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• 1 2018-05-01T10:31:48-07:00 Man is the Center of the Universe 6 Consequences of Emotional Enslavement plain 2018-05-21T17:19:10-07:00 Both Dana and Charlotte are similarly subjected to emotional slavery. One major similarity between them is that both Charlotte and Dana are manipulated and enslaved to men they care about. This male-centeredness echoes aspects of humanism, in terms of Man, as a gender, being the focus of these women’s universe – their emotional enslavement is centered around these men.
  
  
  
  However, there seems to be a defining difference between the two female protagonists. Charlotte remains passive and unaware, even on her deathbed, while Dana tries to fight this form of enslavement and partially succeeds to free herself from this emotional enslavement by killing Rufus in self-defense at the end of Kindred. Charlotte dies innocent at the end, naïve even to her own physical state. When asked how she feels, she replies, “Why better, much better” (Rowson 86), whilst only having a few hours to live. She dies in a state of weariness. In Dana’s case, she overcomes the attachment between her and Rufus when she realises: “I realized how easy it would be for me to continue to be still and forgive him even this” (Butler 259). She does, to an extent, break free from her emotional enslavement, and thus, her physical confinement in the past.
  
  Butler, Octavia E. Kindred. Beacon Press, 2009.
  Rowson. Susanna. Charlotte Temple. 1794. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011.