Copyright by DELORES COLE WASHBURN 1978 the "FEEDER" MOTIF in SELECTED FICTION OF
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Copyright by DELORES COLE WASHBURN 1978 THE "FEEDER" MOTIF IN SELECTED FICTION OF WILLIAM FAULKNER AND FLANNERY O'CONNOR by DELORES COLE WASHBURN, B.A., M.A. A DISSERTATION IN ENGLISH Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Approved December, 1978 Ooh^^'^?' ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am deeply indebted to Professor Everett A. Gillis for his invaluable direction and careful emendation of this dissertation and to the other members of my committee. Professors Walter R. McDonald and James William Gulp, for their helpful criticism and encouragement. 11 CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ii PREFACE v \ I. THE TRADITIONAL ROLE OF THE FEEDER IN THE ANTE-BELLUM SOUTH 1 II. GENERAL SOCIAL RITES AND CUSTOMS ASSOCIATED WITH THE FEEDER ROLE 25 III. THE ROLE OF THE FEEDER AT WEDDINGS, ANNIVERSARIES, BIRTHDAYS, AND OTHER SOCIAL EVENTS 46 IV. THE FEEDER'S ROLE IN THE CIVIL WAR 59 V. THE POST-BELLUM AND CONTEMPORARY ROLE OF THE FEEDER IN THE SOUTH 71 VI. THE ROLE OF THE FEEDER IN THE FICTION OF FAULKNER AND O'CONNOR: THE BASIC PATTERNS 101 A. Yoknapatawpha County: Civil War, Reconstruction, and After 101 B. The Feeder as Spiritual Image 114 VII. THE TRADITIONAL FEEDER IN WARTIME 123 ^ VIII. THE POST-BELLUM SOUTH: AUNT JENNY AND OTHERS 145 IX. DILSEY: SURROGATE MOTHER AND FEEDER 184 ^ X. THE TRANSITIONAL SOUTH: JOANNA BURDEN, BYRON BUNCH 211 XI. THE FEEDER ROLE AS SPIRITUAL IMAGE: THE TARWATER FAMILY 240 A. Physical-Spiritual Backgrounds 240 B. Young Tarwater's Personal Devil 259 111 XII. MOTIFS OF SECULARITY: COMMERCIAL INFLUENCES ON THE FEEDER 269 XIII. THE MOVEMENT AWAY FROM AGRARIAN FOLKWAYS: THE FEEDER IN A TECHNOLOGICAL AGE 300 ^ XIV. THE DECAY OF THE FAMILY IN MODERN SOUTHERN LIFE: TWO VIEWS 330 A. "A View of the Woods" 330 B. "Greenleaf" 349 XV. MATERIALISM AND THE SOUTHERN FAMILY: THE NADIR OF THE FEEDER FUNCTION 369 A. "The Life You Save May Be Your Own" 369 B. "Good Country People" 384 ^ XVI. SUMMARY AND CRITIQUE: THE FEEDER AS MIRROR, SYMBOL, AND TECHNICAL DEVICE 407 A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 429 IV PREFACE In an unpublished doctoral dissertation (University of Illinois, 1974) on the work of Eudora Welty and Carson McCullers, Nancy Armes defines the term "Feeder" as a character "within a narrative who provides or has the skills to provide others with a sense of well being" with respect to bodily and social nourishment. As suggested by Armes, such a reflection is an accurate index of the actual role played by such persons in family life in the deep South. The same phenomenon may be observed as well in the fiction of William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor, who, as will be shown, capture with equal accuracy the data of Southern communal patterns and values. The fictional time covered by Faulkner and O'Connor is that roughly of the period of the Civil War through the middle decade of the twentieth century, a period marked by fundamental changes in the structure of Southern community life. As necessary background to an understanding of the Feeder motif as it appears in the fiction of Faulkner and O'Connor, five chapters will be devoted to a detailed survey, based on formal sociological studies, first of the traditional feeding patterns as they existed in the ante-bellum South, and, second. Nancy Armes, "The Feeder: A Study of the Fiction of Eudora Welty and Carson McCullers" (Ph.D. dissertation. University of Illinois, 1974), p. 1. of subsequent changes in Southern food serving effected by the impact on Southern life of the Industrial Revolution: including in the latter aspect such patterns as (1) those associated with the "fixed" or primary family Feeder as traditionally understood, wife or mother, et cetera, and any associated helpers or substitutes; and (2) those reflected in the rise of various forms of commercial feeding institu tions beginning with the country store and concluding with the developing fast-food franchise chains of a later date. The remainder of the dissertation will present a full scale examination of the Feeder as portrayed in the fiction of Faulkner and O'Connor, a portrayal that begins with the Feeder who represents, in the purest sense, those qualities of love and devotion for her family that cause her to adhere insofar as possible to the tradi tional patterns of feeding, despite the disruption and violence of war, an adherence that results in the psychic wholeness of the family's offspring and the maintenance of family harmony. The examination con cludes with the modern Feeder whose devotion to her family and its feeding rituals has been so corrupted by the impulses of a technologi cal age—commercialism, materialism, secularism—that she fails to provide the degree of social nourishment necessary to insure the well being of her family, a failure that is registered in the dis integration of her offspring