dog. Go here, open your legs; go there, bust your back. What they care! I ain’t s’pose to have no feelin’s!” (pg. 181) Tess is powerless to change her situation.

Dana is very vulnerable being thrown back into 1815, and as a woman is very much at risk for the very same thing- the possibility of sexual assault, and it’s something women face in our times, also. Becoming a victim of sexual assault is an issue women have always had to deal with, and in Kindred, there was no legal system to protect a woman of color, as they weren’t even considered human beings, and as slaves, had no rights. And I should add, the legal system today, does not always protect a women when she is the victim of sexual assault. In the patriarchal society in Kindred, the white women had very few rights, either, and were merely appendages of their husbands and fathers. However, it was no comparison to what the black women suffered as slaves. I think Octavia Butler was able to truly convey in this book, the horrible injustices the women slaves were subjected to by their masters, and society as a whole in those times.