ABSTRACT

WILLIAM FAULKNER’S MULATTO: A STRUGGLE ON THE BORDERLAND

My thesis explores William Faulkner’s handling of racial issues of mixed identity in his novel Light in August by using Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderland theory. Anzaldúa can explain and represent the disconnect that occurs for those that are deemed social outcasts through her theory of Borderlands, “cultural tyranny,” and mestiza consciousness. Within Borderlands La Frontera: The New Mestiza Anzaldúa draws upon her experience of marginalization to create her own mestiza consciousness, finding empowerment in this marginalized status. In particular I research and analyze the physical and psychological effects of the borderland in regards to the life and experiences of Joe Christmas. Christmas goes from believing that he is a white member of society to realizing that he is not full white, causing him to be separated from the rest of society and placed in a state of marginalization. In trying to find acceptance, Christmas tries to embrace the identity and lifestyle of both sides of the divide only to constantly be reminded that he does not belong to either. Christmas demonstrates Faulkner’s growing awareness of the way racial division affects the individual, the South, and the nation. Unlike Anzaldúa, Faulkner sees no way for the individual of mixed race to live and thrive in society.

Stephanie Ann Metzler August 2015

WILLIAM FAULKNER’S MULATTO: A STRUGGLE ON THE BORDERLAND

by Stephanie Ann Metzler

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English in the College of Arts and Humanities California State University, Fresno August 2015 APPROVED For the Department of English:

We, the undersigned, certify that the thesis of the following student meets the required standards of scholarship, format, and style of the university and the student’s graduate degree program for the awarding of the master’s degree.

Stephanie Ann Metzler Thesis Author

Chris Henson (Chair) English

Ruth Jenkins English

Lisa Weston English

For the University Graduate Committee:

Dean, Division of Graduate Studies AUTHORIZATION FOR REPRODUCTION OF MASTER’S THESIS

X I grant permission for the reproduction of this thesis in part or in its entirety without further authorization from me, on the condition that the person or agency requesting reproduction absorbs the cost and provides proper acknowledgment of authorship.

Permission to reproduce this thesis in part or in its entirety must be obtained from me.

Signature of thesis author: ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My educational journey has been a long and arduous task and could not have been accomplished without the countless angels that have stepped into my life from childhood until now. There are far too many angels to name but they all have made an impact on the roads and trails I traveled to get here. To all of you, I thank you. With utmost respect and gratitude I thank Dr. Chris Henson for believing in me. Without your support and guidance I would not be where I am today, and for that, I thank you. You truly are one of my heroes. I would like to thank Dr. Ruth Jenkins and Dr. Lisa Weston for their support and direction, and every professor that I was lucky enough to meet at CSU Fresno. Again, I could not have accomplished this without you. With all my heart I thank my dearly departed mother and father, who proudly supported my educational endeavors. I love and miss you. With love and joy I thank my four sisters, Melissa, Nora, Jessica, and Nicole, for their constant support and pride in my accomplishments. Even when it seemed that I would never finish my thesis, you knew how to uplift me with your encouragement. To my long time mentors and adopted Godparents, William and Yolanda Acuña, who supported me throughout the harshest times. You always reminded me that there was more for me out there if I just kept the tenacity to succeed. Thank you. Last but not least, I would like to thank my loving husband, Dylan Flood. Without you I would not be the person I am today. In every way you have supported me, loved me, encouraged me, and pushed me to succeed. I could not have done this without you. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page CHAPTER 1: INVESTIGATING RACE IN THE WORK OF WILLIAM FAULKNER: THE HARD DIVIDE BETWEEN BLACK AND WHITE .... 1 CHAPTER 2: GLORIA ANZALDÚA’S BORDERLAND THEORY: THE STRUGGLE OF DISPARITY ...... 21 CHAPTER 3: JOE CHRISTMAS: LIFE AND DEATH IN THE BORDERLAND ...... 40

WORKS CITED ...... 73

CHAPTER 1: INVESTIGATING RACE IN THE WORK OF WILLIAM FAULKNER: THE HARD DIVIDE BETWEEN BLACK AND WHITE

Often, within and without the world of literary scholarship, William Faulkner is dismissed as overtly racist and seen as narrow-minded in his view of race and culture. In his article “Faulkner and Racism: The Great White Hope of Black Power,” Marc D. Baldwin contends: “As many critics accuse him, Faulkner may well have been a racist” (1). Along these lines, in “Faulkner and Racism,” Arthur Kinney notes of Faulkner, “Racism spreads contagiously through his works, unavoidably. Its force is often debilitating; its consequences often beyond reckoning openly. The plain recognition of racism is hardest to bear and yet most necessary to confront” (266). Undeniably, Faulkner’s novels are saturated with racism, but perhaps, as some critics note, this stems from writing in an era that embodied racist thoughts and actions. Fittingly, Baldwin explains how much of this racism originated from the society and time period in which William Faulkner was raised: Faulkner was born in the Bible belt, into segregated white society. The tenets of his strict Calvinist-directed Christian faith were strained and twisted by the racism all around him. How could the idea of all men as brothers and equal in the eyes of the Lord be reconciled with the bigoted, double-standardized, violently derogatory attitude and actions of his fellow Whites toward Blacks? They couldn’t. Thus, Faulkner labored under a horrible moral dilemma not unlike Huck Finn’s: Whose side should he take? His society’s and family’s or God’s? Faulkner often played out this 2 2

tragic dilemma through stories tortured by the Christian drama of sin, guilt and redemption. (1) Thus, William Faulkner fought an inner conflict as he was seemingly at odds with both his own white culture and black culture. On one side he was taught the Bible teachings that “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (King James Version, Matt. 19.19). He was also well versed in the principles of the Declaration of Independence that declares, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” Yet, his family and white society believed in the laws of segregation and that blacks were not equal to whites. Thus, as Baldwin notes, William Faulkner was in a constant battle between what his family, society and what he perhaps was raised to believe, and what he perhaps would later read as truth. Growing up, Faulkner most likely shared many of these racist views, and finding meaning and understanding within these racial tensions was often out of his grasp. As much of his writing reflects, Faulkner himself seemed perplexed as to where he stood in this debate. Did he indeed sympathize with the black community and find fault in his own white society; or, did he, instead, see society playing out exactly as it should, thus continuing the tradition of white supremacy? In his article and response to Arthur Kinney’s article, “Faulkner and Racism: A Commentary on Arthur F. Kinney’s ‘Faulkner and Racism,’” Philip Cohen adds to this dialogue: Anyone seeking to shed light on the vexed subject of the racial convictions expressed by William Faulkner during his life and in his fiction must, I think, confront the central fact that Faulkner’s racial attitudes, like his explorations of gender and class, were often 3 3

contradictory, even violently conflicted at any given moment of his career. (109) Faulkner thus had the arduous task of working through these contrasting views, and much of his labor would be exposed, examined and worked through with the writing of his narratives. This task of untangling racist ideology, as we will soon investigate, continued to develop as time went on, and as Faulkner continued to write characters of African-American descent, their narrative plots and outcomes began to uncover this tension of race. William Faulkner lived and wrote in an era that held ongoing shifts of attitudes towards race impacted his own views of race, and has in turn allowed for a deeper conversation into the racial views of the past and the presence of racism in our own modern society. Faulkner’s contradictory stance on race is conceivably one of the reasons that countless readers and critics continue to contemplate these embedded issues of race and culture as they read a Faulkner text. In looking at the racial views of William Faulkner, it is important to probe deeper into the era in which he lived and even further back into historical factors that might have molded his concept of race. In “Faulkner and Racism,” Kinney writes, “Faulkner battled with race and racism, publicly and privately, as few other American authors have ever done or ever had to do” (278). This battle can be seen early on in his writing career and continually progressed as he dug deeper into this the ugly realities of racism in the South. Thus, long before such notions of Cultural Studies or Race Theories existed, William Faulkner, “born in New Albany, Mississippi, on September 25, 1897,” was a man that recognized the deeply embedded issues of race, and knew that the tensions and pressures of this system would eventually change the view and lifestyle of the South he so deeply cared for (Cowley 2). 4 4

In looking at the history of slavery and racism in the nation, Ronald Takaki’s A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America gives an account of the United States through the views and history of the non-Caucasian people. Takaki believes that by “allowing us to see events from the viewpoints of different groups, a multicultural curriculum enables us to reach toward a more comprehensive understanding of American history” (4). In his introduction chapter “A Different Mirror,” Takaki introduces his outlook of slavery and racism as it pertains to the history of the United States: African Americans have been the central minority throughout our country’s history. They were initially brought here in a slave ship in 1619. Actually, these first twenty Africans might not have been slaves; rather, like most white laborers, they were probably indentured servants. The transformation of Africans into slaves is the story of the “hidden” origins of slavery. How and when was it decided to institute a system of bonded black labor? What happened, while freighted with racial significance, was actually conditioned by class conflicts within white society. Once established, the “peculiar institution” would have consequences for centuries to come. During the nineteenth century, the political storm over slavery almost destroyed the nation. Since the Civil War and emancipation, race has continued to be largely defined in relation to African Americans—segregation, civil rights, the underclass, and affirmative action. (7) Takaki explores the historical progression that African Americans faced during slavery, after emancipation, and during segregation, and uses first-hand accounts to portray the harsh realities of America’s dark history. He notes the beginning of 5 5 this racist ideology when “in 1661, the Virginia Assembly began to institutionalize slavery” (58). As noted, before this, slavery came in the form of indentured servants, many of whom were Caucasian, and in need of money to travel, and or, to pay off debt (Takaki 58). Soon after the introduction of African American slaves came the notion that unlike the white indentured servants who would eventually be freed, African Americans were viewed as “heathens” and their assumed lack of civilization allowed white owners to see them as property that could be willed and passed down for generations (Takaki 58). Hence, as Takaki notes, Americans began to “prefer black slaves over white indentured servants” (65). This shift is what changed the course of history for the standard on treatment of blacks. It would then not be until 1865 that the Civil War would end and the Thirteenth Amendment would grant freedom to all slaves (Takaki 131). Nevertheless, this racial ideology unfortunately continued on long after the Civil War and was still a far cry from equality as Jim Crow laws began to be implemented. The Encyclopedia Britannica further defines the enactment of Jim Crow laws: From the late 1870s, Southern state legislatures, no longer controlled by carpetbaggers and freedmen, passed laws requiring the separation of whites from “persons of colour” in public transportation and schools. Generally, anyone of ascertainable or strongly suspected black ancestry in any degree was for this purpose a “person of colour”; the pre-Civil War distinction favouring those whose ancestry was known to be mixed—particularly the half-French “free persons of colour” in Louisiana—was abandoned. The segregation principle was extended to parks, cemeteries, theatres, and restaurants 6 6

in an effort to prevent any contact between blacks and whites as equals. It was codified on local and state levels and most famously with the “separate but equal” decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). (“Jim Crow Law”) Separate but equal laws became a solid part of the South and continued the tradition of racism in inequality. The following quote comes from Takaki’s A Different Mirror, from a man who lived during this time of segregation. His explanation of the real and radical restrictions of segregation and Jim Crow laws gives us a glimpse of the ideology of the South: ‘They’re Jim Crowin’ us down here too much; there’s no chance for a coloured man who has any self-respect.’ ‘The exodus…of coloured people from the sunny South to the colder states of the North…has its very birth out of the ‘Jim Crow’ and ‘Segregation’ condition which now exists in the cities of the South and which have crowded colored people into narrow unsanitary or unhealthy quarters…segregating them like cattle, hogs or sheep.’ (Takaki 345) The description shows that these laws bring about separate, but nothing close to equal. Even more so, racial violence continued to be inflicted upon blacks and was far worse than the imposed Jim Crow laws. This historical outlook of how American society was raised to view blacks and race trickled down through generations and by the time that William Faulkner was born in 1897, much of this black stigma continued and remained. In William Faulkner and Southern History, Joel Williamson notes just how the historical and geographical contexts of Faulkner’s upbringing impacted his literary work. Williamson states: 7 7

