Rufus's Confusing Personality
If there's one thing Octavia Butler is good at, it's creating a book that'll make you feel all sorts of different ways. Throughout Kindred, I struggled with my feelings about Rufus's character. How are you supposed to feel about a somewhat sympathetic slaveowner?
See, I'm kind of a softie. Not overly so, but I'm pretty easily touched when people are sweet or thoughtful or emotional, especially if they're not typically so. Rufus slowly coming to love his children and care for them touched me a little bit. By the last part, Joe was calling him Daddy. He wouldn't even entertain the idea of selling his children. I think he did mean to free them in the end, even though Dana forced his hand a bit. He was talking about sending Joe to school in the North and completely approved of educating him.
But that was really the nicest aspect of Rufus. He's a possessive person and won't let anyone he "loves" go. When he comes into possession of his father's plantation, he refuses to sell the slaves that have been around since he was young: Sarah, Nigel, etc. Similar to Alice, they were a central part of his community as a child and hold a "special place" in his heart. When the opportunity arises, he goes to extreme lengths to own Alice and complete his happy little plantation "family." He slowly wears her down until she "stop[s] hating me" (259). That way, she won't want to run away. And to reinforced it further, he pretends to sell Joe and Hagar as a threat of what would happen if Alice ran away.
Rufus doesn't want to tell Alice that her children will eventually be free, and he doesn't want to provide them with enough knowledge to run. He's quite used to getting everything he wants in life, and slaves are no exception. He knows that Alice doesn't want to be with him even though she's more or less come to terms with it, and if he freed her, there's no reason she would necessarily stay with him. In fact, it may not even be socially acceptable to stay with him, as consensual interracial relationships weren't exactly a thing in the 1800s. Rufus knows that the only way he can have Alice is owning her.
Perhaps Alice would have been more willing to stick around had Rufus showed her papers guaranteeing their children's freedom. Then again, perhaps she wouldn't have. I can't entirely get into her mindset, but her children were the most important thing to her. That much is clear when she kills herself after believing Rufus sold them.
So Rufus doesn't have the best track record going for him. But if you bring the issue of his father into the picture, it gets a tad bit more complicated. Tom Weylin wasn't the worst slave owner, but compared to Rufus, he was rather cruel. Rufus explicitly states he doesn't wish to sell any of his slaves, and I believe he doesn't because he's rather attached to many of them and as we've seen already, he likes to keep things he's attached to. Tom Weylin functions on a purely economic basis, selling slaves when it's necessary to keep his finances afloat. He's more willing to whip and punish slaves than Rufus is, but that doesn't mean Rufus doesn't punish slaves.
Rufus may not want to beat his slaves, but he still does because he has to in order to maintain his authority as the master. It's sick, but if Rufus was too kind to the slaves and didn't punish them for running away (the only time we ever see him whip slaves), there wouldn't be any consequences for the slaves. Running away would become very popular very quickly, and Rufus can't take that economic loss. And don't forget that he still has a merciless overseer running his fields and whipping slaves every day. He's still a slave owner in the end, and there's no such thing as a good slave owner.
So much of Rufus's personality is due to the time period he lived in: his possessiveness would certainly be somewhat reduced if he was living in an era without slavery. But if he had lived in the 1970s with Dana, I think he would have been an abusive and manipulative person all the same.
Still, Rufus does have a human side somewhere. We know he wasn't always a twisted person who does disgusting things to get what he wants. Watching him grow up through different windows into his life let us see the years before his father seriously affected him, before he fully understood the world around him. Rufus had the potential to be a decent person, and I think that's why I feel so conflicted about him. I see the parts of him that could have made him better, but I also see the horrible things he's done to the people around him.
I wonder how he would have raised Joe and Hagar had Dana not killed him -- would he have been kind? Would he have freed them? Part of me hopes he would, but the rest of me is glad I don't have to know.
See, I'm kind of a softie. Not overly so, but I'm pretty easily touched when people are sweet or thoughtful or emotional, especially if they're not typically so. Rufus slowly coming to love his children and care for them touched me a little bit. By the last part, Joe was calling him Daddy. He wouldn't even entertain the idea of selling his children. I think he did mean to free them in the end, even though Dana forced his hand a bit. He was talking about sending Joe to school in the North and completely approved of educating him.
But that was really the nicest aspect of Rufus. He's a possessive person and won't let anyone he "loves" go. When he comes into possession of his father's plantation, he refuses to sell the slaves that have been around since he was young: Sarah, Nigel, etc. Similar to Alice, they were a central part of his community as a child and hold a "special place" in his heart. When the opportunity arises, he goes to extreme lengths to own Alice and complete his happy little plantation "family." He slowly wears her down until she "stop[s] hating me" (259). That way, she won't want to run away. And to reinforced it further, he pretends to sell Joe and Hagar as a threat of what would happen if Alice ran away.
Rufus doesn't want to tell Alice that her children will eventually be free, and he doesn't want to provide them with enough knowledge to run. He's quite used to getting everything he wants in life, and slaves are no exception. He knows that Alice doesn't want to be with him even though she's more or less come to terms with it, and if he freed her, there's no reason she would necessarily stay with him. In fact, it may not even be socially acceptable to stay with him, as consensual interracial relationships weren't exactly a thing in the 1800s. Rufus knows that the only way he can have Alice is owning her.
Perhaps Alice would have been more willing to stick around had Rufus showed her papers guaranteeing their children's freedom. Then again, perhaps she wouldn't have. I can't entirely get into her mindset, but her children were the most important thing to her. That much is clear when she kills herself after believing Rufus sold them.
