Throughout her journey, she discovers the true meaning of freedom when she is able to compare her own life to those who are in bondage on his father’s, Tom Weylin, plantation. The experience that Dana has in the antebellum south, tells a story of the slave trade in a fresh and innovative way. All the characters in the book have a pivotal role in the development of Dana, one in particular being Alice. Alice is the woman who must bear the child that will become Dana’s great-grandmother. Although she does not love Rufus, she must submit to him, which is a foreign concept for the 1976 mind frame of Dana. Butler creates a relationship between Dana and Alice that provides for the reader an understanding not only of a twentieth century black woman’s experiences in the antebellum south, but more importantly, a window into the a nineteenth century black woman’s life in slavery. It was necessary for Alice to be created because she presents a parallelism between the past and the present, revealing how they influence each other in areas such as: sexuality, the importance of motherhood, and definition of ones self in a repressive society. Thus, Octavia helps the contemporary reader understand 19th century America and the slave trade in greater detail.

The idea of sexuality for Dana is initially one that she feels comfortable with and has control over when she is in twentieth century California. Dana views sexual intercourse as a way of enjoyment and pleasure, much to the contrary of her foremother, Alice, whose sexuality creates pain and agony. In the beginning of the novel when Dana discusses when she first met her husband, Kevin, she talks about their first sexual contact in a way that possessed a certain amount of comfort and pleasure. “Sometime during the early hours of the next morning when we lay together, tired and content in my bed, I realized that I knew less about loneliness than I had thought” (57). So for Dana, sexuality was a way to be free and confident, because her environment didn’t suppress or abuse her. Conversely, Alice’s sexual world of vulnerability and victimization characterized the sexual experiences of the black woman during slavery. For Alice, she was faced with the grim reality that she would have to have sex with Rufus for her survival. She initially rejects Rufus, which exemplifies her need for the examples