Faulkner’s Yoknapatwpha Country was, of course, his own Lafayette Country, Mississippi, and the surrounding counties…Yoknapatwpha was Mississippi, and it was also all of the South. The black belts, those areas where the black population stood near a majority or more, extended up and down the vast level lands alongside the Mississippi River…Even emancipation did not change the congruence of rich soil and dark people in Dixie—nor has it yet. What the demise of slavery did do, paradoxically, was turn the richest counties in America in 1860, those most slaves, to the poorest in 1870, and that result, too, has persisted. (11) Therefore, growing up, William Faulkner saw first-hand the segregation and degradation of the South. He grew up hearing tales of his family’s prosperous lifestyle of land and slaves, and their tragic loss of all they had after the Civil War. It is therefore understandable that much of Faulkner’s writing portrays the demise of the South that existed before the Civil War. Mississippi, or his fictional Yoknapatwpha, was once full of huge plantations that brought in riches beyond belief, that is, until the Civil War brought these plantations to their ruin. With the ending of slavery came the end to most landowners’ wealth and prosperity. Faulkner’s biggest struggle was most likely against his own upbringing, an upbringing that “preached democracy for whites and slavery for blacks as an ideal for Southern society” (Williamson 13). In his early writings, Faulkner was not focused on issues of race. Faulkner’s first book, “a book of poems entitled The Marble Faun” was published in 1924 (Williamson 5). At this time, Faulkner does not approach issues of race; this collection contained poems of unrequited love and longing. The publication of Marble Faun was not well received by critics and readers alike, and after this 8 8 failed attempt Faulkner finally began to find his calling with his second publication, Soldiers’ Pay, a novel published in 1925. Although at this point in time little about race was addressed in his novel, we do see glimpses of racial struggles in the character of the mammy, Callie Nelson, and her grandson Loosh Nelson. After Donald Mahon returns home from WWI, as a shell of a man, Callie and Loosh go to visit him. The stereotypical “mammy” language of the character Callie, was perhaps Faulkner’s attempt to represent her as he had witnessed in real life; yet, many scholars would later see this as racist as it continues stereotypes of blacks as uneducated and wild: “Bless de Lawd, done sont you back ter yo’ mammy. Yes, Jesus. Ev’y day I prayed, and de Lawd heard me” (Faulkner 160). At this point of the narrative, the character Gilligan is trying to hold Callie back and Faulkner describes this with animalistic comparisons: “Gilligan held her withered arm while she strained like a leashed hound” (Faulkner 159). This dog representation reinforces Takaki’s revelation about the racial ideology of blacks as seen as uncivilized. A review by World Press further describes Faulkner’s stance of race in Soldiers’ Pay: The African American characters serve mainly as comic figures or noble enduring stock characters. Their dialogue is almost painfully minstrelesque. He will certainly improve in that area as he develops as a writer. One of the most poignant but also stereotypical scenes is when Caroline or “Callie,” Mahon’s childhood nurse, visits the dying man. While perhaps overdramatized, Callie’s anguish over her former charge feels genuine, and at least hints at some of the complexity of black and white relations in the south. (World Press) Again, as this was Faulkner’s first novel, it interesting to see how it eventually leads him to dig deeper into notions of race and culture. His usage of African 9 9

America dialect and the obvious inferior treatment of African Americans within Soldiers’ Pay is a contrast to the treatment of white characters that are introduced. In 1929 when The Sound and the Fury was published, readers once again saw the stereotypical character of mammy, in the character Dilsey, but this time with a little bit more thought behind the insight and capability of the mammy character. This novel follows the Compson family, and in an interesting and effective way, Faulkner utilizes the literary device of stream-of-consciousness, in order to connect with his reader and give a deeper glimpse into the world of his characters. Each part also is told from a different character’s perspective that further shows an understanding of the power of perception. The reason that The Sound and the Fury is so noteworthy in regards to racial understanding is because this is the first time that Faulkner attempts to reveal the life of an African American character. The last part of the novel, often known as Dilsey’s chapter, allows the reader to get closer into the everyday world of the mammy character, Dilsey. Still, as progressive as this might have been for Faulkner at the time, critics often criticize that the first three sections use first person perspective and stream-of-consciousness and in comparison, although the fourth section is about Dilsey, she is still not given her own voice and is instead narrated through third person narrative, an omniscient narrator. Thus, Faulkner, it seems, was not able to narrate from the viewpoint and mindset of a black character. As time goes on, William Faulkner eventually reaches another level of racial understanding when he writes his 1932 Light In August, featuring as a main character a racially mixed man by the name of Joe Christmas. This character is different from all of Faulkner’s African American characters before. Although written in third person perspective, the novel provides more about his thoughts and feeling. In addition, Joe Christmas is the main character for the entire novel. This 10 10 racial breakthrough helps readers to humanize and empathize with a nonwhite character. Criticism subsequently seeks to find if this attempt in racial understanding was thus a part of Faulkner, or if Faulkner was indeed writing to evolve racist structures of Southern society and create a space for social change. Since early in William Faulkner’s writing career to the most recent criticism, numerous critics have approached this complicated issue of Faulkner and race. In an introduction chapter to the anthology Faulkner and Race: Faulkner and Yoknapatwpha, 1986, Doreen Fowler notes: “Faulkner is one of America’s greatest writers, and one of his central subjects is race. But can Faulkner, a white Southerner, the great-grandson of a slave owner, or for that matter, can any white man enter a black consciousness or render accurately black lives? Opinions vary” (vii). Much of this criticism seeks to answer the question, was Faulkner then a racist, and how much could he have understood about race? It is important to note the evolution of thought and attitudes defining Faulkner’s attitudes towards racism, which for better understanding, can be sorted into four differing, yet somewhat similar, views of William Faulkner’s stance on race, as well as reasoning behind his writings. The first of these critical views argues that William Faulkner wrote within the limitations of his society and time period, as his writings spanned 1924-1962. Thus, although William Faulkner wrote about issues that contemporary readers could now read as issues of race, critics argue that William Faulkner was limited by prevailing ideologies and did not even understand that his writings perpetuated racist ideology. The second critical view argues that William Faulkner wrote in order to reflect upon and ponder the societal and racial issues that saturated within Southern society. These critics argue that Faulkner was beginning to see that there were indeed racial inequities. As much as Faulkner understood that there were racial issues, these critics do not believe 11 11 that Faulkner wrote to change society, merely to note these racial differences. A third critical stance on William Faulkner believes that he wrote and gradually found his voice and manner in which to criticize and disagree with Southern society’s treatment of race. These critics extract from the examples of Faulkner’s various black fictional characters. By looking at their character plots, actions, and dialogue, these critics find a criticism of racial views and collective ideologies. This criticism reveals that although he begins to criticize society, Faulkner was still not able to find solutions to these societal issues. Lastly, the final camp of scholars and critics assert that William Faulkner understood these racial and societal issues, could reflect upon them, and accordingly wrote in order to create a space for philosophies of social change within Southern society. These critics insist that Faulkner was well aware of the power of words and intended to help change the perceptions of race within society in such a way as to change the system of segregation and allow a space for equality. The first criticism sees William Faulkner as a writer who was limited by his society and time period. In Faulkner on the Color Line: The Later Novels, Theresa M. Towner writes about William Faulkner’s depiction of the Negro and notes the various limitations that Faulkner faced in his writing. Towner quotes William Faulkner as he attempts to understand his own limitations: “It is easy enough…to say glibly, ‘if I were a Negro, I would do this or that’ but a white man can only imagine himself for the moment a Negro; he cannot be that man of another race and grief and problems. So there are some questions he can put to himself but not answer” (144). Thus, Towner insists that although Faulkner might have written about race and plight of racism, he was still held back by his limited scope of race in order to truly create any social change. Towner continues to focus on Faulkner’s limitations and even respects those limitations, stating: 12 12

In his decision not to try to speak for the racial other but instead find in that already defeated entry point of his imagination a way to expose even more vexed racial constructions, he could imagine ‘for the moment’ a host of characters of all colors and both sexes suffering within the ridged (sic) protocols enforced and elaborated upon in this country for centuries. To pretend to be more than that would have been a grotesquerie of all American racial experience, his own included, and he knew that, too. (144) Towner thus argues that although William Faulkner did indeed try to open the conversation of race and race relations, he was limited by his lack of ability to truly sympathize and understand the plight of the African American. His experiences did not allow him to comprehend the lifestyle and psyche of the black populace. Thus, try as he might to portray these social issues, Faulkner fell short of the mark. Eric J. Sundquist’s article, “Faulkner, Race, and the Forms of American Fiction” first notes that “It is only in the last several decades that the tradition of black writing, as well as the tradition of white writing on race, has begun to emerge with clarity” (1). Sundquist attributes William Faulkner as a key contributor to this shift in literary advancement. He notes that, “Literary traditions are inherently instruments of judgment and segregation; at the same time, they correspond to ideas of cultural division and superiority that are not meaningless but must be examined for the virtues as well as their flaws” (2). Thus, Sundquist acknowledges that Faulkner’s writing was able to portray racial tensions, but he still sees the limits of his writings. Sundquist goes on to reveal, “Although Faulkner’s novels bring to a pitch the literary confrontations with race hatred in the early twentieth century, there are, by the same token, limitations to his vision” 13 13

