So we know that Rufus would have loved to marry Alice had he lived in the 1970's, but would Alice have agreed to marry him? This question has been nagging at me for basically the entire book long. I would like to think that Alice and Rufus could have been a normal, loving couple had they lived in a later time period, but something tells me that it's not as probable as I think. We know that a lot of Alice's hate for Rufus stems from his being white. At one point Alice says that she'd rather sleep with ten black men than with Rufus. But if Alice and Rufus had lived in the 1970's, these racial barriers wouldn't exist in the same way they existed in the ante-bellum slavery era. Well, that's what I thought when I was mid-way through the book.
The truth is that an interracial couple still wasn't normal in the 1970s, as we can see from Dana and Kevin's relationship. Dana and Kevin get looks from people and also have no family support when they want to get married. What's interesting is that Dana has a more extreme reaction than Kevin to her family not giving support. Kevin is one who just brushes these things off and could care less (he even says something along the lines of let's just pretend we don't have family), while Dana is actually concerned when her family isn't happy with the marriage. This reminds me of Rufus who could care less about how the people around him think of how he loves Alice and how Alice is concerned about her reputation. Of course the time period in which Alice and Rufus live in affects how Alice feels about Rufus, but if Alice had so much hatred towards Rufus because of his being white in that time, and there still is something weird about being an interracial couple in the 1970s, I think it is highly unprobable that Alice and Rufus could have been in a normal relationship in the 1970s.
It seems clear that Rufus holds onto this ideal vision of how things could be between he and Alice if . . . pretty much everything were totally different. And it's true that this is probably a fantasy. The Alice we know could never love Rufus, for a whole host of reasons--but foremost among them might be that he not only *fought* Isaac (a normal enough circumstance when two gentlemen vie for a lady's affections) but that, in her view, he essentially is responsible for Isaac being mutilated and sold into deep-South slavery. Not exactly the way to win the heart of your beloved.
ReplyDeleteWe're talking about questions that can't really be answered, of course, but it's crucial to me that Alice and Rufus were friends as children--this gives his otherwise questionable "love" for her at least some legitimate basis. They've been buddies since early childhood, and he *does* see her as a distinct individual that can't be replaced by any other. His grief at her death (and his remorse at the bonehead role he played in it) seems genuine. Maybe if *she* were allowed to grow up in a society that didn't include horrific scenes like the one we see her witnessing in that first chapter, she would've grown up to love him too. Who knows?