For my final research project I’m interested in doing a long wiki on traditional Southern Women, focusing on Dilsey from The Sound and The Fury and Granny from The Unvanquished. Though these women are from different stories and different races, they both share many of the same characteristics of a southern woman that we do not see in other lead female characters like Mrs. Compson, Caddy, Drusilla, Lena or Joanna. Unlike all those women, Granny and Dilsey are steadfast in their Christian and southern values. I will be looking at different characteristics such as protecting and providing for family members, taking on traditionally male roles, and touch on the overall Christian themes found in both characters. I will also be expanding on one of my earlier blogs and looking at both Granny’s and Dilsey’s pivotal church scenes.

Though I may mention other characters from Light in August, I plan to use The Sound and The Fury and The Unvanquished as my primary texts. As far as secondary sources I will be likely go through the Hunter College Library and use the databases Project Muse, Google Scholar, and JSTOR.

For my final project I would like to write about the presence of fascism within Faulkner’s works. It is interesting because the concept of fascism did not gain prominence until the early 20th century, but Faulkner’s Mississippi before, during, and right after the Civil War was abundant with the ideas of it. The most noticeable parallels between World War I’s fascism and that of the south’s during the Civil War is the notion that “the advent of total war and the total mass mobilization of society had broken down the distinction between civilians and combatants. A “military citizenship” arose in which all citizens were involved with the military in some manner during the war.” This, and the attitude of the people in the South towards “carpetbaggers” are startlingly close to the fascism that arose in Italy and then throughout Europe. Since both of these works were written and published after world war I, is Faulkner making the statement that the South, specifically Mississippi, was the real birthplace of fascism? How else can Faulkner’s “South” essentially be a perfect example of fascism before the term was even invented? I will attempt to answer this question primarily using The Unvanquished and The Sound and the Fury. Jason Compson II demonstrates a tendency for fascism in his perspective, what with racism, the suspicion of “Jews” and cities, and his genocidal rage. Meanwhile, through the eyes of Bayard and Ringo we watch the entire south mobilize itself for the war, and everyone plays a part. And throughout all the works we have read, Faulkner seems to give the towns personalities of their own, which are fascist in nature. This can be especially seen in Light In August and Absalom! Absalom! I am unsure what form to write my final project in, but am leaning towards a yoknapedia entry since I can find evidence of fascism in all of these works. For my research, I will start with JSTOR, Zotero, and the Hunter library, and go from there. I will also be looking up where Faulkner was and what he was doing during the first world war to see if he got the inspiration from it to show how its existence was already flourishing in the South. I hope this is not too broad an idea, but if it needs to be narrowed down I could try to focus on just one aspect of fascism and see where that takes me.

Hightower’s words are not as disparate from his actions when Bunch returns to announce that Christmas has been captured. Bunch arrives to discover a sleeping Hightower. The clean, fresh clothes and folded hands of this sleeping man make him appear pontifical (363). But his repose is disturbed and he quickly becomes the sweaty large man we recognize from his earlier encounter with Bunch. He is easily excited by the news and request that Bunch bears this Sunday evening. His excitability is mirrored by his verbal and physical presence in this scene. Where he merely sweated steadily while maintaining composure over his verbiage the last time this pair spoke, his speech is littered with (longer than em) dashes that indicate an audible redirect or correction: “But it is not right to bother me, to worry me, when I have          when I have taught myself to stay          That this should come to me, taking me after I am old, and reconciled to what they deemed          ” (364-365). In this climactic instance of speech, Hightower is trying but can’t find the words to admit to Bunch why he is no longer a reverend. It is not only his ability to clearly communicate that cracks under duress, but he begins to cry in a way that subverts his first conversation with Bunch.

Previously, his sweat was depicted as tears streaming from his entire body. Now, his benignant facade is cracked and his tears are real though diminished in sentimental value: “Once before Byron saw him sit while sweat ran down his face like tears; now he sees the tears themselves run down the flabby cheeks like sweat” (365). This switch is focalized through Byron and could reveal that that he lacks empathy. To look at a large man cry and imagine the tears are sweat is insensitive. I’m not calling Byron out for body-shaming, he conveys that he is not an empathic person through his next words to Hightower too. In the next few lines, he assumes that because of the reverend’s title and position, he can handle any news a man could bring to him.

Hightower has the potential to be remembered for his deeds. In spite of his current state of disgrace and in direct opposition to his forefathers. Offering the remaining scraps of his reputation for the soul of Christmas (whose guilt or innocence is impossible to know for sure) would be the honorable thing to do if he felt it necessary to protect Christmas’ life or if Christmas was definitely innocent. But he knows that Byron does not come to make his request out of tremendous care for Christmas but rather to undermine Brown and save Lena. This is why Hightower says he refuses Byron’s request. Christmas’ recently revealed heritage is unstated here, but must be involved in his decision subconsciously. The news Christmas’ his being part black evoked an alarming physical reaction from Hightower. On some level, the reverend must be thinking of Byron’s request through the lens of his own Confederate family history.