(3). These limitations, in his mind, are the very fact that William Faulkner was just not capable of fully getting into the mind and life of an African American person. In the article, “Faulkner and Racism: A Commentary on Arthur F. Kinney’s ‘Faulkner and Racism’” Philip Cohen likewise asserts that although William Faulkner perhaps thought himself to be advanced in this racial thinking, it was still extremely limited. Cohen begins his article by noting: “True, as Arthur Kinney points out, Faulkner progressed from giving voice both in his life and work to some of the most pernicious racist beliefs about African-Americans that he had inherited from his family and his society to expressing more insight into and sympathy for the plight of southern blacks than almost any other southern white male writer of his time,” he goes on to reveal that Faulkner was still far from being an advocate of racial equality (109). Cohen then states: “Indeed, Faulkner’s first Yoknapatawpha novel, Flags in the Dust (first published in 1929 as Sartoris), perpetuates rather than examines Southern racial stereotypes and caricatures” (109). Thus, Cohen sees Faulkner as truly limited by the social roles that were set within society and unable to ever imagine a world where African Americans were ever seen on equal ground as white Americans. Moving on to the second critical view that seeks to reveal William Faulkner as reflecting societal problems through his writing, we look back to one of the earliest reviews on Faulkner, Malcolm Cowley’s introduction to a well-chosen collection of Faulkner’s works in The Portable Faulkner. The 1946 publication of The Portable Faulkner helped put Faulkner on the literary scene, when many of his works were often overlooked or misunderstood. Cowley argues that throughout Faulkner’s works, more particularly, with his Yoknapatawpha saga, Faulkner quite evidently “was brooding over a social situation” (13). Cowley 14 14 notes, “Faulkner’s novels of contemporary Southern life continue the legend into a period that he regards as one of moral confusion and social decay. He is continually seeking in them for the violent images to convey his sense of despair” (14). This sense of despair saturates Southern society as racism continues to negatively affect both white and black races as they are now forced into specific cultural roles. Perhaps even more telling of Cowley’s views of Faulkner’s literary purpose is where he notes: Faulkner’s novels are full of well-meaning and even admirable persons, not only the grandsons of the cotton aristocracy, but also the pine-hill farmers and storekeepers and sewing-machine agents and Negro cooks and sharecroppers; but they are almost all of them defeated by circumstances and they carry with them a sense of their own doom. They also carry, whether heroes or villains, a curious sense of submission to their fate. (16) This thereby shows a reflection of the time period in which Faulkner wrote. It was indeed a time of despair as blacks and whites were both forced into a state of poverty, and were all forced into an ideology of the time that caused people to not look at people as people, but instead as color. This forced ideology not only caused destruction for black families but also white families as well as they were socially constructed to treat other humans as less than, merely because society deemed it as so. Arthur Kinney continues this debate with his 1993 article “Faulkner and Racism” in which he addresses this concern: The single most indelible fact about William Faulkner’s work is his persistent concentration on observing and recording the culture and country in which he was born; what is most striking now, as we look 15 15

back on his legacy from our own, is the enormous courage and cost of that task. Faulkner’s Lafayette County, in northeastern Mississippi, not far from the battle sites of Brice’s Cross Roads, Corinth, and Shiloh, is still marked in its town squares with statues of soldiers of the Confederate Army of the United States, in full battle dress and, more often than not, facing South towards the homeland they mean to protect with their lives. But what for Faulkner is most haunting is not the communal psychology of war so much as the agonizing recognition of the exacting expenses of racism, for him the most difficult and most grievous awareness of all. (266) Thus, Kinney reveals the struggle that William Faulkner faced in understanding the impacts of racism, and his reflection of society and race continually revealed itself in his writings as his writing became a tool to dissect and reflect upon these societal issues. Probing deeper into this notion of race, we next look to the third criticism that advocates that William Faulkner wrote to criticize southern societal problems. In this camp, Michael Kreyling reads William Faulkner as a man who wrote against the very society that he was raised. In Faulkner in the Twenty-first Century, Kreyling attempts to reveal Faulkner’s stance against Southern Society: For more than a third of the previous century (certainly from 1930 to 1960), Faulkner created (and, I argue, was in turn created by) not only the fictional county over which he claimed sole proprietorship, but also the entire state with which, from time to time, he wanted nothing to do. Faulkner might have been the creator of Yoknapatawpha County, but in creating Mississippi he had the help 16 16

of scholars and critics, politicians, marketing copywriters, photographers and filmmakers, careful readers and skimmers who, for a whole spectrum of motives, preferred Mississippi ‘‘barbaric’’ or ‘‘tragic,’’ American or thirdworld, sick or well, but never the median. Faulkner’s meanings depended on meanings of Mississippi that developed both directly from his texts, and at various degrees of separation from them. (14) Here we see a version of William Faulkner as a man who portrayed the land that he grew up with not just to reveal the imperfections of society, but to also criticize these imperfections. By creating Yoknapatawpha, Faulkner created a tool to dissect and scope out the particularly racial and inhumane attitudes of the South and/or Mississippi. His portrayals of everyday Jim Crow South were to some normal and acceptable, but under closer scrutiny, readers are able to see that characters like Dilsey from The Sound and the Fury and Joe Christmas from Light in August should have been treated more human and not as inferior, as they are by numerous characters throughout the whole of the novels. Thus, Kreyling argues that Faulkner did more then merely recreate the world in which he lived; he created scenarios that criticize the South and the people that continue the injustice against a whole race of people. Looking further into William Faulkner’s writings of race, Catherine Kodat, in her article “Faulkner and ‘Faulkner,’” recounts hearing a speech by Werner Sollors on William Faulkner at the May 2001 American Literature Association. In his speech Kodat was taken aback by a shocking statement. Kodat states, “Sollors came to the example of William Faulkner, whom he straightforwardly and unapologetically identified as ‘the most significant American novelist of the century’” (188). Kodat continues her article by explaining why Sollors stated such 17 17 a lofty claim, stating “There is of course an obvious and mundane explanation for Sollars’s comment: it was simply not a claim that he could have made before the twentieth century was over” (188). This, according to Kodat, is largely due to the fact that twenty-first scholars have both the desire and tools to re-examine and analyze historical social issues that drenched the era of the Jim Crow laws. Before this, much of the criticism could not look past the initial racism that filled the pages of Faulkner’s novels. Now, with this criticism, there is the claim that Faulkner reflected what he saw in society to open the eyes of his readers and then was able to openly criticize through his writing. The fourth and most favorable critical view is that of scholars who read William Faulkner as writing to create social change. These scholars argue against reading Faulkner as a mere racist or as a reporter revealing the times, or even as an author that attempted to reveal social injustice, and instead insist that William Faulkner indeed wrote to create social change. For these scholars Faulkner the racist would be redeemed if he indeed wrote in order to change the heart and mind of his readers and thus promote social change. In “Focusing on the Margins: Light in August and Social Change” Abdul-Rakkak Al-Barhow reads William Faulkner’s Light In August as a definite call for social change. Al-Barhow states, “In William Faulkner’s Light in August (1932), a number of figures are actively engaged in social change” (52). Al-Barhow looks closely at Joanna Burden, Joe Christmas, Gail Hightower, and Lena Grove and reveals their own unique marginalized status. Due to their opposition to the imposed societal norms, these characters are ostracized. It is indeed in this marginalized status that Faulkner’s views of racism can likewise be examined: Joanna’s ancestors received a commission from the government in Washington to go down to the South “to help with the freed 18 18

negroes,” and two of them were shot dead by the slaveholder John Sartoris over a question of Negro votes in a state election (189). Joanna, the last Burden in the South, carries on with this “commission” until she is killed by Joe Christmas. The appeal of the engagement with social change in Faulkner’s text does not lie in these characters, however, and the way the Burdens perform their commission remains, after all, questionable. Instead, the force of Light in August derives from its ability to dramatize the social and racial contradictions, which are set in motion by Joe Christmas’s indeterminate racial origins. The need for, if not the inevitability of, social change in racial relations is made even more pressing through Faulkner’s demonstration of how the racial ideology that holds this society together is the same ideology that will tear it apart. (Al- Barhow 52-53) Here Al-Barhow is arguing for a reading of the novel as a call for social change. This change is for his readers and for people of the South to no longer embrace segregation and instead see it as damaging for all people of the South. Living in a society that enforces such ugly contradictions and tears apart families because of race was indeed causing more problems than strengths within society. Al-Barhow argues that Faulkner wanted his readers to see the damage, and then reflect on these corrupt societal structures, and realize where and how they were truly flawed. In seeing them as flawed, they would then fight against these social structures and perhaps take a step in the right direction in regards to race and race relations. Al-Barhow argues that these were indeed the goals of William Faulkner’s writing. 19 19

All four critical views regarding Faulkner and race admit that Faulkner was indeed writing in a volatile time period. Some believe that he sought to find answers to the impending questions of race. Interestingly, much of this criticism looks to Light In August as a critical text and even as a pivotal moment for William Faulkner and his views of race and most all agree that in some way William Faulkner was aware of these imperfections and wrote to reveal this conflict to his readers. Throughout this research I go one step further and argue that William Faulkner’s writings of the marginalized, those living on the border between white and black society, truly represent this call for social change within Post-Civil War Society. In “William Faulkner and the Negro Problem,” Charles Glicksberg describes this recurring motif: “the alienation of the Negro of mixed blood, the fatal dualism of Negro and white blood, negro thinking and white thinking as if an unbridgeable gulf separated the two races, as if they gave off a different aura, responded to different biological rhythms” (157-58). In Faulkner’s attempt to understand this tension of race he fleshed out the realities of racism and the result of America’s secret of its half-white, half-black, disregarded individual, the mulatto, a byproduct of racial mixing that often occurred and yet was an unmentionable offense often denied as a reality within society’s perimeters. These individuals are swept under the rug in regards to their parentage and their true racial origin and find themselves unable to actualize an identity. In looking at this marginalization, readers are able to fully look at both sides of the story and come to their own conclusions about whether or not society was fair in its approach to those of race and its “one drop law.” In the following chapter 2, “Gloria Anzaldúa's Borderland Theory: The Struggle of Disparity,” we look to the writing and theory of Gloria Anzaldúa and her creation of Borderland Theory. This theory seeks to reveal the harsh realities 20 20 of those that live in the borderlands between two disparate worlds. Anzaldúa notes: “Borderlands are psychically present wherever two or more cultures edge each other, where people of different races occupy the same territory, where under, lower, middle and upper classes touch…” (19). This world along the border, this marginalized space in which they belongs to both sides, but painfully are reminded that they have no room within these social strictures forces them to look within and seek an actualized version of who they are and where in the world they may exist. By looking closer into this marginalized world and seeking answers to what it means to live in among the borderlands, we can eventually move into chapter 3, “Joe Christmas: Life and Death In the Borderland.” In this chapter we will look closer at Faulkner’s Light In August and the marginalized character Joe Christmas. Looking at the character of the ambiguous mulatto character Joe Christmas, Werner Slabey notes: “his is the problem of the American mulatto whose position is ambiguous because no matter how small his proportion of Negro blood may be, according to Southern genetics, he is treated the same as a full-blooded Negro.” Through the creation of this marginalized character, and by utilizing Anzaldúa’s Borderland theory to dissect and probe deep into the mind of William Faulkner and his writing, we find that Faulkner eventually comes to a deeper understanding of race and its effects on the individual, the South, and the nation. More particularly, in a very Anzaldúan manner, Faulkner is able to reflect upon and explore the marginalized individual caught between two worlds and their constant struggle of living among the borderlands.

