her world and Xuela has to find a way to account for this when she herself has had no experience of it--especially not from her father.
Sethe, on the other hand, recognizes that her mother's basic decision to avoid attachment (though it was largely forced on her) was clearheaded and logical. Her children were the results of rape and, more importantly, she and her children could be permanently separated at any time without a moment's notice. The decision to repress whatever love and attachment she felt was briefly broken when she came, if Sethe was not dreaming it, to see her child for a moment in the middle of the night. Thus Sethe's decision about love might have been similar to her mother's except that she makes the mistake of taking her situation at Sweet Home for granted and fails to calculate the chance that things might change. She deliberately chooses a husband who works for his mother's freedom and shows a commitment to his family, and she is proud that she will be able to provide her children with a grandparent and a father. When the horrifying changes come to Sweet Home Sethe realizes, too late, that she is left with no choice but to opt for the freedom of escape.
Xuela performs an intellectual analysis of the world in which she lives. She concludes that this world is populated by slave
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