I think that this kind of use of an element to explore an aspect of humanity, by putting someone with the values and ethics of the late 1900’s into the previous century is an interesting philosophical and psychological exercise, I don’t think she wrote it to create an imaginary universe, I think she used that element to put someone like herself back in that time and see how it felt. When I think of fantasy, I think of something magical, a world that isn’t like our own, but I think here, it’s not a fantasy world at all, it’s a woman from today (except that it was written in the 70’s) experiencing life back in the 1800’s and everyone else there is from that era. We can imagine how that would have stretched the imagination of the author and the challenges that created for her, grappling with what she discovered there, with what she was becoming aware of. It’s a thought-provoking novel that uses that element of fantasy to place a woman of the 1970’s into the 1800’s to look at that life and legacy from the inside out.
But he wanted me around – someone to talk to, someone who would listen to him and care what he said, care about him.Īnd I did. It was that destructive single-minded love of his. I looked at him again and let myself understand.
Rufus is the son of the plantation owner, the person Dana is connected to, as he ages and becomes more like his father, she struggles to rationalise her feelings towards him. Not that I wanted us to have trouble, but it seemed as though we should have had a harder time adjusting to this particular segment of history – adjusting to our places in the householder of a slaveholder. That disturbed me too when I thought about it. The longer Dana stays, the more she begins to feel part of the household, familiar and accepting. Butler transports a modern women, someone like her in fact, back in time, and makes us feel what life was like in 1815, showing us how someone from our own time might cope if sent back there, knowing what we know now. Levy looks at slavery through the eyes of a slave and does so with both humour and distaste. It reminded me of Andrea Levy’s story of slavery in the Jamaican plantations Long Songboth writer’s had a similar objective, to get inside the world of their ancestors, to imagine those voices that hadn’t been able to record their perspectives and feelings. It’s a riveting account, putting a modern woman into an era where her attitude, education and way of being in the world are a danger to herself. Until the next time his life is danger and she is called back again.
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She must try and survive while she is there and figure out how to return to her own life. The child is Rufus, it is 1815 in Maryland and Dana has time-travelled (without explanation) to an era where her liberties are severely constrained, to save the life of an ancestor. Before me was a wide tranquil river, and near the middle of that river was a child splashing, screaming … On her 26th birthday, something strange happens, she feels dizzy and nauseated, the room blurs and darkens around her, symptoms she will come to recognise with horror, signalling she is about to be transported back in time. She is a Black woman writer married to a white man, a writer named Kevin. It is 1976 and Dana is remembering everything that happened leading up to that moment. After reading the first line, I was ready for something brutal to occur. The novel begins with a shocking revelation, that immediately puts the reader on guard. She uses that element of fantasy to transport a character back to that historical period. I guess it was the science-fiction label that stopped me reading her until now, having read Kindred her best-known work, I understand why Butler refers to this particular novel not as science fiction, but fantasy. Butler for some time, she was one of the most well-known African-American science fiction writers, with a reputation akin to the likes of Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou who sadly passed away at the age of 58 in 2006.
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