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The physical descriptions of Hightower during Bunch’s telling of Christmas’ story paint a picture of the Reverend that is rife with contradictions. His calm voice “sounds light, trivial, like a thistle bloom falling into silence without a sound, without any weight” and is belied by “the still, flaccid, big face…suddenly slick with sweat” (89). His meditative posture resembles “that of an eastern idol” and clashes with the Christian title of Reverend he once held (90). He does not say or do much during his exchange with Bunch, so his limited  dialogue and Faulkner’s descriptions of his body are supposed to give readers a sense of his feelings about race.

Knowing Hightower’s history as a proud descendant of Confederates gives us insight into how we might read the contradictory descriptions of his speech and actions. Hightower hasn’t heard the news of Burden’s death yet. The first bit of gossip he is presented and has to accept is that Christmas is black. His body contorts in separate parts and ways as if it were the features of a face trying to maintain airs: “There seems to come over his whole body, as if its parts were mobile like face features, that shrinking and denial” (89). Though his voice is light and airy, his physical reaction is a manifestation of the Confederate pride in his bones. His body wants to reject the new addition to his brain, the knowledge that Christmas is part black.

Knowledge of Christmas’ heritage has visibly disturbed Hightower. There is not another mention of  the features of his body demonstrating a denial, but the sweating continues steadily has Bunch relates to Hightower Christmas’ crime. Perhaps the movements that the narrator noted in Hightower’s body are a series of microexpressions that he cannot control but reveal one’s true fears or emotions

At the end of the story the sweat is transformed into tears: “Hightower with that look compassionate and troubled and still…with his eyes closed and the sweat running down his face like tears” (100). His whole body is crying at the news of black on white violence. But to reiterate the troubled upbringing of a man who reveres Confederate ancestors, his first words at the end of the story are not about the murder but to ask if it is “certain, proved that he has negro blood” (100). He prioritizes knowing Christmas’ true racial identity before offering condolences, expressing sympathy, or asking about any other part of the case. His response to the news is punctuated with  the lament “Poor man. Poor mankind” (100). This is a loaded phrase that could be read as Hightower’s complete disavowal of Confederate ideology. As a former reverend, he could be expressing pity for a man who will surely be lynched if Bunch’s story is true. However, when Hightower has a chance to defend Christmas’ life and provide him with an alibi, he refuses.

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(Final Project Proposal)

As scholars, we tend to be quick to castigate manual laborers as less apt, less adept and perhaps more obstinate. In reading Faulkner, I realize that he sits on something of a high horse in terms of literary craft, however, I can’t ignore the hyper-focus he casts on labor in relation to the community of his towns. Whether it be the sawmill community in Light in August, the architects in Absalom, Absalom! or Jason Compson’s storefront business in TSAF, Faulkner is commenting on the role of labor in fostering community, nationhood and personal identity and how they are all interconnected, whether for better or for worse.

In one literary analysis on Faulkner and commercial culture, a student of Faulkner reasons that, “Whatever the original inspiration for the Snopes forenames, they function ultimately as ironic public reminders, signs at once of the distance and relation between American commercial history and a disenfranchised family’s own underclass identity” (Skinfill). While the provocative nature of the Snopes’ line constitutes a case study in and of itself, the writer’s point on “function” of labor in generating a shared identity between person, family and town is not lost.

In a revealing episode of Absalom, Absalom! justice Jim Hackett welcomes a bruised and bloodied Bon Jr. back with an indictment speech to a full court house professing that, “At this time, while our country is struggling to rise from beneath the iron heel of a tyrant oppressor, when the very future of the South as a place bearable for our women and children to live in depends on the labor of our own hands… What are you?” (165). At this juncture, the son of Bon has been repressed from entering the social structure of Jefferson and thus is unknown by the judge or the town. Regardless, it is vital for him to assume a purposeful role in the society or otherwise, he will not only fail to contribute to the country at its hour of greatest need (civil turmoil), he will remain unknown without identity  and thereby continue to be interpolated as a miscreant and troublemaker.

The pragmatic mindset of the judge is rooted in capitalist-industrialist ideals, the same ideals which threatened the ecosystem of a rural Southern society not economically per se but culturally. It’s worth noting how Skinfill calls attention to the normalized fragmenting of the family unit with relation to labor. Martyn Bone, a scholar of Southern literature, takes this notion a step further applying it to the region as a whole: “confronted by capitalist speculation in, and despoilation of, the rural South, Faulkner was not averse to indulging a neo-Agrarian ‘aesthetics of anti-development’ ” (Bone 21). In Bone’s view, Faulkner is engaging in a region-wide sentiment of dissociation from the norm or capitalization and development simply by not engaging with the latter.

