I love you, Mammy
In Kindred, one of the main issues of social enslavement that Dana faces as she travels back into slavery-era America is the subconscious mimicking of what society expects of her race in terms of behavior. Ever since Dana first travels back in time, she is bombarded with speculations about the way she dresses and the way she talks. Her way of talking is connected to "white people," which puts her in danger. Even child Rufus questions Dana's way of speaking by asking her "why you try to talk like white folks?”(Butler 74). Dana is being scrutinized in every aspect, including the way she speaks and the way she dresses. Though she works to retain a sense of her identity as a strong black woman in late twentieth-century America, as a result of her emotional and physical enslavement in 1815 Maryland, Dana ends up conforming to and portraying the part of the slave she is expected to be."We're going to have to fit in as best we can with the people here for as long as we have to stay. That means we're going to have to play the roles you gave us” (Butler 65).
The century that Dana comes from does not have the vast difference in powers between blacks and whites Americans, yet when she goes back to her ancestors time she is introduced to the idea of the social and racial hierarchy that she is expected to abide by.
Eventually, the longer she spends in nineteenth-century Maryland, Dana adapts and almost obliviously fills the shoes of the black slave that she is expected to be and performing the role of the mammy that she had worked to avoid.
After spending months on the plantation of her ancestor, Dana starts to fulfill the household chores that were given to the 'slaves'. This is self-preservation, but it has consequences. Dana continues being judged even after she fits in with the others since even Alice ends up fighting with Dana and accuses her of being a slave to Margaret Weylin since Alice tells Dana, "you don't want to hear me, get out of here. The way you always suckin' up to that woman is enough to make a body sick” (Butler 199).“If you two don’t get yourselves into the house with that food …!”
"You sound just like Sarah." (Butler 159)
Despite her persistence about being a free person who is neither a slave nor owned by anyone, she nonetheless mimicks the other slaves and the mammy through the way she speaks and acts. The role of the mammy is expected of Dana in one of the scenes where Alice bursts out at her again and tells her to "do your job! Go tell him! That's what you for—to help white folks keep n—s down. That's why he sent you to me. They be calling you mammy in a few years” (Butler 167). Even Alice can see that Dana is abiding by the roles of society and turning into a mini version of Sarah, where soon Dana herself will become the mammy.
The picture above shows the transition that Dana undergoes through the novel, where Dana gets rid of her "white people" clothes that resemble those of men (because it was unusual for a woman to get dressed in pants) and starts wearing a dress just like she is expected to. The shackles around her hands in the picture are another example of the societal slavery that she is facing, in this case, the necessity of conforming to societal standards of dress.
When Dana and Kevin are both sicked through time, Dana tries to convince Kevin that they have to pretend "to play the roles," yet what disturbs Dana most is that as some point she stops pretending and actually starts becoming what she once only pretended to be.
