In their panel presentation, Will, Maia, and Shruti suggested that Sarah may represent a mammy like figure. I certainly did not agree with this, Sarah doesn't portray much of the stereotypical values of a mammy figure. Sarah may work in the kitchen in the house, but she doesn't play a major role in raising Rufus, and she has a deep hatred for Master Weylin rather than submission. After contemplating the thought that there may be representation of stereotypical mammy figure in the novel, I found that Dana appears to fit the mammy role.
Dana plays a large role in the raising and upbringing of Rufus. Even though she travels in time between the 19th century and the 20th century, Dana manages to see Rufus through numerous parts in childhood. Even in those short times, she seems to play a larger role than his own mother in his life. She saves his life as a child twice, when he is sick she stays with him and reads to him. She watches him grow up and tends to him, knowing that one day he'll grow up to follow in the foot steps of his father. Yet even though she knows this she hopes that somehow, she might have made a difference and just might be a little different. This can be seen when she tells Rufus not to call her a nigger. She is attempting to change his views on black people.
Further more to fit her mammy role, Dana is submissive to the will of Rufus. She may argue with him and say that she disagrees with his choices but at the end of it all, she has to remember that he is in charge and she has no say over what he does. Despite this dislike of his actions and his disregard of what she has to say, Dana still loves him. Dana still treats him with the utmost respect. Her going to Alice and telling her to go to him, further more shows just how submissive Dana was to Rufus. When Dana did call Rufus out on the things he was doing, such as selling Tess, he quickly snapped at her and she re-assumed her role.
Dana is the representative of a stereotypical mammy in the novel. She tends to Rufus and cares for him as a child, raising him and hoping that he won't be like his father. All the work that Dana does is in the house or in the kitchen, she only works in the field for one day. She is very submissive to Rufus, yet does not hold him in regard as her master, she sees him as family (which he is), but family that has authority over her. She fits the role almost to a tee.
This is a really interesting possibility to think about, and in some ways this view of Dana reflects the way some of the other slaves on the plantation view her "special" status in the household. It's true that she takes on this stereotypically blurred role w/ Rufus, inflected with real maternal feeling and a sense of responisibility.
ReplyDelete(And note that Dana herself suggests that some people in the 1960s would have *called* Sarah a "mammy figure," but Dana herself sees her in greater depth, understanding her *reasons* for her placative attitude as desperately trying to hold onto the one child remaining to her. Butler gives us a *social context* to understand the derided "mammy" in, to see her as more than the stereotype.