Kevin and Rufus (Part 2)

We’ve talked quite a bit in class about Kevin’s uncomfortable wedding proposal.

“How would you feel about getting married?” I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was. “You want to marry me?” “Yeah, don’t you want to marry me?” He grinned. “I’d let you type all my manuscripts.” I was drying our dinner dishes just then, and I threw the dish towel at him. He really had asked me to do some typing for him three times. I’d done it the first time, grudgingly, not telling him how much I hated typing, how I did all but the final drafts of my stories in longhand...The second time he asked, though, I told him, and I refused. He was annoyed. The third time when I refused again, he was angry.

 This, as well as other incidents, point to a power disparity between Kevin and Dana even in 1976, and suggest that perhaps the late 20th Century was not as progressive as we’d like to think. Kevin frequently expects Dana to do menial labor for him. She unpacks boxes while he sits in his office, and is washing and drying the dishes during this very conversation. However, it is more than this expectation that is problematic. It is that he not only expects her to do this work, but treats doing his menial labor as a privilege and expects her to be grateful for the opportunity. And by making this assumption it is clear that he does not care much at all about Dana as a person with opinions, feelings, and a career of her own. This reinforces the claim made by the article my group used for our panel presentation that the Western institution of marriage parallels slavery in that it is a commitment traditionally based on ownership and possession. Not only is an element of Kevin’s marriage proposal that Dana will do this work for him, but when Rufus asks Kevin if Dana belongs to him, he replies “In a way. She’s my wife.” Additionally, although one of Rufus’s takeaways from observing Kevin and Dana’s marriage is that an interracial relationship based at least partially on love is possible, he still thinks that if a white man wants to marry a black woman, her opinion and feelings regarding the relationship are irrelevant. When talking to Dana about Alice, he comments “If I lived in your time, I would have married her”. Would Alice have wanted to marry him? He doesn’t care.

A pointed parallel between Rufus and Kevin is that Rufus too asks Dana to write for him.

“I brought you here to write a few letters for me, not fight with me...I’ll tell you, I hate to write.” “You didn’t hate it six years ago.” “I didn’t have to do it then. I didn’t have eight or nine people all wanting answers, and wanting them now.” I twisted the pen in my hands. “You’ll never know how hard I worked in my own time to avoid doing jobs like this.”

Again, Dana is being asked by a white man to help him by writing words that are not entirely her own and that she will not receive credit for writing. That this is happening in the antebellum South as well as in 1976 highlights once again the power imbalance in Kevin and Dana’s relationship, and the ways in which race- and gender-based inequalities continue into the present. However, there are some key differences this time around. One of these is that instead of flat out refusing Rufus like she did Kevin, Dana agrees to do the work. There are several possible explanations for this. First of all, the stakes are much higher. It 1976, it was only Dana’s romantic relationship at stake. In the 1800s, Dana could see even more of the slaves on the Weylin plantation--many of whom she’s developed close relationships with--split up and sold to places even worse than where they are now. Additionally, by not complying with Rufus she is risking the continuation of his relationship with Alice, and therefore Hagar’s birth. Dana is put in the extremely uncomfortable position of having to help Rufus keep his plantation and perpetuate the system of slavery in order to ensure her own existence. Dana also talks about how she is horrified to find that she is adjusting to the 1800s and adopting a more submissive attitude. This factor, as well as fear for her personal safety, could also contribute to how she walked out of Kevin’s apartment in response to being asked to type his manuscripts, but agrees to help Rufus with his letters after minimal argument. It is also important to mention that Rufus, ironically, gives Dana more agency in this process and recognizes her feelings to a greater extent than Kevin did. She is writing the general message that he gives her, but has some freedom in how the letters are crafted. Rufus also recognizes how much she hates writing other people’s words and provides her with paper for her own use in exchange for writing for him. This contrast definitely does not help Kevin--whose motivations, attitudes, and actions were already questionable--in the reader’s eyes.