CHAPTER 2: GLORIA ANZALDÚA’S BORDERLAND THEORY: THE STRUGGLE OF DISPARITY

Author, editor, and cultural theorist Gloria Anzaldúa has paved the way for many seeking to understand and discuss the deep-rooted societal and cultural issues of past and present within the United States, particularly the situation of the individual caught between cultural and racial division. Through her numerous essays, short stories, poems, collections, and perhaps most notably, her work Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestia (1987), she analyzes the components of this cultural and racial divide and its physical and psychological impacts. This divide, or the Borderland, is a space that is created by those in power who dictate who does and does not belong in a certain group or area (Anzaldúa 38). For the people that do not belong to either side of the Border, that space becomes a place of rejection, solitude, and exile—they live among the Borderlands. The people that inhabit this in-between space often face physical, socioeconomic, and psychological impacts. Anzaldúa’s extensive research into the struggles of those that reside in an in-between space of what is acceptable and what is taboo to society at large has given many a basis of approach in detangling the root of injustice. As Sonia Saldívar-Hall notes in the introduction of the second edition, “Borderlands/ La Frontera continues to offer a radical (re)construction of space in the Americas where political struggles and alliances are forged only after risking conflicts, appropriations, and contradictions in the face of power and domination” (Anzaldúa 13). Anzaldúa used her work to define and build upon this metaphorical space, the Borderlands, giving a name to the very struggle that so many diverse cultures and peoples fight every day. Indeed, although created to reveal the physical, psychological and spiritual struggle of Mexicans and Mexican 22 22

Americans living on the border between the United States and Mexico, this metaphorical Borderland has evolved to connect with all peoples who are pushed aside or treated less than due to being conceptually “other.” As Anzaldúa notes: “Borders are set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from them…The prohibited and forbidden are its inhabitants” (25). Anzaldúa argues that society has created guidelines of correctness, and when people do not live up to these standards, they are pushed aside to the outskirts of society, whether that be a physical or symbolic exclusion. Norma Cantú notes the impact of Anzaldúa’s work in her article, “Doing Work That Matters: Gloria Anzaldúa in the International Arena:” “the ideas in her work reach out across cultures, across nations, across many borders” (2). Anzaldúa’s Borderland theory in regards to race, her notions of cultural tyranny, and the constructive result of a created mestiza consciousness can all provide insight into the struggles of any marginalized people and their failure or success in coping with their marginalization. When looking deeper into the theories from Borderlands: La Frontera, it is perhaps helpful to look into the history and upbringing of Gloria Anzaldúa herself, as much of her framework was created from the incidents and scenarios that she experienced in her past. Gloria Evanjelina Anzaldúa was “born on September 26, 1942, in Raymondville, Texas, to Urbano and Amelia Anzaldúa” (Wayne 14). Her family—as many Mexican American families of the South—worked in the fields in order to support themselves. Anzaldúa grew up working alongside her family and learned the value of hard work. This perseverance would eventually become one of her greatest assets. Growing up, Anzaldúa and her family also wrestled against socioeconomic injustice, as did many Mexican and Mexican American families. These 23 23 experiences helped to shape that which she was to become, but the memories still haunted her. Anzaldúa remembers seeing how hard her family worked the fields to make ends meet, only to be in a constant state of debt: To make a living my father became a sharecropper. Rio Farms International loaned him seed money and living expenses. At harvest time, my father repaid the loan and forked over 40% of the earnings. Sometimes we earned less than we owed, but always the corporations fared well. (31) This situation is a direct exposure of the trauma and struggle for those that live within the Borderlands. As her family and many Chicano families witnessed, since they were not of White society, they were set apart and often taken advantage of. This struggle that Anzaldúa’s family and countless others faced is likewise noted in Ronald Takaki’s A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America. Within his chapter titled, “El Norte,” Takaki exposes abundant examples of travesty and injustice that Mexican laborers historically faced in the fields in the United States. Takaki provides us examples of this historical racial usage of Mexican laborers and the faulty reasoning behind their employers’ oppression. Such racial and inaccurate stereotypes prevailed and dominated the functions of farm life for people of color. And, sadly as Anzaldúa noted from her own personal experience from working the fields, “Mexican laborers often discovered they could not leave their employers because they had been driven into debt” (Takaki 322). Unfortunately, laborers had a hard time getting out of debt when the system perpetuated an eternal system of debt by their employers. They were never meant to financially succeed; unbeknownst to them, they struggled and labored for the sole profit of the corporations and farm owners. The byproduct of this situation creates a marginalized sect of outsiders. Takaki informs us that “in 24 24 the Southwest, agricultural labor became virtually synonymous with Mexican labor, and Mexican wages with ‘cheap’ wages” (323). Their status as “cheap labor” creates a powerful rift between them and the rest of society. As many of us know, this abusive usage of certain peoples for profitable gain has indeed been a bitter truth for the United States; and thus, Anzaldúa grew up to realize that Mexican laborers were seen not as equals but instead as subservient outsiders. This racial injustice continued on throughout Anzaldúa’s life. Anzaldúa recalls the inequity of growing up in a school system that devalued her Mexican culture: “I walk through the elementary school I attended so long ago, that remained segregated until recently. I remember how the white teachers used to punish us for being Mexican” (111). Along with being punished for being Mexican, Anzaldúa was threatened and beat anytime she spoke Spanish at school: “I remember being caught speaking Spanish at recess—that was good for three licks on the knuckles with a sharp ruler” (75). The segregation that she grew up with was both a physical and psychological reminder that one’s skin color and language can socially dictate a person’s value. As a young girl this experience must have been very confusing as the rejection that she faced was a rejection of her language and her race, both of which were very much a part of her. How do people deal with the fact that they are hated and rejected because they were born different? How can one be asked to forsake oneself? For a little girl to be punished merely because she was Mexican is both a shame, but also is a cold hard truth about the historical racism in the United States. In addition to facing racial borders, Anzaldúa also faced gender and sexual blockades as early in her life she “made the choice to be queer” (Anzaldúa 41). She believes that her lifestyle choice caused walls to go up from every side. Some of these walls were created by the Catholic Church, by her own Mexican culture, 25 25 by her family, and by much of society. Hence, for Anzaldúa, being pushed aside for being different became a norm and she was constantly faced with being on the other side of the border due to one concept of her being or another. This inner and outer struggle of being unaccepted and cast aside did much to create a unique perspective of those that reside in the Borderland. This perspective is what ultimately leads to the creation of Borderlands/La Frontera where she writes: This book, then, speaks of my existence. My preoccupations with the inner life of the Self, and the struggle of that Self amidst adversity and violation; with the confluence of primordial images; with the unique positionings consciousness takes at these confluent streams; and with my almost instinctive urge to communicate, to speak, to write about life on the borders, life in the shadows. (19) For Anzaldúa, the shadow became the place where the outcasts live. It is the place that normal society wouldn’t dare to venture. Walls frame this abandoned land and the rejected have no hopes of getting to the other side. It is the opposite of what is seen as good and right. Fearing judgment and punishment, the rejected hide themselves from view so that they can somehow hope to just get through the day. This landscape is so undesirable that the sun cannot even reach through, and it is lost in darkness. Difference then creates fear and the rejected can safely go nowhere else but to the shadows—towards the borderland. This difference is perhaps a factor contributing to her desire to excel in school and establish herself in a group where she could be accepted. With a higher education she was able to use her intelligence to get out of the farm and into the University, where she began to cultivate and expand on her understanding of race, class, sex, and politics. Achieving a “B.A. in English, art, and education in 1969,” and a “M.A. in literature and education from the University of Texas at Austin in 26 26

1973,” Anzaldúa later attended the University of California, Santa Cruz in quest for her PhD (“An Introduction to Anzaldúa, Gloria (1942-2004)” 1). Unfortunately, as she soon learned, even in education there still lay borders. As much as education aided her in expanding her theories, she noted that the lesbian woman of color still faced an oppositional border. In her article, “Speaking in Tongues: A Letter to 3rd World Women Writers,” Anzaldúa approaches this struggle and reveals the ways in which she was ostracized: Unlikely to be friends of people in high literary places, the beginning woman of color is invisible both in the white male mainstream world and in the white women’s feminist world, though in the latter this is gradually changing. The lesbian of color is not only invisible, she doesn’t even exist. Our speech, too, is inaudible. We speak in tongues like the outcast and the insane. (165) This particular borderland is not one that Anzaldúa thought that she would have to face as one would believe the world of academics to be broadminded and understanding of difference. Unfortunately, what she faced in her pursuit of education mirrored that which she faced in mainstream society. This then became a final lesson in tolerance, and lack thereof. Moving forward with the life lessons she gained, Anzaldúa taught various classes, spoke at lectures, attended forums, and wrote about racial, socioeconomics, gender, and queer issues all in hopes for social change. She hoped that she could reach others through educating them on the injustice in the world, as she later notes that “books saved my sanity, knowledge opened the locked places in me and taught me first how to survive and then how to soar” (19). Gloria Anzaldúa was thus able to create a platform of change based on her own experiences with racism, sexism, and discrimination, and she later learned to use 27 27 every type of discrimination and difference as a tool to create awareness and promote acceptance. Her experiences helped to mold her theories and beliefs and motivated her to seek solutions to correcting this corrupt system. Consequently, as a person who fought against being cast in the shadows, Anzaldúa found a theory of acceptance (not rejection), of inclusion (not exclusion). Her acceptance of herself and her status on the border took time to develop but at last she was able to actualize a clear understanding of what it means to live life in the borderlands. This eventual acceptance of who she was in this divided world propelled Anzaldúa into seeking answers and solutions to these embedded issues of prejudice. Many of these answers, as noted earlier, were found in books. But her quest did not end there as she went one step further and created her own book in which to bring answers and solutions to others that face similar inequities: I am a border woman. I grew up between two cultures, the Mexican and the Anglo. I have been straddling the tejas-Mexican border, and others, all my life. It’s not a comfortable territory to live in, this place of contradictions. Hatred, anger and exploitation are the prominent features of this landscape. (Anzaldúa 19) The hatred that she writes of was the very hatred she faced daily as a lesbian woman of color. Still, although she notes the negative feature of life in the borderlands, Anzaldúa utilizes Borderlands: La Frontera as a positive solution to this unequal power structure. Accordingly, in her article, “New Mestiza, Nepantlera, Beloved Comrade: Remembering Gloria E. Anzaldúa,” author Ann Keating likewise praises the many accomplishments that Anzaldúa attained in her lifetime of advocacy: As one of the first openly queer Chicana writers, Anzaldúa played a major role in defining Chicana/o, queer, and female identities. And 28 28

