One Vision, Two Women

Duality and comparison are recurring themes throughout Butler’s Kindred. Many haunting connections exist between, for example, Kevin and Weylin, Rufus and Kevin, and, perhaps most importantly, Alice and Dana. Alice and Dana were the duo that I found most interesting -- not only for their close but fraught relationship, but also for the direct action that their similitude takes in the novel. Not only does Rufus call them two “halves of the same woman”, but even they themselves acknowledge that they look very much alike. In Rufus’ mind, they’re only distinguished (according to Alice) by Alice’s presence in bed at night and Dana’s presence out of it in the day -- one half to sleep with, the other to talk to. One half for sexual “love”, the other for a more abstract, mental love. 
Even these rather uncomfortable distinctions, however, are blurred by the many similarities between them. Dana and Alice look so alike that Rufus can easily overcome any qualms he has with sleeping with the former, especially at the end of the novel when the latter commits suicide. The threat of rape hangs increasingly heavier over Dana’s head as time progresses, a situation which is made all the more horrifying when considering Rufus’ childhood relationship with Dana, his current sexual relationship with Alice, and Dana’s blood connection with him. 
In addition, Dana and Alice’s personalities and life experiences are relatively similar. Both are equipped with a sharp tongue (which Dana uses mostly against Rufus, and Alice uses mostly against Dana). Both are separated from their husbands, albeit through very different circumstances, both try to run away as a direct result of Rufus’ actions bringing on hopelessness (and Dana even compares her escape to Alice’s when she’s hunted down), and both have made suicide attempts to gain some sort of freedom. Alice even mentions that if she spoke to Rufus like Dana does (implying that she could, hypothetically, speak to Rufus like Dana, it is only that she chooses not to), he’d have her “hangin’ in the barn” (another example of some excellent and haunting Butler-shadowing). The only thing that really distinguishes their treatments of Rufus (determining which relationship is more physical and which one is more “mental”, per se) is their love for him. Thus, the only thing that makes Rufus see them differently is their freedom. 
Dana allows herself to love Rufus and kill him while Alice cannot. Alice is a slave; every aspect of her life is controlled and dictated by him. She has no control over the nature of their relationship, her freedom, or even her children. She doesn't even have the illusion of freedom like Dana, being technically a free woman as well as more respected (and perhaps even more loved?) by Rufus. Her lack of freedom prevents her from feeling any warmth towards Rufus -- in fact, she despises the idea, exclaiming before her death that she has to “go before I turn into what you are”. She resents what she sees Dana to be: a privileged black woman who, in her mind, wants to be white, and loves Rufus despite all the horrors she sees him committing. She’s less naive and far less blind to Rufus than Dana, who herself comes from a relatively sheltered past in the 1970s. Dana can barely see or comprehend what their relationship is evolving into and continues to love him, while Alice stoically (and, in her mind, heroically) continues to hate Rufus. Alice is perhaps a version of what Dana would have been if she would have been a slave (either by birth or sold to Weylin sometime earlier in the novel) instead of a free woman. And yet, Dana’s love for Rufus and his respect for her is what finally allows her to kill him, freeing her life from the clutches of the 19th century -- and perhaps even freeing Rufus himself. 

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