Time and Self
81
situations help them prepare for survival in the past. Initially, their plans for the
future revolve primarily around physical survival. Kivrin, a young historian,
plans in detail. She dirties her fingers and weaves her own dress. She learns
Middle English and how to milk a cow. She grows her hair long and practices
medieval table manners.
In Kindred, Dana also makes plans for her journey to the past. Once Dana
has been back twice, she prepares a knapsack with items she knows she will
need: aspirin, a toothbrush, maps of Maryland, and a knife. After being treated
poorly by Rufus and his father, Tom Weylin, Dana foresees herself escaping
from the plantation. She carefully prepares every detail only to be discovered by
Rufus and Tom a couple of hours later and brutally whipped for her attempt.
Through the pain she realizes, “Nothing in my education or knowledge of the
future had helped me escape.”^ Dana knows of events that will take place
decades from now, but one’s ability to predict the near future depends on one’s
knowledge of the present. She contrasts herself with Harriet Tubman, who,
without knowing how to read or write led 19 people to freedom. As a stranger in
antebellum Maryland, Dana must immerse herself within her new present if she
hopes to survive for her future self
Only intimate experience within a particular time supplies the necessary
foundation for predicting the future. Kivrin dedicated herself to studying life in
the Middle Ages, but when she arrives, her hands are too soft, her dress is of too
fine a weave, and her Middle English inflections are wrong. “I’ve been thinking
about how you were right, Mr. Dunworthy,” Kivrin prays into her recorder, “I
wasn’t prepared at all, and everything’s completely different from the way I
thought it would be.”^
Despite their shortcomings, Kivrin and Dana fit in well enough to survive
physically only to discover that true survival is psychological. A person controls
only one body, so psychological survival hinges on one’s ability to act
independently both in the present and the future. Independent choice is key to
identity development, and in this way, plantation living challenges Dana’s
autonomy. Because she’s black, when she travels to antebellum Maryland, she
adopts the identity of a slave. She chooses this role as a means to survive, but
she struggles to be her own master while assuming the guise of a servant. When
her great grandfather Rufus tries to force the role of slave upon her through rape,
she fights against him to prevent irreversible trauma to her sense of self Each
time she travels to the past, she travels with certain expectations. She and Rufus
have established an unspoken agreement to allow her enough freedom where
living looks better than killing or dying. Her husband Kevin, who traveled to
Maryland with Dana on her third trip, asked if Rufus treated her the way he
treated other slaves. Dana believed that no matter what her great grandfather
was capable of, he was not capable of raping her. When he betrayed her
expectations and threatened her singularity, she had to reevaluate personal
expectations of her self “I could accept him as my ancestor, my y ounger
brother, my friend, but not as my master, and not as my lover.”*®When Rufus