as editor or coeditor of three multicultural, multigenre feminist anthologies, she played an equally crucial role in developing inclusionary movements for social justice. Although she chose to work outside the university system (except for selective teaching engagements and conference "speaking gigs"), her impact on many academic disciplines—including (but not limited to) American studies, Chicana/o studies, composition studies, cultural studies, ethnic studies, feminism/feminist theory, literary studies, queer theory, and women’s studies—has been immense. Her writings have been included in over 100 anthologies to date—and I predict that this number will grow much larger during the twenty-first century. Her work speaks to many people on a variety of levels. (14) As Keating suggests, the work that Anzaldúa did is vast and very influential. As Anzaldúa was not trapped in just one discipline of study and instead was able to break through multiple fields of study, she used her knowledge to reveal a message of inclusion. From her own dealings with being seen as the “other” Gloria Anzaldúa was able to use her education and experiences to write and speak against these social inequities and promote the acceptance and benefits of difference. Anzaldúa’s Borderlands: La Frontera is an interesting assortment of genres and writing styles. Anzaldúa utilizes creative nonfiction, poetry, prose, autobiography, history (an Anzaldúan creation called autohistoria), and code switching of seven different languages, among them Spanish and Nahautal (Anzaldúa 2). The first half of the book is seven chapters in which she sets up the theoretical borderlands, notions of cultural tyranny, and the power of mestiza consciousness. The second half is a variety of poems that reflect and reinforce the 29 29 theories that she outlines in the first. Anzaldúa’s varieties of genre allow the reader to first study and learn Borderland theory, and then later see how it can be applicable to any struggle between two divides. Her work opens with a symbolic poem that represents the epitome of borderland theory: Wind tugging at my sleeve feet sinking into the sand I stand at the edge where earth touches ocean where the two overlap a gentle coming together at other times and places a violent clash. (Anzaldúa 23) The imagery of ocean meeting land is representative of two differing worlds, two differing views. These differing elements can never become the other, but instead, must learn to live in an agreeable manner or else one would overcome the other and land or sea would fade to exist. Anzaldúa is revealing the importance of both sides, as well as noting the place of conflict, which is where both collide, and notes that this collision has the possibility to be a peaceful meetings as easily as it can become a warzone. As she openly admits, there is indeed difference in people. It is not the difference that is wrong but the praise that one side receives and the stigma that the other side unjustly receives. People’s difference should then be seen as ocean and sand, as both are innately different, yet both are a vital part of this earth and thus equal. Instead, what often occurs is that this difference is often focused on and used as a means of branding those that differ as inferior and dangerous. Consequently, the people that are branded as such live in this permanent border where they have no hopes of escape. If they venture to the other side of the border they are insulted, rejected, and maimed for daring to be where they do not belong. These rejected individuals are in a relentless battle with 30 30 themselves. They constantly wonder why they were born different. They ask, “what did I do to deserve this…Why can’t I have been born normal?” Accordingly, they often begin to hate themselves and their difference, when instead they should see the system, and not themselves, as the thing that must be destroyed. At a young age Anzaldúa discovered that she was different but somehow found the ability to accept her difference and to not feel ashamed; instead, she “had a stubborn will” and a desire “to live life on [her] own terms no matter how unsuitable to others they were…” (Anzaldúa 38). Instead of trying to find the ways to fit in and live on the other side of the border, Anzaldúa believes that these border people must relish their difference and accept it in order for others to likewise accept their unique variance. It is this mindset that Anzaldúa promotes for those that live on the border. Within Borderlands: La Frontera, Anzaldúa sets out to uncover who created the cultural ideologies that separate people from one another due to difference. Anzaldúa asserts that the root of this unequal power relation is brought on by what she coined, “cultural tyranny” (Anzaldúa 38). “Cultural tyranny” is thus a creation and abuse of power that certain groups of people use to reign over others. In the United States, Anzaldúa looks towards the history of cultural domination of Whites over Hispanics: Gringos in the U.S. Southwest consider the inhabitants of the borderlands transgressors, aliens—whether they possess documents or not…Do not enter, trespassers will be raped, maimed, strangled, gassed, shot. The only “legitimate” inhabitants are those in power, the whites and those who align themselves with whites. Tension grips the inhabitants of the borderland like a virus. Ambivalence and unrest reside there and death is no stranger. (Anzaldúa 26) 31 31

Anzaldúa thus reveals that in the United States, anyone who is seen as different than the race and lifestyle of the whites is thereby threatened and oppressed in various ways. These people are daily reminded of their differences as it is these differences that make it so hard for them to feel like they belong. “Cultural tyranny” forces fifth generation Mexican Americans to feel like outsiders of the United States, even though they have never set foot on Mexican soil. As Anzaldúa notes, this “cultural tyranny” comes from a place where gringos are “locked into the fiction of white superiority” (29). This fiction is perpetuated and enforced within white society. Anzaldúa also recognizes the cultural tyranny that can exist within a culture. According to Anzaldúa, Mexican men use “cultural tyranny” to dictate the role and lifestyle of Mexican women. In trying to break down the origin of much of this power abuse Anzaldúa exposes that: Culture forms our beliefs. We perceive the version of reality that it communicates. Dominant paradigms, predefined concepts that exist as unquestionable, unchallengeable, are transmitted to us through our culture. Culture is made by those in power—men […] (30) Hence, Anzaldúa often wrote that the problem that Mexican women have faced when dealing with sexism is embedded within their very culture. This struggle with both positive and negative attributes of Mexican culture is perhaps synthesized with Anzaldúa’s stand: “though I’ll defend my race and culture when they are attacked […] I abhor some of my culture’s ways, how it cripples its women, como burras, our strengths used against us” (43). Still, Anzaldúa makes it clear that though she will always honor her Mexican culture, she can no longer accept the “aspects of [my] culture which have injured me” (44). 32 32

Likewise, by utilizing Anzaldúa’s notion of “cultural tyranny” we can explore other groups that face cultural tyranny. In this regard, “cultural tyranny” may be seen as one race presiding over another race, or it may even be one race presiding over, among others, a certain gender, sexual orientation, religion, belief, occupation, education, or trait, within their own race. “Cultural tyranny” can help in analyzing any form of oppression. Historically and culturally “cultural tyranny” has told homosexuals, women, people of color, impoverished people, among others, how they should live their life, and when not in accordance to this, they are rejected. Through the conception of “cultural tyranny” Anzaldúa has been able to dig to the core of these unjust power systems that have historically proven that “cultures take away our ability to act—shackle[s] us in the name of protection (Anzaldúa 42-43).” By pinpointing the perpetrators that enforce these segregated prisons Anzaldúa argues that one can dismantle the system and free oneself from these imposed chains. In order to help others break free from dominant ideology Anzaldúa utilizes Borderland theory as a platform on which to build her message of embracing a new consciousness, or as she defines it, a new mestiza consciousness. As Anzaldúa claims: “I want the freedom to carve and chisel my own face…I will have to stand and claim my space, making a new culture—una cultura mestiza— with my own lumber, my own bricks and mortar…” (44). Instead of rejecting the difference that she is, Anzaldúa embraces these differences and even finds power in these differences. She stays true to her inner being and is not swayed by what is deemed acceptable and right to dominant culture; instead, she embraces her niche, her borderland, where she is free to be all the attributes that she feels encompass her. It is through this lens that Chicanas/os, and many other groups, cultures, 33 33 races, and peoples, have begun to renegotiate their identity and role in present society: Living on the borders and in margins, keeping intact one’s shifting and multiple identities and integrity, is like trying to swim in a new element, an “alien” element. There is an exhilaration in being a participant in the further evolution of humankind, in being “worked” on. I have the sense that certain “faculties”—not just in me but in every border resident, colored or non-colored—and dormant areas of consciousness are being activated, awakened. (Anzaldúa 19) The new mestiza thus holds the ultimate power over her lifestyle and outcome. She can choose for herself where, how, why and with whom she wants to live. She can choose for herself the identity that best suits her. For Anzaldúa, her power came in claiming all of her identities and making a collage of herself. She found this notion from a Mexican philosopher, José Vasconcelos, who envisioned a mestizo race to be the most “cosmic” of races: Opposite to the theory of the pure Aryan, and to the policy of racial purity that white America practices, his theory is one of inclusivity. At the confluence of two or more genetic streams, with chromosomes constantly “crossing over,” this mixture of races, rather than resulting in an inferior being, provides hybrid orogeny, a mutable, more malleable species with a rich gene pool. From this radical, ideological, cultural and biological crosspollination, an “alien” consciousness is presently in the making—a new mestiza consciousness, una conciencia de mujer. It is a consciousness of the Borderlands. (Anzaldúa 99) 34 34

The notion of a mestiza consciousness, of a new way of embracing all of one’s identity despite what may be seen as traditional, is for many a refreshing and exhilarating concept. For those that have fought inner turmoil when they were constantly told to reject aspects of their being in order to be accepted, there is now a new world of understanding. The incidents that Gloria Anzaldúa experienced helped mold her into embracing this mestiza consciousness. Her first awareness of her mestiza consciousness began when she was a young girl who refused to be molded into a housewife and instead sought out “studying, reading, painting, writing,” despite her family’s demands for her to do “women’s work” (Anzaldúa 38). As a lesbian Chicana woman she faced racism, prejudice, and sexism and yet, she still was very open about who she was, where others may have allowed themselves to be pushed into the outskirts of society. Anzaldúa embraced her differences and found the ability to accept, promote, and value herself because of, not despite, her differences. Accordingly, Anzaldúa’s consciousness gradually became actualized and the actualization of herself pushed her to write Borderlands: La Frontera in order to grant the same awareness to her readers. Anzaldúa’s acceptance of herself allowed her to spend her life not limiting herself to just one cause, and instead she took part in countless forums, all in hopes of bringing about a better awareness of injustice. Still, as these forums often had clashing ideologies, she was frequently asked to commit fully to one or the other. Nevertheless, being forced into a certain role was not something that Anzaldúa could ever allow. As Keating notes: Anzaldúa could not be contained within any single group or location. Although each group tried to make membership contingent on its own exclusionary set of demands, Anzaldúa refused their rules 35 35

without rejecting the people or groups. At great personal risk, she exposed the limitations in the labels and the flaws in the various forms of group-think on which such labels rely (15). Anzaldúa very much lived her life the way that she wrote about in Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. For her, there was power in being able to be a part of many communities, rejecting none, and pulling from each what worked best for her. After her death in 2004, a new wave of critical articles, essays, and reflections came pouring out into the academic and cultural sphere. Indeed, Anzaldúa’s writing and her Borderland theory are still breaking ground in understanding of culture, sex, politics and notions of difference. Although most critics agree that the creation of Borderland theory brought about a new approach to looking at culture, there are varying ways in which her theories are applied. First, there are many critics that continue to read Anzaldúa as a means of understanding the cultural struggle of those living between the United States and Mexico. These critics often focus on cultural studies to further dissect the struggles of first, second, third, etc., generations of the Mexican/American border and analyze how each generation has faced political, geographical, cultural, and racial discrimination. The second group of critics reads Anzaldúa’s work and interprets more through the feminist, gender, and homosexual lens, investigating the areas in which patriarchy has historically held men and women into highly regulated gender roles. A third group of critics focus on the connection between W.E.B. Du Bois and Gloria Anzaldúa in that both authors similarly created groundbreaking theories from their experiences with their identity as outsiders. Both authors have experienced rejection and threat due to their race. In their similar approach and concepts of borderland, Du Bois experience as an African 36 36

