Rufus Weylin and His Fickle State
The entirety of the novel shakily revolves around this relationship between Dana and Rufus. Dana is connected to him in the way that she tolerates him to some extent and is related to him by blood. Throughout Kindred, Dana has attempted to change Rufus's behavior. Seeing as he is a product of the slave-owning environment of the 1800s, Dana aims to prevent Rufus from growing into his abusive and strict father. While Rufus is an emotional, brutal, and selfish mess, Tom Weylin is a cold, predictable slaveholder. He tends to be quite impersonal and doesn't possess Rufus's affection for some of the slaves. Some might argue that Tom Weylin's style of slavery is preferable to Rufus's methods. Oftentimes, Rufus lets his attachments to some of his slaves skew his perspective, causing him to bend promises and destroy relationships. Examples of this mindset includes Rufus lying about sending the letters to Kevin (since he doesn't want Dana to leave him). In this way, Rufus uses his power as a white slave owner to manifest his beliefs and failing relationships, forcing his will upon other people. On the other hand, Tom Weylin maintains a "professional" relationship with his slaves. He doesn't try to create relationships with them, and instead creates a predictable atmosphere, which the slaves have grown accustomed to. The change from Rufus's father to Rufus yields unforeseen consequences, even with Rufus's good nature. He exploits the relationships he has with his slaves and although he cares about some of them in his own twisted way, he continually betrays and uses them to fulfill his own selfish needs.
Even after Dana's attempts to change Rufus for the better, Rufus echoes his father's first confrontation with Dana where he pointed a gun at her head, resulting in her being transported back to the 1900s. Towards the end of "The Fight," Rufus points a gun at Dana and Kevin, reverberating this memory from their past. Although he seems to be different from his father in terms of his attitude towards the slaves, this act of hostility suggests that Rufus may have his father's intentions at heart. Despite this fact, Rufus doesn't seem to want to hurt Dana (Dana even assumes Rufus doesn't have the heart to kill her). The text even states that Rufus was pointing the gun more at Kevin than at Dana. This interaction is an example of Rufus's unstable mentality and his need to control and manipulate everything around him. He can't deal with this type of rejection from Dana and others around him, including Alice.
Due to Dana's efforts to change Rufus's attitude towards slavery, it seems that he is now a man stuck between two worlds. He has some deranged mentality where he hopes of a world where he and Alice can be together, free of the judgement from their 19th century world. Rufus has loved Alice for a long time and recognizes that a world where that relationship exists is possible, seeing the same relationship he desires with Alice in Kevin and Dana. Unfortunately, the 1800s convention accepts the raping of a slave, but not a relationship between a white man and a slave. This impersonal relationship is commonplace and is seen in Tom Weylin, who rapes his slaves and has many of his children running around the plantation. The only way for Rufus to express his love for Alice in the system of his world is by raping her. Dana excuses this behavior to some extent, allowing him to fulfill his selfish desires and progress further into his twisted fantasy. Rufus acts only according to his own feelings, exploiting those who he claims to love the most.
Rufus can't even handle rejection from others, often resulting in his increased moodiness and emotional outbursts. During a conversation between Rufus and Dana about Rufus's continual raping of Alice (p. 163), he draws a similarity between Kevin and Dana's relationship and Rufus and Alice's relationship. The fact that he is unable to distinguish between these two relationships contributes to this idea of his emotional immaturity and selfish tendencies. He goes on to "share his pain" and "hurt [Dana] as he was hurting" (Butler 163). Rufus brings up the fact that Kevin hasn't responded to any of her letters, trying to make Dana feel worse about her own situation just so he can find some parallel between the two of them, hoping it will ease his own pain. While Rufus does have some redeeming qualities, he is often a selfish and fickle slave owner, exploiting and raping those he claims to love and leading others to disastrous ruin.
I think you make a really strong point that Rufus is jealous of the love that Kevin and Dana seems to have. It could partially be because Rufus almost looks up to Dana, and definitely respects her. She is like his moral compass, and feels bad when he inevitably cannot meet her standards. In his perfect world, he would be able to have his romantic needs met by Dana and his sexual ones met by Alice.
ReplyDeleteYour point that Rufus can't handle rejection from anyone is really interesting, considering the power and identity he has in his society at that time. Not only is he a white man, but he's also a slaveowner whose used to manipulating people that he owns. So when he's introduced to the concept of love between two people of different races, he can't really grasp it alongside everything he's been taught about slavery and the amount of power he yields. This just makes the story more complicated than it already is. Nice job on this post!
ReplyDeleteWhen you refer to Rufus "caring about" the enslaved people on his plantation "in his own twisted way," you make a good point about the impossible situation that Dana's influence puts him into: he does see himself as "caring for" Alice and Nigel and his own children, but he also cares very much about taking on the role he was born into in his culture--taking over the plantation from his father is literally his birthright. But his ability to create a "better" version of the system his father had embodied so fully is problematic--we might say that there IS no viable way to be a "good" slave-owner, and therefore Rufus's "caring" just makes him more insidious and manipulative. There are psychological aspects to his abuse of enslaved people that goes much deeper than his father--Tom Weylin will beat people for violating rules, but Rufus comes up with the uniquely evil "trick" where he tells Alice he's sold their children, in order to get her to do what he wants. Tom wouldn't "care" enough to come up with something so sick (it resembles the cover story Kevin comes up with for him and Dana, in many ways).
ReplyDeleteMy general stance on Rufus and Dana has always been that if Dana knew Rufus for a MUCH longer time, she could've changed him. However her sudden appearances and disappearances might have actually been the cause for him becoming relatively unstable. Like you mentioned, he is stuck in between two worlds; one where he believes he could love Alice and live a normal life with her, while the other world is his current time period. This juxtaposition of these two viewpoints was probably too much for him to handle at the young age, along with Dana's appearance and abandonment, is what probably caused him to be so unhinged compared to his father. That's just my theory though.
ReplyDeleteGreat post indeed! I like how you focus on different aspects of Rufus's personality. One thing I noticed in comparison to Tom, is that Tom has consistent moral rules that he follows. On the other hand, Rufus doesn't follow any consistent moral rules and just does whatever he wants constantly.
ReplyDeleteI think this is a good insight into Rufus' twisted, slightly-modern but mostly 1800s mentality. Another of Rufus' relationships that I think plays interestingly into the examination of his mentality is the one between him and his mother. Margaret absolutely dotes on Rufus, and while sometimes Rufus likes that attention, if he ever gets annoyed or tired of her, he doesn't hesitate to explode at her. We see this when Dana is reading to Rufus and Margaret keeps interrupting. Rufus does seem to care about Margaret somewhat, but shows no regard for her feelings or well-being, just what she can do for him. To me, this says that Rufus sees *all* of the people in his life through this abusive, manipulative and selfish lens, and as long as they are in a position where he can capitalize on his urges and wants without punishment, he will do so. It's not just a racial thing in Rufus' mind, although race does play a huge part in it. The black people and slaves that Rufus "cares" about are in the most dangerous position, as pretty much any treatment towards them is deemed ok by society. But Margaret can also be targeted by Rufus in some ways (never nearly as bad as what he does to the various black characters) because of her low standing in Tom Weylin's eyes, and because of how she would forgive Rufus pretty much anything.
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