Dana's Search for Identity

I want to extend on our discussion in class about how Dana was brought back into the reality of the 1810s to find her identity in her own reality and learn how to take care of herself. At the beginning of the novel, Dana has not yet found her place in the world. She does not take good care of her health. She gets little sleep, skips meals, and as a result Kevin tells her she looks “like she sleepwalks through the day” (53). Dana lives her life without really living it. She does not yet identify herself truly as a writer, remarking “what would a writer be doing working out of a slave market?” (53). She stands up for herself rather meekly when Buz teases her about her relationship with Kevin. She lives in a house that Kevin bought. She is even Kevin’s secretary temporarily. In certain ways she is a slave even before she is sent back to the antebellum south.

After Dana is brought back to Rufus’s time, she continues revealing her lack of confidence in herself and her identity. When she is beaten and about to be raped by the patrolman outside Alice’s cabin, she cannot quite bring herself to poke him in the eye and save herself. Afterward she claims that she would kill to protect herself from others like him but takes beatings from Tom Weylin and the overseer without fighting back. Dana does not identify herself as a slave. She even criticizes Sarah for giving in to slavery, but every day acts more and more the perfect slave herself because it makes it easier. She easily slips into the role of caregiver to everybody except herself. She takes unwarranted abuse from Alice and Rufus and forgives them every time. She makes threats toward Rufus, but never acts on them.

I think that when Dana stabs Rufus at the end of the novel, it represents how far she has come toward recognizing herself as someone worth saving. As she realizes that he plans to rape her, she does not immediately resist. She realizes "how easy it would be for [her] to continue to be still and forgive him even this” versus how “hard [it would be] to raise the knife” (260). She starts making excuses as to why it would not be so bad to let him have her. She tells herself he would not treat her as his father treated Tess. He would not beat her, he would not sell her. Ultimately, however, she realizes that “a slave is a slave” (260). If she lets him do this to her, their relationship will officially be of slave and master. She finally stands us for herself and her identity. She will not be a slave. And with the death of Rufus, her trips to his reality stop. She has found her identity.