American man in a white society, and Anzaldúa’s experience as a Chicana in a white society, both ring a similar bell of truth. With the correspondence of Du Bois’s “double consciousness” and Anzaldúa’s “mestiza consciousness,” critics examine the similarities and differences of their ideologies. Finally, a fourth group of critics look further and argue that Borderland theory is able to transcend and be applicable not just to those struggling in the United States and Mexico, not just to the struggles of Chicanas and homosexuals, but to any cultural, political, situational issue where people of difference struggle against any type of injustice, and how they can use Borderland theory to overcome this inequality. For this investigation the work of the critics in the latter two groups is the most helpful, as both move to a broader application of the theory and practices of Borderland theory and may connect to the writings of William Faulkner. As critics note, although almost a century divides the writings and workings of W.E.B. Du Bois in his book, The Souls of Black Folk (1903) and Gloria Anzaldúa’s, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestia (1987), there is indeed much similarity between their research and theories. In particular, in looking at the close connection between Du Bois’s “double consciousness” and Anzaldúa’s “mestiza consciousness,” there is a true correlation in the self-reflective and transformative understanding of their selves against society’s cultural oppression. Like Anzaldúa’s mestiza consciousness, Du Bois writes about his own issues as an outsider, a thought that he first realized as a young boy when a girl refused to take his greeting card. It was then that he realized that he “was different from the others” due to being African American and not White (292). An educated man, Du Bois quickly learned that: “This double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others…One ever feels his twoness—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts…” (293). This notion of double 37 37 consciousness is very similar to Anzaldúa’s mestiza consciousness as a Mexican American, as it refers to a person pulled between two worlds and the effects of that on the individual. In the article “The Double-Consciousness of Du Bois & the ‘Mestiza Consciousness’ of Anzaldúa,” Theresa A. Martinez argues for the connection between W.E.B. DuBois and Anzaldúa: It is the central argument of this paper that Du Bois’ concept of the “double consciousness” and Anzaldúa’s concept of the “mestiza consciousness,” among other related aspects of their work, are linked and nuanced ideas that describe interlocking systems of oppression spanning two centuries and arguably binding the experiences of African American and Latina/os in America. (159) Here again lies the groundbreaking impact of Anzaldúa’s work that in many ways built upon the theories and writings of Du Bois and his notions of “double consciousness.” Thus, where DuBois was able to express the psychology of African Americans in the segregated and colonial United States in the early nineteen hundreds, Anzaldúa was able to express the psychology of Chicanas in the 1980s to present. Both reveal theories of cultural divides, but Anzaldúa is able to go one step further in her theory and create a solution, if you will, in the form of mestiza consciousness. Like Du Bois, Anzaldúa pinpoints the creation of this dual consciousness, but unlike Du Bois, Anzaldúa eventually finds a theory that accepts this difference, and then finds a benefit of this difference that allows for a more evolved way of being. Denise A. Segura and Patricia Zavella look towards the evolution of Borderland theory in their article, “Introduction: Gendered Borderlands.” Within 38 38 this article they analyze issues of marginalization as well as Anzaldúa’s theory, claiming it as an approach to negotiating systems of domination: Anzaldúa acknowledges the pain and anguish of otherness and seeks to reclaim its latent power by exploring how disempowered subjects labeled as ‘other’ express their identities and resistance. She coins the term mestiza consciousness to reflect border subjects’ expressions of agency that incorporate spiritual transformations and psychic process of exclusion and identification—of feeling ‘in between’ cultures, languages, or places. Anzaldúa also delves into the origins and conditions that construct and reinforce otherness. Her theoretical formulation of ‘borderlands’ expounds on the dynamics within material and discursive spaces that transcend geopolitical border areas, where women, men, and youth, straight and queer, adapt, resist, and develop new strategies to negotiate social inequalities. (537) The difficulties of life in the borderland are apparent and very real for so many people, of so many forms and so many countries. Segura and Zavella argue that although there is indeed a disadvantage to being an in-between resident, there is also much advantage. This advantage comes in the strength and ability to overcome and resist and recreate notions of power. Once again we see the importance of Borderland theory as it has, since its publication in 1987, transcended and evolved to reach out and give hope and solutions to those that find themselves lost in the borders. Those that are divided, those that are outcast, and those that seek refuge from the wastelands, all can utilize Borderland theory, understand the root of “cultural tyranny,” and embrace a mestiza consciousness. 39 39

Within his own investigation of race in the early nineteen hundreds, American writer William Faulkner sought to explore society’s reactions to and treatment of the mixed-raced men and women, the mulattos, if you will, calling into question the very categories of white and black race. To Faulkner, the plight of the mulattos is a complicated issue as they are in a constant struggle to understand their position in society while being outcast by both black and white culture. In Anzaldúa’s terms, they are true dwellers of the Borderlands. William Faulkner introduces the mulatto character Joe Christmas in his novel Light in August (1932) to reveal the psychological impact of finding and accepting—or not finding and accepting—one’s identity at the margin of society. Not accepted as white, and judged harshly by some blacks, this character is constantly marginalized and lives on the border of both races. Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands theory is key to further understanding this deeply embedded issue of the mulatto being forced into the margins and not allowed to move to either side of the spectrum. This issue of identity is both a psychological as well as societal creation for “the placelessness of persons who have, whether through their own efforts or because of some twist of fate, become located in the margins of society. What Faulkner excavates is the number of possibilities attached to a person who is simultaneously a part of, yet, outside, of society” (Watkins 11). Anzaldúa’s Borderland theory can aid in excavating the struggles that Joe Christmas faced in regards to power and powerlessness, the deep miscegenation of the South, and the irony of being two races and not accepted as either with his identified status as a half black, half white man. By utilizing Borderland theory we may uncover the places in which Joe Christmas found himself as a border dweller.

CHAPTER 3: JOE CHRISTMAS: LIFE AND DEATH IN THE BORDERLAND

“We even made laws which declare that one eighth of a specified kind of blood shall outweigh seven eighths of another kind.” --William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom! Although throughout his life and career William Faulkner wrote his novels from the understanding and background of the privileged white bigoted Southerner of the early 1900s, he also eventually began to question and probe for progressive answers to race relations and the stigma that surrounded black society. In “Faulkner and Racism,” Arthur F. Kinney claims: “The single most indelible fact about William Faulkner’s work is his persistent concentration on observing and recording the culture and country in which he was born; what is most striking now, as we look back on his legacy from our own, is the enormous courage and cost of that task” (265). For Faulkner, his arduous task was examining race relations and confronting the prejudices that existed within his own lifetime and society. As Faulkner wrote in a time when segregation was a part of the fabric of society, he risked criticism from family, friends, and the rest of society. He also faced his own inner conflict between his upbringing and his intellectual desire to find a progressive view on race. Thus, Faulkner wrote to teach others that the delicate fabric holding this race-conscious-society together would eventually unravel. Faulkner foresaw this unraveling in conjunction with the demise of the old South and the understanding that racism only further corrupted society. The ones in power, the white Southerners, wanted to continue life the way that their 41 41 forefathers did, by claiming superiority over blacks. Ronald Takaki writes of race in A Different Mirror, “Race, we will see, has been a social construction that has historically set apart racial minorities from European immigrant groups” (10). Faulkner himself gradually began to understand that race is indeed a social construction. The way that people see and understand race is a man-made creation and is perpetuated by those that maintain power through the implementation of this imposed rhetoric. After he came to his own understanding of race Faulkner was able to use fiction as a mirror of society so that readers could begin to digest the truths within his storytelling. By writing the many truths of segregated society he called attention to a breach in humanity that many would otherwise choose to ignore. As we saw through his writing progression from chapter 1, Faulkner gradually moved from writing black characters as backdrops or props to eventually bringing out their names, stories, backgrounds, emotions, triumphs and defeats, so that readers could begin to see them as more than just stereotypes, but instead, as human beings. In order to really understand the racial divide between black and white men and women, Faulkner created scenarios in which he could explore the psychological impact of those that live in the margins of society. His progressive breakthrough arrived when he began to look at an even further marginalized group of people and tell their story of “placelessness” (Watkins 11). These people belonged neither to white society nor black society, though they biologically were descendants of both. They were known as the “mulattos,” the offspring of black and white parents, and due to their half-status they were often ostracized, certainly by white society and often by black society as well. In his book Who is Black? One Nation’s Definition, F. James Davis further defines “mulatto” in the United States: “The term "mulatto" was originally used to mean the offspring of a ‘pure 42 42

