Blog 5: The Meaning of Kindred

The novel Kindred, by Octavia Butler portrays the protagonist Dana and her husband Kevin and their adaption to a slave era coming from the present time of 1976. Dana is African American and married to a white man Kevin, and they both time traveled back to Dana's ancestors life during the slave period. They are forced to morph into the society where most blacks are slaves forced to serve their white masters, and the masters have ultimate control. Dana and Kevin were born and grew up in a society where they had priviledges and people lived in peace despite the different races, which did not exist in the past. But after spending long periods of time in the past, they are able to adapt to the segregated and cruel society and have gotten used to the place to call it home. Kindred represent how humans can easily fit in and get used to changes in their society and environment, but they are capable of producing their own thoughts and perceptions despite social norms. Rufus, Dana's ancestor from the past who is a white slavemaster struggles to live in his society where whites are not supposed to see blacks as humans like themselves, and he has emotional bond towards black people and developed close relationships with them in which the society would see it as taboo.

Dana had stated, “I were losing my place here in my own time. Rufus's time was a sharper, stronger reality. The work was harder, the smells and tastes were stronger, the danger was greater, the pain was worse ... Rufus's time demanded things of me that had never been demanded before, and it could easily kill me if I did not meet its demands” (Butler 191 Kindle Edition). Thus even though Dana belongs to a completely different time period with a society that is different from Rufus’s time, she was starting to lose sense of belonging to a time period. Confused of what she felt like home. Dana had gotten used to living in the past, playing the role as an educated slave, and creating relationships with the people there that she felt like she is capable of calling it home, and feeling like she can belong there. That shows that no matter how used to we are living our familiar lives day by day, our society is subject to change, and when change does happen, we are forced to comply and we will eventually adapt to it in order to survive and fit in.

Works Cited

Butler, Octavia. Kindred. Bostons Massachusetts: Beacon Press, 1979. Kindle Edition.

Blog 6: If He Hollers, Let Him Go by Chester Himes

Catharsis seems to happen in the scene where Bob accidentally gets locked up in a room with Madge, and she uses that to her advantage and accuses Bob of rape. Madge screamed out, “Help! Help! My God, help me! Some white man, help me! I’m being raped” (Himes 180). During this moment, we feel emotions of pity and fear. We dread the consequences of the accusation and feel sorry for Bob that he gets accused of a crime he did not commit. There’s a tension and suspense present, in a conflict between a black man and a white woman.  The fact that she called out for a “white man” to help her indicates that right at this moment she has power over Bob, and he is helpless because he knows society will never side with him. “Coloured” people like Bob aren’t even considered human, thus anything they say may be considered lies. In this moment, he is deprived of his masculinity and his pride. The anagnorisis seems to happen before this scene, where Bob has a long talk with Alice about their future. In this scene, Bob saw a future of him getting married and having children, realizing that perhaps deep inside him he wanted a family of his own. Thus he changed his mind and considered settling down with Alice, to marry her and start a family in which he never thought of before for he was against the idea of marrying Alice.

Works Cited

Himes, Chester. If He Hollers, Let Him Go. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1986. Print.

Blog 2-Ruth Hall: Absence of Sympathy

In the novel Ruth Hall by Fanny Fern, what caught my attention is the absence or lack of sympathy from Ruth’s family members and friends. It seems as though the feelings and emotions of compassion for Ruth are non-existent when Ruth became widowed and fell into poverty, and was struggling single handedly to make a living for herself and her daughters Katy and Nettie. I felt furious when Ruth’s immediate family members are reluctant to help her, for I had hoped that they would be the ones at least sane enough to sympathize with Ruth and help her as a moral human being. But many of Ruth’s so called “family” and “friends” in the novel lack sympathy, and they are selfish, ignorant, prideful, and egocentric. Truthfully, they could probably care less if Ruth and her family became homeless.

