Marguerite and Lee

Marguerite in Libra is currently a mystery character to me. We don't get to see much of her, and when we do, everything just seems to add to her convoluted relationship with Lee.



The way DeLillo introduces Marguerite at the very beginning makes her seem like a relatively sympathetic mother in a bad situation, but still trying her best. This is right after the scene of Lee "playing hooky" on the trains, and he and Marguerite are sitting together watching TV. Lee is telling her about riding the trains, and Marguerite notes that it's okay to skip a day of school or two since the other kids bother Lee and he's likely to have "turbulence running through him," as a boy without a father.

"She sat and listened to the boy's complaints. She couldn't fry him a platter of chops any time he wanted but she wasn't tight with the lunch money and even gave him extra for a funnybook or subway ride" (4)

Hearing about Marguerite's multiple failed marriages and her low jobs also add on to make her seem like a mother who's also gone through some hard times but is still trying to stay supportive of Lee where she can.



Except that under the facade, Marguerite's character has some ambiguous quirks and weird flaws that aren't much highlighted in the book so far--but may be the reason for some of Lee's antagonism (in addition to just his asshole character):

Although we get some positive images of Marguerite's mothering, we also later learn that she sometimes leaves Lee in the orphanage for periods of time. The reason isn't given, but it seems rather strange to casually do this multiple times; it doesn't seem that they are quite destitute enough either, for a mother to leave her child this way.

In addition, Marguerite doesn't seem to really try and get Lee back in school for his benefit after receiving official notice of his skips. She just complains for "two hours in [a] high piping tone," not an effective or conscientious way or solving the problem (6). The long sections of Marguerite's rambling narrations to the ambiguous "your honor" are a similarly ranty, expressive, and rather untrustworthy side of the woman. In one single section she bemoans her family situation and wavers between unrelated (and probably untrue) assertions such as Lee buying her a parakeet with a planter and ivy and food etc. (48).

In class, Mr. Mitchell mentioned that Marguerite in the records is known to be a pretty weird person and tried to get off as much publicity as possible from Lee Harvey Oswald. She seems to a rather ambiguous character so far in Libra, but is definitely already showing her weird side--whatever future development comes to play, I'm on the side of taking everything Marguerite represents with a grain of salt.

Brutal birthdays

Unlike the usual happy and celebratory feeling associated with birthdays, birthdays and days of birth seem to be a bad omen in Kindred. 

We learn in the very first paragraph of The River (right after the prologue) that Dana's troubling time travels to the nineteenth century begin on her 26th birthday, June 9, 1976. This is small detail when we don't yet know who Rufus is or Dana's family history. I quickly skimmed over the fact until Dana realizes that Rufus and Alice are some of her great (times three or four) grandparents, and it became a conspicuous detail to start Dana's series of visits on her birthday.

Dana's birth becomes the crux of a central dilemma in the book. As we discussed in class, the worth and morality of Dana's existence and conception is called into question; she herself has to choose between facilitating the birth of her ancestors and trying to prevent it. It is obviously painful for her to push Alice along. Rufus' rape highlights an abundance of problems: the blind mindset of physically "owning" a person/body, the unfairness to Alice as a black female slave, even the plight of Rufus who loves Alice as a white man.

Understandably, Dana is super frustrated when she returns to the 1800's and Alice has had three children, two who are dead and none Hagar. It's a setback to any considerations of intervention between Alice and Rufus among other things. The lone baby Joe, however, looks white, which will place him in a different position than kids who are born looking black. Any children who look black enough have a big chance of becoming slaves.

Slave births are a strange, sweet-bitter type of event. Nigel's scene with Weylin in the middle of The Fight (161) is a perfect example. The parents are obviously happy about the baby, yet as Nigel says, Weylin is "one [n-word] richer" because of the child. And Nigel is also tied down to the plantation by one more person (Carrie being the other).

Births highlight the central racial issues in Kindred, and Octavia Butler sets a brutal trend with these examples. She reinforces the points by setting the novel during the nation's bicentennial, a reminder that with the birth of the US also developed a history of problematic slavery.