Kindred

Alice and Dana serve as foils for each other throughout the novel. Alice is, Dana knows, her own ancestor, who will someday have a child named Hagar with Rufus, setting off a chain of events that eventually results in Dana’s own birth. Many characters note the physical resemblance between them, and Rufus even insists that they are one woman in two bodies. Dana, however, reflects on the profound differences between her and Alice, who was raised in the early 19th century: 

I stared out the window guiltily, feeling that I should have been more like Alice. She forgave him nothing, forgot nothing, hated him as deeply as she had loved Isaac. I didn’t blame her. But what good did her hating do? She couldn’t bring herself to run away again or to kill him and face her own death [...] She said, “My stomach just turns every time he puts his hands on me!” But she endured. Eventually, she would bear him at least one child. And as much as I cared for him, I would not have done that.

Cite this Quote