A Woman's Ruins
26
Consequences of physical enslavement
plain
2019-05-14T04:51:55-07:00
Charlotte Temple and Dana both endured physical enslavement in different forms. Nevertheless, they were both enslaved by a male captivator and experienced serious and bodily consequences as a result of their physical confinement.
Here's what happened to Charlotte Temple:
After Charlotte was kicked out of the Farmhouse, she walks several miles in horrible weather conditions in inconvenient attire and finally seeks shelter at the Hovel. Charlotte gives birth to a baby girl and then reunites with Mrs. Beauchamp and Mr. Temple (her father).
And then: “She raised her eyes to heaven—and then closed them forever” (Rowson 87).
As a result of her physical enslavement and struggle, Charlotte loses her life, but dies as a martyr. She is then buried in Trinity Churchyard in New York. The notion that her body remains in New York is another demonstration of the ways in which she is physically enslaved to a foreign land that is not her home.
Although her body never finds its way back home in the novel, it becomes a site of pilgrimage in the "real world." (Coats 349).
Despite Charlotte Temple being a fictional character, Laura Coats claims that "Charlotte's grave becomes a symbol that embodies inequalities that emerged from a specific historical moment" (Coats 341). With that being said, the consequences of Charlotte's physical enslavement may have cost her her soul, but it granted her a milestone in history.
On the other hand, here's what happened to Dana:
Dana was enslaved to Rufus’s control over her and her travels. She was unable to leave the plantation because of his domination over as a “master,” who supposedly attempts to sympathise with her because he “needs” her to save his life. By the end of the novel, Rufus wants to keep Dana with him, but she is exhausted by his absurd treatment and intentions; in a moment where her physical safety is threatened by Rufus, she takes control of the events by killing him in self-defense and ends the torment once and for all.
When Dana stabs him,“his body went limp and leaden across me. I pushed him away somehow—everything but his hand still on my arm. Then I convulsed with terrible, wrenching sickness” (Butler 260).
Dana’s physical enslavement in this scenario is reflected in Rufus’s body literally weighing down on Dana’s. He manages to maintain his grip on her arm. Now that Dana feels like she is in danger, it opens the portal for her return home, but“something harder and stronger than Rufus’s hand clamped down on my arm, squeezing it, stiffening it, pressing into it—painlessly, at first—melting into it, meshing with it as though somehow my arm were being absorbed into something. Something cold and non-living” (Butler 261).
When Dana returns home (Los Angeles), she finds her arm caught in the wall of her living room.
The statement above does not only allow readers to envision the physical complications, but it also provides a metaphorical demonstration of Rufus's domination over Dana. The statement "painlessly, at first" may also be interpreted in terms of describing Dana's prior relationship with Rufus, where it was not as confining nor as painful (metaphorically and physically) as it is now.
Now that her arm is "absorbed into something," it is not only a matter of physical absorption; rather, it is a symbol of having become something else. Dana has embodied a new identity now that she has lost her arm.
That something is described as "cold and non-living", which also refers to Rufus's corpse.
Finally, when she pulled her arm,“there was an avalanche of pain, red impossible agony! And I screamed and screamed” (Butler 261).
Dana has to proceed with her life without an arm—an arm that is amputated and remains in the past—as the greatest consequence of her physical enslavement. In a greater sense, a part of her identity is severed.
Who would have thought you could actually get stuck in a wall? Here's Matteo Pugliese's "Blade" sculpture to help you visualize that.
Butler, Octavia E. Kindred. Beacon Press, 2009.
Rowson. Susanna. Charlotte Temple. 1794. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011.
Coats, Lauren. “Grave Matters: Susanna Rowson’s Sentimental Geographies.” Charlotte Temple: A Norton Critical Edition. 1st ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 2011. 327-349.
