Kindred: Style 1 key example

In a passage that exemplifies the novel’s reflections on the complexities of history, Dana notes her changing attitudes regarding Sarah, an enslaved woman who works as a cook on the Weylin plantation: 

She had done the safe thing—had accepted a life of slavery because she was afraid. She was the kind of woman who might have been called “mammy” in some other household. She was the kind of woman who would be held in contempt during the militant nineteen sixties [...] the frightened powerless woman who had already lost all she could stand to lose, and who knew as little about the freedom of the North as she knew about the hereafter. I looked down on her myself for a while. Moral superiority. Here was someone even less courageous than I was. That comforted me somehow.

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Rather than losing her life in multiple escape attempts, Sarah has largely “accepted a life of slavery” out of fear, and she works hard to keep the Weylin household running smoothly. Here, Dana notes that, in the “militant nineteen sixties,” many people would look down upon women such as Sarah, who do not seem to fit the mold of a brave and courageous freedom fighter. In fact, Dana acknowledges that she “looked down on her” during her earlier days on the plantation. However, Dana now has greater insight into the profound challenges and risks that women such as Sarah faced in their daily lives, as well as the often-fatal consequences of attempting to escape slavery by traveling to the north. Now, she understands that Sarah, like many other women of her time, has “already lost all she could stand to lose.” This is just one of many instances in which the novel reflects upon these historical complexities.