African Negro’ and a ‘pure white.’ Although the root meaning of mulatto, in Spanish, is ‘hybrid,’ ‘mulatto’ came to include the children of unions between whites and so-called ‘mixed Negroes’” (5). This label, mulatto, became a way of ostracizing those of mixed blood and completely separating them from white society. Throughout the early 1900s Faulkner began to dig deeper into his understanding of this mulatto character through numerous characters and novels. Faulkner introduces his first mulatto character Elnora in Flags in the Dust in 1929. Still, although we learn of her story as a half-black half-white housemaid, we are unable to fully enter the psyche of her character. Not until his later novel, Light in August in 1932, do we begin to understand the tangled and confused psyche of the marginalized Joe Christmas. Through Light in August, Faulkner portrays the psychological and societal strain mulattos face when realizing their identity within their margin of society. As an alleged half-white half-black man, this character was destined to be seen as more black than white due to the “one-drop law” that was created by those in power in order to segregate African Americans from the rest of white society. In regards to the “one-drop law,” Davis explains its origin and effects on those of racially mixed heritage: In the South it became known as the "one-drop rule,’’ meaning that a single drop of "black blood" makes a person a black. It is also known as the "one black ancestor rule," some courts have called it the "traceable amount rule," and anthropologists call it the "hypo- descent rule," meaning that racially mixed persons are assigned the status of the subordinate group. This definition emerged from the American South to become the nation’s definition, generally 43 43

accepted by whites and blacks. Blacks had no other choice. [Emphasis added] (4-5) White Southern society found it imperative to continue segregation and the notion of “black blood” in order to maintain the status quo. If they began to grant mulattos freedoms and laws kept for pure whites, then they would have a hard time continuing the justification of segregation and the denial of freedoms to all blacks. Although it was very much a law, we must remember “the one-drop rule and anxiety about passing originated during slavery and later received powerful reinforcement under the Jim Crow system” (Davis 14). As their notion of race was a social construction made to perpetuate racial superiority of whites over blacks, an alteration to this concept would cause social unrest between the people that wanted to continue segregation and those that wanted a progressive approach to race relations. This “one-drop rule” was not just something that flourished in the US South; it eventually extended to many other states, although not all adopted such official practices (Davis 14). In Light in August Faulkner explores the psychological trauma of being accepted by neither group due to a social construction of race. Faulkner illustrates the strict structure that does not allow for one to live in-between, even if of both black and white descent. As a result, instead of being taken as white or black, mulattos are deemed different and inferior, as they are proof of the attempt to break away from societal laws against miscegenation. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, miscegenation is “the mixing or interbreeding of people of different races or ethnic groups, especially the interbreeding or sexual union of whites and non-whites” (“Miscegenation”). This mixing still occurred in a time of deep segregation and produced many mulattos who were forced into borders, or 44 44 instead, when possible, tried hard to conceal their black blood and join white society by “passing” as white. In Borderlands: La Frontera: The New Mestiza, Gloria Anzaldúa writes on this issue of half-ness or perhaps double-ness, noting that society has created “an absolute despot duality that says we are able to be only one or the other. It claims that human nature is limited and cannot evolve into something better” (1020). Anzaldúa notes society’s lack of understanding and acceptance of anything or anyone that is seen as the “other.” Similar to the struggles of the mulatto, in Borderlands Anzaldúa writes about the struggles of living between the Mexican and American border and the effort to find acceptance in this marginalized space; as a mestiza, of Indigenous and Spanish decent, she was forced to constantly struggle between two opposing identities: that of the oppressor and of the oppressed. Her experience of struggling to find the right codes of conduct, the right language and the right home mirrors that of the mulatto. Anzaldúa’s theory of Borderlands, “cultural tyranny” and mestiza consciousness thus aids in the further understanding of Faulkner’s mulatto, Joe Christmas, in regards to his psychological and physical exile, as the Chicana and mulatto share many fundamental issues and effects of marginalization. Anzaldúan terminology and ideas will aid in articulating what Faulkner might not have been able to articulate as he was perhaps stifled by Southern decorum and acceptability and his own barriers of prejudice, and thus unable to imagine “a different mirror” (Takaki 17). Faulkner’s first presentation of the mulatto is seen in his 1929 novel Flags in the Dust, originally published by the name Sartoris. Flags in the Dust is a post- World War I novel of two men returning from war, Bayard Sartaris and Horace Benbow. The novel also gives the history of the Sartoris clan and the first preview of the Snopes clan. Somehow in the midst of all this we are given a small look 45 45 into the backdrop of Southern life: black labor. Elnora is introduced as a minor character, the mulatto servant of the Sartoris home. Faulkner is aware of the stigma on mulatto children and uses her role in the home to reveal the hidden truths of deep miscegenation of the South. In his introductory description of her, we take close note of her appearance: A tall mulatto woman appeared in the slanting sunlight without the back door and came sibilantly into the house. Her faded blue garment was pinned up about her knees and it was darkly and irregularly blotched. Beneath it her shanks were straight and lean as the legs of a tall bird, and her bare feet were pale coffee-splashes on the dark polished floor. (9) Through the descriptions of Elnora we see a woman that is indeed caught within a paradox of identity. Her clothing as faded and irregularly blotched perhaps refers not only to her clothing but also symbolically to her race as faded and blotched by white and black blood. Her legs no longer look like human legs but have attained a birdlike quality, and her feet are like pale coffee, not black coffee, but darker all the same. Later we come to realize that Elnora is the daughter of a black servant woman, Euphony, and the deceased master of the house, John Sartoris, and thus half-sister to old Bayard to whom she is now servant. Elnora is thoroughly rejected as family and not treated at all like a sister. Still, despite the fact that she is more servant than sister, Elnora does not move about the house quietly but instead, as if to announce her presence and prove her identity, she comes “sibilantly” in, almost like a bird’s lingering whistle, perhaps to prove that she still exists despite society’s belief that she should not. Although her character is not at all the focus of Faulkner’s novel, it does show that there was certainly awareness 46 46 on his part of the miscegenation and identity struggle of mulattos within Southern society. Although Elnora’s half-brother old Bayard does not seem to know her to be his sister, he does know her to be half-white and yet still insults her with racial slurs all the same: “Why the hell cant you niggers tell me the truth about things…Or not tell me anything at all?” (9). Like Southern society, old Bayard looks at Elnora and can only see the black stain that is part of her genetic makeup. Elnora and others of her marginalized group are denied any ounce of their whiteness and instead only seen as “niggers.” This can perhaps be credited to Southern society’s refusal to see her “whiteness,” as it would force them to challenge their very notions of race. As Anzaldúa explains, “culture forms our beliefs. We perceive the version of reality that it communicates. Dominant paradigms, predefined concepts that exist as unquestionable, unchallengeable, are transmitted to us through culture” (1018). Hence, although a person may have mixed blood, Southern culture dictated that the smallest drop of black blood is enough to taint and destroy and make him or her the other and inferior in all ways. For Southern society, Elnora may have the same father as old Bayard, yet it is her mother’s genetics that disallow her to be a part of the Sartoris clan. Interestingly, it is almost as if Elnora uses the preconceived notions of her status as black to placate old Bayard into believing that she truly was just too naïve to know any better. Her innocent response is: “who’d be comin’ out here, lessen you er Miss Jenny sont’ um?” as if to feign her lack of knowledge that young Bayard returned to town and that she has possibly already seen him (Faulkner 9). Here we realize that Elnora is quite aware of the power of manipulation. Similar to the border between black and white society, in the 1990s Hastings Donnan and Thomas M. Wilson researched a variety of state and country 47 47 borders from around the world in order to reveal border impact on identity and culture. In their text Borders: Frontiers of Identity, Nation and State, Donnan and Wilson find that “borderlanders are often victims of the abuse of power” and are forced into these spaces both physically and metaphorically by those in power (4). This space is not necessarily a physical space, although many times it can be; it also is a symbolic and metaphorical space in which the subordinate populace are forced for various reasons and by various methods. Likewise, in Flags in the Dust Old Bayard is the power that dictates and reminds Elnora of her place and status as an inferior being. Her space is in the servant’s quarters. She is not given a bedroom next to her brother. Nor will she ever be written into the Sartoris family tree. Although they may share the same genetics from their father’s side, the black blood is enough to tip the scale. As Davis notes: “It should now be apparent that the definition of a black person as one with any trace at all of black African ancestry is inextricably woven into the history of the United States. It incorporates beliefs once used to justify slavery and later used to buttress the castelike Jim Crow system of segregation” (15). For Elnora, and anyone with black blood during these segregated times, the “one-drop law” became a constant rhetoric of justification and reasoning as to why whites are inherently better than blacks, used to continue the abuse in power and push them to the margins. Within Flags in the Dust, Faulkner does not go any deeper into the concept of the mulatto. Like a passing wave, we are only given a glimpse into this racial and social issue. Nor, do we ever get the chance to read about Elnora’s own feelings on the matter. How and what she personally thinks about her status in society and in the Sartoris home is never disclosed to us. At this time in his career it seems that Faulkner is still limited by the societal parameters that surround race. Nevertheless, Flags in the Dust is where Faulkner believed he finally found his 48 48 material as a writer. This novel was the first of his Yoknapatawpha novels, a fictional placed based off Lafayette County, Mississippi and most of his novels afterwards were based off this setting. Despite his limitations, Flags in the Dust does touch on these issues of race. Indeed, Faulkner’s ability to utilize this marginalized space and make his reader aware that this is truly an area of confusion where brothers and sisters are separated not by physical space, but instead by a racial divide, perhaps can be read as a preview into the future. Faulkner is basically asking himself and his readers to admit that there continue to be people of mixed-blood despite Southern views against the taboo of miscegenation. Three years later, in 1932, Faulkner began to further explore the psyche of the mulatto through the character Joe Christmas in Light in August. In the article “Faulkner’s Light in August: A View of Tragedy,” Ray Benedict West reads Joe Christmas as a marginalized man who is plagued by the small percent of black blood he carried in his veins. He characterizes Joe Christmas as “the baffled figure of one who is at once ‘everyman’ and ‘noman,’ because he is white with Negro blood, the doomed object of Man’s (and particularly, here, Southern Man’s) curse” (7). In this reading, black blood seems to suggest a correlation with evil. In his characterization of Christmas, one read could reveal that Faulkner perpetuates the notion that in the end it is a curse to be born with black blood, as this blood dictates fate’s design on an individual. Unlike Anzaldúa who realizes that as humans we all have the same blood, Faulkner sees a distinction between white and black blood, and sympathizes with African Americans as he feels they are victims of circumstance and fate. He does not seem to have the ability to see that it is social construction that is the curse of blacks, not their blood. Thus, in Light in August Christmas is very much like the tragic Greek heroes that 49 49

