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Chapter 4: The Fight
Explanation and Analysis—Alice and Dana :
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.
Alice, who was previously brutally beaten and whipped after attempting to help her husband escape from slavery, has stopped actively fighting against Rufus. However, Dana notes that Alice has refused to allow Rufus into her heart, maintaining a strong hatred for him. “She forgave him nothing,” Dana notes, “forgot nothing, hated him as deeply as she loved Isaac.” Dana, in comparison, has a more complicated relationship to Rufus, whom she continues to feel affection for despite his cruel and deceptive treatment of her in the past. Further emphasizing these contrasts, Dana notes that she could not, despite caring for Rufus, allow him to sexually assault her, where Alice has learned to endure his abuse. Throughout the novel, Dana and Alice serve as parallels for each other, two women with different backgrounds who face similar violence on the Weylin Plantation.
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