Ruth’s parents-in-law Mr. and Mrs. Hall and family are clearly selfish. The Halls despise Ruth so it is obvious that they do not sympathize for her since the beginning. There was an absence of sympathy from the time Harry and Daisy passed away, to the time Ruth’s family fell close to poverty. The Halls will do something only for their self-interest. They will offer to financially “help” support Ruth for a certain amount of time (Kindle Locations 1348-1349), not out of goodwill, but for their own benefit to acquire their granddaughters and for a positive “Christian reputation” at their church community (Kindle Location 1373). As for Ruth’s father, he is only concerned about money. He is ignorant, and pretends not to know the hard situation Ruth is in, and refuses to be responsible for her. He sees Ruth not as his daughter, but as the Hall’s daughter because Ruth married into their family for Mr. Ellet claimed "when a man marries his children, they ought to be considered off his hands. I don't know why I should be called upon” (Kindle Locations 1355-1356). When he was forced to temporarily support Ruth, he saw Ruth and her daughters as a burden. Ruth’s brother Hyacinth and her so called “friends” are similar to Mr. Ellet, they are ignorant of Ruth’s situation and they’re also egocentric and prideful. Now that Ruth became “lower class”, they do not want to be acquainted with her because they are embarrassed. Drowning in wealth, they ignored Ruth’s situation and do not want to help. It’s sickening how Hyacinth marries a rich woman, and does not want to be associated with Ruth. His sister is non-existent to him. The disgusting part is how later on in the novel, Mr. Ellet tries to take credit for Ruth’s success because of his “good upbringing”, and Hyacinth boasts about Floy being “his” sister. 

Works Cited

Fern, Fanny. Ruth Hall: A Domestic Tale of the Present Time. Girlebooks, 2008. Kindle. 26 June 2012.

Blog 1:"Anger in the House: Fanny Fern's Ruth Hall and The Redrawing of Emotional Boundaries in Mid-Nineteenth Century America" by Linda Grassois and "Ruth Hall" by Fanny Fern

The article "Anger in the House: Fanny Fern's Ruth Hall and The Redrawing of Emotional Boundaries in Mid-Nineteenth Century America" by Linda Grassois is an article written based on the reactions of the readers to the novel “Ruth Hall” by Fanny Fern. The article contains arguments and debates on whether it is acceptable for women to express their anger, for women during that time did not really have the “right” to portray or be angry simply because they are women and not men. There were gender roles in society in which women and men were expected to act accordingly to the standards that are set for them, that indicate the acceptable and the unacceptable acts. Grassois wrote:

“The fact that so many people seized the opportunity to pronounce whether Fern's vitriolic depiction of undemocratic men was a criminal breach of moral ethics indicates just how contested the ideal of "womanly" behavior had become by the mid-nineteenth-century.  For what was ultimately at stake in the debate over Ruth Hall was whether a woman had the right to publicly express anger at men and still be deemed “womanly," respectable, and capable of  rational au-thorship. The herculean efforts both male and female reviewers made to en- force the disjunction between anger and womanhood betrays a lurking fear that emotional boundaries were being redrawn. Indeed, it is clear from the review-ers' anxious response that the public expression of women's anger signified a direct challenge to the maintenance of unequal gender roles and privileges” (Grassois p.253-254).

Thus it is believed that the novel “Ruth Hall” posed a threat to the social norm during that time, because it helped women realize their oppression to express their anger publicly and to wish for freedom from this oppression. Women can then see that the angry feelings that they’ve hidden because society claim is the “proper” thing to do for women, are indeed just and that they should have the right to express them openly. They will be aware of the gender role imbalance in society, and seek action. Grassois also mentioned in the article that the oppression of women is similar to that of a slave. 

In the novel “Ruth Hall”, Ruth Hall’s mother-in-law disliked her and had an expected set of standards on how a woman and proper wife should act, and was disappointed that Ruth did not know how to some of the household chores and looked down on her. Ruth’s mother-in-law stated “"It is a great pity you were not brought up properly," said she."I learned all that a girl should learn, before I married” (Kindle Locations 189-190). Ruth's mother-in-law kept telling Ruth the things that women are supposed to do and the things that they should not do, like reading "frivolous" novels. She will continue to meddle between Ruth and Harry, and tried to find every little thing that Ruth has done “wrong” and tries to keep controlling their lives. The doctor stated, “Ruth never says anything when you vex her, but there's a look in her eye which—well, Mis. Hall, it tells the whole story" (Kindle Locations 414-415). I believe Ruth knows for a fact that her in-laws disliked her and the way her mother-in-law kept trying to trouble Ruth angers her, but Ruth did not show her anger towards them even during the time Daisy and Harry passed away partly caused by the old doctor failing to help them on time. 


Works Cited

Fern, Fanny. Ruth Hall: A Domestic Tale of the Present Time. Girlebooks, 2008. Kindle. 26 June 2012.

Grasso, Linda. "Anger in the House: Fanny Fern's "Ruth Hall" and the Redrawing of Emotional Boundaries in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America" Studies in the American Renaissance , (1995), pp. 251-261. JSTOR. Web. 28 June 2012.