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Popular Culture Review
attempts to dominate her body and her personal identity, Dana thrusts a knife
into his side and back. By attacking Rufus, Dana preserves control over her own
body as well as her right to self-definition. Had she allowed Rufus to rape her,
she would have been psychologically burdened with his control over her present
and future identity as well as his role in the new history of her life.
In contrast, Dana’s great grandmother Alice had fewer options. When Rufus
rapes her, Alice lacks power to resist. Rufus robs Alice of control over herself,
and in so doing, he destroys Alice’s psychological wellbeing. Only able to resist
Rufus mentally, Alice chooses to hate, begrudge, and offer disdain in place of
affection. With someone else dominating her actions, Alice loses the ability to
determine her sense of self: “She didn’t kill him, but she seemed to die a
little.”"
Psychological survival involves maintaining a hope for the future during the
direst of situations. Alice’s hope and strength to mentally resist Rufus rested in
her children. When Rufus took them from her as a form of retaliation, she tied
rope around her neck and hung herself from the top beam of the bam. Because
she could not survive psychologically, she could not survive physically.
Kivrin also struggled to maintain hope in appalling circumstances. Upon
discovering she had mistakenly traveled to the most ghastly of times—England
during the Black Plague—Kivrin had little time to react. Charged with the task
of caring for plague victims, Kivrin encountered death’s mercilessness to an
extent for which she could not have prepared. As she cares for villagers, she
observes limbs turning black with internal bleeding, necks and inner legs
growing tumor-sized buboes overnight, and insides becoming gangrenous while
orifices spew the stench of rot. She must use her own dress to wipe victims’
vomit of blood and mucus while they become delirious with pain. Having
received inoculations in her future time, Kivrin is one of the few healthy enough
to care for all the villagers who eventually succumb to the plague’s assaults. The
victim list includes those to whom Kivrin became closest—Agnes, Rosemary,
and Eliv^s—the family who cared for her upon her arrival. Kivrin grows
especially close to six-year old Agnes with whose care she becomes responsible
during her stay with the family.
Terrified and lonely, Kivrin keeps herself alive psychologically by
maintaining hope. The heroism and devotion of Father Roche, the village priest,
encourages her as he sacrifices everything to care for the masses. While she
seeks clean water, lances buboes, finds food, cleans faces, and tries to comfort
the tormented, she records every emotion for the sake of her fellow historians in
2052. Across time and space she preserves the hope of the future, and reminds
herself that:
. . . there will be wonderful times after this. The Renaissance
and class reforms and music . . . There will be medicines and
people won’t have to die from this or smallpox or pneumonia.
And everyone will have enough to eat, and their houses will
be warm even in the winter.