and of the family unit itself. Between the two extremes are to be found a number of surrogate Feeders of both sexes, whose general regard for life elicits from them certain feeding practices in lieu of those of a traditional Feeder. A number vi of these surrogate Feeders are so successful in their practice of feeding rites that they retard the dissolution of the family whom they serve while assuaging the physical hunger of its members. Others of this group, however, who are either less committed to the feeding tasks or less devoted to those whom they feed, seek assistance from commercial feeding institutions or withhold a portion of their fellowship in the feeding procedures, both occasions contributing to a predictable result: the destruction of the individual's social well being and, in instances in which the family figures, the dissolution of the family. The examination as just described suggests that the integration or disintegration of the family, the fundamental institu tion of society, is related to the kind of Feeder who responds to its needs with regard to bodily and social well being. Furthermore, as the technological age advances, the number of rootless, wandering individuals increases, all of them requiring the assuagement of their physical and social hunger at the hands of surrogate Feeders, most of them being of the hired variety, the institutional feeding establish ments, who are dehumanized and thus lacking in the ability to provide a sense of well being along with the food they offer. The works of Faulkner and O'Connor under consideration in the following discussion are The Unvanquished, Sartoris, The Sound and the Fury, and Light in August by Faulkner; and The Violent Bear It Away and four short stories—"A View of the Woods," "Greenleaf," "The Life You Save May Be Your Own," "Good Country People"—by O'Connor. Vll CHAPTER I THE TRADITIONAL ROLE OF THE FEEDER IN THE ANTE-BELLUM SOUTH The chief sociological distinction of the ante-bellum South lay in its agrarian character and its dependence upon the abundant natural resources for its subsistence, it being in essence a folk culture. In contrast, the pre-Civil War North was committed to a 2 state civilization, geared to civil organization and technology. As a folk culture, the South derived its peculiar social character 3 from its fundamentally archetypal relationships and occupations; in turn, its institutions were those discovered to be inherent v/ithin its natural order, chiefly familial in nature, and closely knit. Thus, both the family and the home were firmly attached to the land, the farm and farmhouse combining as a social and economic unit, each dependent upon nature and providence for fertility and growth. The family, recognizing its physical and spiritual bonds with earth and man, created a moral order closely geared to living sources, which 2 Howard W. Odum, "On Southern Literature and Southern Cul ture," in Southern Renascence: The Literature of the Modern South, ed. Louis D. Rubin, Jr., and Robert D. Jacobs (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1953), p. 93. ^Ibid. 4 were not always predictable nor always within human control. Thus, because the various elements of the Southern culture were so inter related, survival and prosperity at all levels were linked to ideals of work, neighborly help, individual freedom, and religious faith. The richness and variety of Southern resources—abundant sunshine and rain, fertile soil, plentiful game, hardy vegetation— afforded a comfortable living for those who were willing to work. Although modern criticism of the ante-bellum South tends to stress only the "peculiar institution" of slavery as an economic system which not only exploited human labor and dignity but, it is said, also retarded the development of regional industry and economic prosperity and perpetuated a general poverty and ignorance in the South, the ante-bellum "aristocracy" (the planter class with exten sive land and slave ownership) possessed numerous desirable qualities as a consequence of its folk culture: good breeding, quiet living, family honor, public responsibility, self-respect, contempt for lying and cowardice. As a whole. Southern culture was a hierarchy represented at the top by a planter class, which was expected to produce gentlemen in the framework of a Greek democracy. Immediately 4 James McBride Dabbs, "The Land," in The Lasting South, ed. Louis D. Rubin, Jr., and James J. Kilpatrick (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1957), pp. 82, 79. Howard W. Odum, The Way of the South: Toward the Regional Balance of America (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1947), p. 21. Charles W. Ramsdell, "The Southern Heritage," in Culture in the South, ed. W. Terry Couch (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1934), p. 15. beneath the planter, but separated by a sharp line of distinction, were the middle class, composed of industrious farm folk and mer chants, tradesmen, professional people, artisans, mechanics.