So Rufus doesn't have the best track record going for him. But if you bring the issue of his father into the picture, it gets a tad bit more complicated. Tom Weylin wasn't the worst slave owner, but compared to Rufus, he was rather cruel. Rufus explicitly states he doesn't wish to sell any of his slaves, and I believe he doesn't because he's rather attached to many of them and as we've seen already, he likes to keep things he's attached to. Tom Weylin functions on a purely economic basis, selling slaves when it's necessary to keep his finances afloat. He's more willing to whip and punish slaves than Rufus is, but that doesn't mean Rufus doesn't punish slaves.
Rufus may not want to beat his slaves, but he still does because he has to in order to maintain his authority as the master. It's sick, but if Rufus was too kind to the slaves and didn't punish them for running away (the only time we ever see him whip slaves), there wouldn't be any consequences for the slaves. Running away would become very popular very quickly, and Rufus can't take that economic loss. And don't forget that he still has a merciless overseer running his fields and whipping slaves every day. He's still a slave owner in the end, and there's no such thing as a good slave owner.
So much of Rufus's personality is due to the time period he lived in: his possessiveness would certainly be somewhat reduced if he was living in an era without slavery. But if he had lived in the 1970s with Dana, I think he would have been an abusive and manipulative person all the same.
Still, Rufus does have a human side somewhere. We know he wasn't always a twisted person who does disgusting things to get what he wants. Watching him grow up through different windows into his life let us see the years before his father seriously affected him, before he fully understood the world around him. Rufus had the potential to be a decent person, and I think that's why I feel so conflicted about him. I see the parts of him that could have made him better, but I also see the horrible things he's done to the people around him.
I wonder how he would have raised Joe and Hagar had Dana not killed him -- would he have been kind? Would he have freed them? Part of me hopes he would, but the rest of me is glad I don't have to know.
I agree that it was extremely difficult to know how to feel about Rufus throughout the entire book. It got particularly difficult as he got older and became the master of the house, as his possessive side began to come out much more. It's hard to characterize him as a monster, but it's also hard to characterize him as a decent human being. His actions are a mixed bag of good actions and really bad, possessive, selfish actions, which makes it hard to have a firm opinion on him. I would say that if he hadn't grown up in the slavery era he wouldn't be selfish and possessive to the degree that he was in the 1800s, but that may also be a result of him not having the same power of people as he had in the slavery era. In other words, he could have the same selfish, possessive, motives had he grown up in a different era, but he just wouldn't have been able to carry out his intentions because society wouldn't give him the power to do so.
ReplyDeleteThis was also something that I discussed in my blog and I agree that Rufus had so many different sides to him. It was hard to figure out what kind of person he was and how he would act at times. To me, he was a pretty unpredictable person and thats why I would always be nervous during Dana and Rufus' interactions. However, it was nice to read the parts when Rufus seemed to show more of his humanistic side, for example, when he would talk about his children or Alice in a loving way. It was endearing to see Rufus become awkward around his kid because the child opened up a soft side of him.
ReplyDeleteIt is very confusing how Butler made it possible to sympathize with a slave owner. I don't know about other people, but I wanted things to go well for Rufus, at least in the sense that he learns to cope with Alice's death and raise his children so that they turn out decent people. But then looking back on that, I realize that things going well for Rufus still means that he is running the plantation as a slave owner, living his "happy" life of having total control over everyone around him. It's just incredibly unclear how we're supposed to feel about Rufus. And if he were living in more modern times? I feel like I'd have to agree with you that Rufus would probably still be Not Great. If we're seeing the "modern man" Kevin trying to demand that Dana do his correspondence for him, I can't imagine what Rufus would be doing.
ReplyDeleteIt feels to me like even if Rufus did love his children, he'd never bring himself to free him. In fact, maybe not even "even". I suspect that he might be less willing to free them if he loved them, because we see throughout the novel exactly what Rufus' idea of love is, and it's to never let something out of his grasp.
ReplyDeleteI think that Dana is somewhat of a "softie" as well, in her tendency to keep trying to see the best in Rufus. And I think it's possible to have some genuine sympathy for Rufus without somehow justifying or rationalizing slavery. One effect of this novel, for me, is that it doesn't make it seem remotely appealing to be either slave or master in this arrangement--the white people (the Weylins) in this novel are as messed up by slavery as the black people (in different ways). There's no sense in which we think, "It would be pretty sweet to be a Weylin." Their family dynamic is miserable, abusive, dysfunctional, and Rufus's "softer" qualities only make him more confusing and more sadistic as a slaveowner, in so far as his abuse of Dana and Alice has a psychological and emotional dimension that Tom's doesn't have. We can feel bad for him that he has to live out his life in the role of a white man during the slavery era, and to some extent feel and affirm his longing to live in a more progressive era. And yet he's trapped within his era, and in the end fully defined by it.
ReplyDeleteThe issue with Rufus' character though is the fact that he is not willing enough to let go the things he's attached to. We've seen it time and again with the way he tries to keep Dana from leaving and wants to make sure he ends up with Alice in the end. While yes he is attached to his slaves and likes his children, which is more than can be said for his father, that attachment can go too far.
ReplyDeleteI found your point about Rufus being possessive to be really on the nose about the complexity of his character. I'd imagine some of his desire to control those he "loves" is a result of his upbringing and his father's abuse. However, I think that another contributing factor is that he has grown up in a society that normalizes owning humans. That sort of mindset could easily overlap into possessiveness in other relationships and not knowing how to otherwise interact with people.
ReplyDelete