One of the abiding themes of Kindred is
the disturbing ease with which slavery can be accepted by individuals
and by a whole community of people. Dana suppresses her instincts
to rebel against slavery, especially after she has seen one man
whipped, and Butler suggests that it is the constant threat of violence
that forces people to accept it. The memory of Weylin’s brutality
forces Dana to stay calm, for example, when Margaret slaps her across
the face for sleeping in Kevin’s bed. Butler cites the threat of
emotional violence as another reason to knuckle under. Sarah, a
strong-willed and intelligent woman, tamps down her own fury to
keep her one remaining child close to her. The knowledge that Weylin
could sell off Carrie, as he sold off her sons, scares Sarah into
obedience. But Butler suggests that it is not just the threat of
physical and emotional violence that keeps slavery going. Rather,
she argues, people have an amazing and disquieting predisposition
to accept the status quo. Children observe their elders, figure
out the way things are, and behave accordingly. The children even
pretend to auction each other off. Although they do not consciously
realize what they are doing, they are preparing themselves at an
early age for a predictable life of slavery. Even outsiders find
it easy to accept a state of slavery. It should be nearly impossible
for Dana and Kevin, citizens of modern America, to adjust to 1800s
Maryland. Yet they do adjust, and with astonishing ease. By part 7 of
“The Fall,” Dana is feeling ashamed of her relationship with Kevin,
and Kevin is hinting that life on the plantation isn’t all that
bad. The natural human instinct to fit in, Butler suggests, makes
change difficult and rebellion almost unthinkable.
Because he is a white man, Kevin cannot see the Weylin
plantation as Dana sees it. In part, this is a literal failure to
see. Kevin is in the house, kept away from the day-to-day lives
of the slaves. He doesn’t observe, as Dana does, the whipping of
spirited slaves, the forced illiteracy of children who want to learn,
or the enduring pain of a mother who has lost her children. While
Dana and the other slaves get up while the whites are still sleeping
and stay awake, working, until after the whites have gone to bed,
Kevin is well rested, well fed, and bored. But Kevin’s failure to
see is also a failure of the imagination. Dana describes her husband
as a liberal, forward-thinking man. But even enlightened, twentieth-century
Kevin can block out the evil around him. Butler suggests that it
is easy to ignore injustice we don’t experience firsthand, even
when that injustice is happening right under our noses, and even
when people we love are the ones suffering that injustice. Kevin
stops far short of letting the Weylins off the hook, and he assures
Dana he doesn’t mean to minimize the horror of what’s going on around
them. Still, the fact that he doesn’t experience slavery in the
palpable, personal, and humiliating way that Dana does means that
he cannot fully understand it.