One of Faulkner’s strongest examples worthy of consideration towards this position is the Compson household in TSAF. Upon the suicide of Quentin and the shaming of Caddie, Jason takes it upon himself to maintain the Compson household financially through his business endeavors and money laundering. In spite of monetarily sustaining the entire household and repeating it constantly to satiate his ego, Jason causes a near disintegration of the family and meets near death via his shaming of Quentin, an action the result of his “need” to sustain and maintain the well-being of the house and its inhabitants. Jason can not be a mogul in both his business and his family lives without repercussions whereas Dilsey, a black maid at the bottom of the economic food chain, glues the household together tighter than Jason could even fumble it apart. In that respect, Faulkner’s Compson household signifies how obsession with labor and economic development potentially compromise the integrity of the family.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

Works cited (so far)

Bone, Martyn. The Postsouthern Sense of Place in Contemporary Fiction. Baton Rouge: Baton Rouge: LSU, 2005.

Skinfill, Mauri. “The American Interior: identity and commercial culture in Faulkner’s late novels.” The Faulkner Journal, vol. 21, no. 1-2, 2005, p. 133+.

My proposal is inspired by a moment in Absalom, Absalom! in which Jason Compson ruminates on Henry Sutpen’s (lack of) understanding of his sister’s virginity: “Henry, the provincial, the clown almost, given to instinctive and violent action rather than to thinking, ratiocination, who may have been conscious that his fierce provincial’s pride in his sister’s virginity was a false quantity which must incorporate in itself an inability to endure in order to be precious, to exist, and so must depend upon its loss, absence, to have existed at all” (AA! 76). Faulkner’s exploration of the “false quantity” concept extends through many of his texts.

The most obvious parallel is in The Sound and the Fury, when Quentin can only contextualize Caddy’s virginity by losing it. The false quantity of virginity is fundamental to the culture of the Antebellum South. What is the implication when something, even something as intangible as virginity, is defined by its negation? By it’s “inability to endure”?

The intangible becomes much more cherished with the knowledge that it can and will be lost. Beyond virginity, this also applies to race. Many of Faulkner’s characters are fixated on racial identity and “whiteness” becomes a false quantity in Yoknapatawpha. In this case, it is not the absence of white (black) that is worrisome. Rather, it is the loss of a white racial identity that concerns the characters. They can only perceive of “whiteness” along with the inevitability of miscegenation.  Joe Christmas’s internal conflict is fueled by this false quantity.

I believe that other false quantities are more subtle, but still present in Faulkner’s work. Childhood and/or innocence must come to an unavoidable end. The Compson children, Bayard and Ringo, and Joe Christmas exemplify this concept. It would be interesting to explore the ways in which adults act toward children, as a result of the false quantity of childhood. Bayard’s retrospective narrative provides a perspective in which a character reflects on the false quantity of his own innocence.

I’ve also considered thought – more specifically “ratiocination” which is the “process of exact thinking” or “a reasoned train of thought” (medium Wiki to follow!). The Compsons really personify this false quantity – Caddy is presented as someone who thinks very rationally (supported by the fact that she never narrates). Jason’s section of TSAF shows some slippage, brief moments of unreasoned thought. Quentin is next, with many passages that are disconnected and lack exact thinking. Benjy, of course, exemplifies a total loss of ratiocination. The ratiocination false quantity is like a literary device for Faulkner. His writing is often defined by the relinquishment of reason. Here, I plan to use research about Faulkner’s stream of conscious writing style and it’s significance.

In addition to research about Faulkner’s style, I think that most of my sources will focus on the big topics (virginity, childhood/innocence, race) since early research hasn’t yielded much about false quantities specifically.

Here’s the review I mentioned today of Andre Bleikasten’s biography of Faulkner by Thomas Powers. And here’s S-Town, the somewhat Faulkneresque podcast that’s taking the world by storm.

Have a great Spring Break, folks!

My final project will be in the style of a long Yoknapedia entry. It will explore the reception of TSAF. I think the breadth of this topic lends itself to a wiki entry because of the need for future students to consult this entry for Faulkner’s reception, explore sources, and explore more specific aspects of this topic. There will be an extensive section on its reception in America in the decades since its publication. In this section I will seek to explain the problematic and praiseworthy sections of TSAF for each decade. It will also seek to organize the reception of TSAF in other countries less extensively. As of now, I have only explored a few databases through Hunter and have had some success on JSTOR and the Literature Resource Center finding criticism contemporary to the novel and articles on reception in other countries. My next step for research is to consult the librarian. I may need to explore databases that include disciplines other than English.