Aeschylus, Sophocles, Aristotle, among others, wrote of. It is as if Christmas is cursed by a fate he couldn’t control—the black blood that coursed through his veins. In a translation by S.H Butcher, Aristotle declares in the Poetics: Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions. (1) Although the story of Christmas does not ideally match all of the elements that make a tragedy, there is indeed a level of Aristotelian tragedy for Christmas as his “one-drop” of black blood sets him up for defeat. In his article “‘It Was like I was the Woman and She Was the Man:’ Boundaries, Portals, and Pollution in Light in August,” Ralph Watkins likewise comments that “because of some twist of fate [Christmas has] become located in the margins of society” (11). Trapped in the margins due to an unpreventable fate, Christmas goes through life in a state of self-pity and fear of being found out and consequently attempts to purge himself of this pity and fear by actively starting fights with others. His readers are caught up in his tragic story and hold both fear and pity for his outcome; even if he did indeed commit murder, he is sympathized with all the same because it was something that he could do nothing to change. Another aspect of tragedy is the idea of individual will versus fate, with fate always winning, leading one to ask: “Are its causes internal, and does one bring suffering upon oneself through arrogance, infatuation, or the tendency to overreach?” (Sewall 1). Another reading of Faulkner’s novel is that it is not Christmas’s blood that sets fate against him; instead, the actions and decisions that Christmas makes throughout the course of his life result in his life becoming a 50 50 tragedy. Christmas is Faulkner’s tragic hero that chooses to misbehave and sneak into the dietitian’s room, chooses to kill his adoptive father, and chooses to kill Joanna Burden. The outcome from each of these events, among others, eventually sets his life and death in misery. The Oxford English Dictionary states that tragedy focuses on a sort of fate that destines the hero to ruin: “dealing with sorrowful or disastrous events, typically the downfall or death of a powerful or important person” (“Tragedy”). Although Christmas does not fully embody the archetype of a hero, nor is he a powerful person in regards to wealth or power, his representation as a mixed race man lifts his status to a higher meaning and importance. As we will soon learn, the story of Joe Christmas becomes a way for Faulkner to reveal the impact and tragedy of Southern racial attitudes on the individual, the South, and the rest of the nation. Through Faulkner illuminating black blood as a curse he is able to question the power structure of the South. Christmas’s curse can be contributed to the very act of miscegenation. Miscegenation finds its way into Jefferson when Milly Hines has an affair with a man that is later said to have black blood. It is interesting that Faulkner does not directly state within the text that the father is undeniably black. Faulkner instead keeps his identity ambiguous and it is not ever known whether or not Christmas does indeed have black blood. Speculation is enough to cast him as black. This ambiguity allows Faulkner to call into question societal construction on the concepts of race. Despite not knowing whether or not the father was black, it is this supposed act of miscegenation that gives Christmas tainted, and no longer pure, blood. Milly dies after giving birth to Joe Hines (Christmas), and her father, Eupheus Hines, believes that her death was a trick of fate to punish both herself for the heinous sexual act, and Christmas for his inheritably sinful nature. As Hines insists of Milly’s relationship with a nonwhite 51 51 man: “It’s God’s abomination of womanflesh!” (373). Hines thus sees both women and blacks as a cursed lot, as an abomination to the rest of white male society. As Faulkner hints, most Southerners would have reacted much like Christmas’s grandfather, Eupheus Hines, when he rejects Joe Hines as part of the family. Quickly, Eupheus drops him off at an orphanage for whites, much to the dismay of his wife and Joe’s grandmother, Mrs. Hines. The questionable mulatto baby is dropped off on Christmas night; thus, this holy day becomes his name. At the orphanage, Joe Hines (now Joe Christmas) has attained initials that mirror those of Jesus Christ. Just like Christ, Christmas is destined to suffer and die for others’ sins. Despite comparison, the similarity is mostly stifled by the fact that although both were “crucified” in their thirties Jesus Christ lived his life inspiring others, whereas Joe Christmas lived his life with anger. For the time being, his questionable identity is secured as the orphanage was one for white children and Christmas had a chance of “passing” as white. Interestingly, something in Eupheus cannot truly rid himself of Joe Christmas entirely and instead of leaving the ugly truth behind him, he continues to obsessively watch Christmas for any sign of the evil he feels is within his black blood. Anzaldúa would see this obsession with Joe Christmas as a fear of what his otherness can represent. She states: “Humans fear the supernatural…the undivine (the animal impulses such as sexuality, the unconscious, the unknown, the alien)” (Anzaldúa 1018-1019, emphasis added). Hines fears Christmas as he sees him as “a walking pollution in God’s own face” (Faukner 128). Thus, Hines stays close to Joe Christmas, yet at a distance, in order to fulfill his curiosity and bafflement at the birth and existence of a mixed child. At the age of five the other children at the orphanage begin calling Joe Christmas a “nigger,” and Eupheus, who took the role of janitor in the orphanage states, “Out of the mouths of little children He 52 52 never concealed it. You have heard them. I never told them to say it, to call him in his rightful nature, by the name of his damnation. I never told them. They knowed” (128). This speech brings about a biblical damnation that seems to suggest that the black blood in Joe Christmas is more than a curse but also a sin within him. It is the South once again declaring that black blood, even one drop, changes a person from being a part of society, to being an outcast. This connection between black blood and sin and damnation was a constant claim and justification for segregation. Black blood cannot be trusted as it lacks purity and directly reflects man’s sins. This theme would follow Christmas throughout his life as he struggled to reconcile with himself the social construction of “blackness” as “evil”. The interaction between Christmas and the dietitian at the orphanage continues the emphasis on blackness as perceived evidence of sin, but also shows how the marginalized figure is easily used as a scapegoat. One night at the orphanage, a young five-year-old Joe Christmas sneaks into the dietitian’s room and accidentally witnesses her in the act of a sexual affair. Although he did not really see anything as he hid behind a curtain, when he is found he is shocked into guilt. The dietitian, fearing that he would tell the matron of the orphanage about what he saw, begins to keep a watchful eye on Christmas. She quickly finds out from the janitor, Mr. Hines, that Christmas is not white. In her desperation to cover up her sin, she brings this knowledge to the matron of the orphanage in hopes that Christmas is sent away forever. By sending Christmas away she would be free from the constant reminder that someone saw her in an act of adultery. She did not want the risk of her transgression to be found out, nor did she want any threat to her reputation. When the matron at the orphanage finds out about Joe Christmas’ “true race” she is forced to send him away for her fear of the truth 53 53 getting out and her reputation damaged. The dietitian—who was responsible for bringing to light his race to the matron—tells her, “I don’t see how we failed to see it as long as we did. You can look at his face now, his eyes and hair. Of course it’s terrible. But that’s where he will have to go, I suppose…Of course it’s bad for the child to have to go to the nigger home, after this, after growing up with white people. It’s not his fault what he is” (134-135). This passage brings to the modern reader the absurdity of caring about the difference in the eyes and hair of a small child. Yet, we must wonder about the novel’s absurdity that Christmas’s blackness is recognized in his face, eyes, and hair by numerous characters. Is it such that one look at a person can view that “black blood” that is a part of their genetics? For the dietitian to know that it is terrible to place such a stigma on a child and yet still advocate for his removal may be read as a critique on Southern ideology. Once again, it is in the dietitian’s benefit that Christmas be removed from the orphanage, and thus she uses race to align herself with those in power as it is in the benefit of those in power (the whites) to sustain notions of racial superiority. Faulkner uses the plot as a framework to bring awareness to his readers: the absurdity in assigning a negative stigma to a person who one minute is seen as acceptable when thought of as white, but then, as something foreign and vile because of a small percentage of non-white blood. For Faulkner, the very presence of the mulatto forces the reader and Southern society to raise the question of race relations and its horrendous effect. It also brings to question the very definition of and assumptions about race and segregation. This questioning and awareness calls into question Southern rhetoric that was often used to justify the hate and segregation of the black community. If black is a connotation for evil then there is definite cause for fear in mixing white and black blood. Gloria Anzaldúa notes similarly the distress of the mestiza, “half 54 54 and half, mita’ y mita’, neither one nor the other but a strange doubling, a deviation of nature that horrified, a work of nature inverted” (1020). It is as if such a mix is against any natural law and thus the result is monstrous. The “unnatural” individual is forced to live in a space between both societies, as the divide between black and white is so large that the mulatto is forced into the canyon of unacceptability. The anxiety that surrounded the mulatto brought much fear to the minds of the Southerners because it questioned prominent beliefs about race and racial superiority. In “Joe Christmas, Faulkner’s Marginal Man,” Slabey notes that for Joe Christmas, “his is the problem of the American mulatto whose position is ambiguous because no matter how small his proportion of Negro blood may be, according to Southern genetics, he is treated the same as a full-blooded Negro” (267). This very notion is one in which Faulkner continually circles in Light in August, playing with the fact that for many years Joe Christmas tried hard to find his place within society. When the matron found out about his ambiguous heritage, rather than send him to an orphanage for blacks, she sets out to get him adopted by whites so that no one would ever find out that she harbored a black orphan at her white orphanage. The truth of his parentage would have caused a scandal that the matron would rather avoid and instead the matron quickly releases Christmas to Mr. McEachern. After being adopted by the McEacherns, an older couple that lived out in the country, Joe Christmas (McEachern) begins to settle again in the identity of a white Southerner. Nevertheless, he cannot seem to shake his knowledge that he is different from the rest of the other white folks. This is likewise reinforced by McEachern’s rigid definition of sin and his constant punishments. Anzaldúa notes that there are: “many defense strategies that the self uses to escape the agony of inadequacy and I have used all of them” (67). As 55 55

Anzaldúa similarly notes of her rejected status as a Chicano, “we suspect that there is something ‘wrong’ with us, something fundamentally ‘wrong,’” and this feeling weighs on a person so much that it is hard to ever feel like they fit in (67). Joe’s knowledge of his black status weighs on him and prevents him from ever feeling accepted as a part of white society. Fate once again sends Joe into a tragedy as Mr. McEachern quickly teaches him that sloth and idleness are not acceptable through the use of the whip. Not only are they not acceptable, they are sins that need to be rectified through corporal punishment in order to adjust and reform these behaviors. These lessons seem to come every day and Joe seems to become complicit in the abuse. Like Anzaldúa, Joe seems to accept this abuse as a way to “blame,” “hate,” and “terrorize” himself, just as many Chicanas do when they face feelings of inadequacy (67). To make up for the abuse, Mrs. McEachern tries to feed and console Joe in secret, but Joe seems to resent the help as he has become comfortable with the abuse and her help would make him feel weak. At this point in the story Christmas has become resigned to being treated as less than human and despises Mrs. McEachern for trying to interfere with the relationship that he and McEachern have formed. By the time that Joe is fourteen he has made friends with other boys from his church but there still seems to be a disconnect in their bonding. One day when all the boys take turns with a black prostitute in a shed something overwhelms Joe, “something in him trying to get out” and he loses it and kicks the girl and starts beating her. It is “smelling the woman smelling the negro all at once” that seems to be the cause of his reaction (156). Anzaldúa reveals that one of her strategies was she, “split from and disowned those parts of [herself] that others rejected” (67). In “smelling” the smell of a negro, Christmas 56 56 likewise rejects what reminded him of himself and his black status. His attack on the young black girl is truly an attack on himself and his identity. When Christmas is seventeen he finds someone he believes will accept him for who he is. Bobbie, a young white waitress quickly becomes his girlfriend, though he later finds out that she is a prostitute. Joe began to sneak into town to meet with her at night and loses his virginity to her, later paying her with candy and coin. One night lying in bed he exposes his secret identity to her: “You noticed my skin, my hair…” She whispered also. “Yes. I thought maybe you were a foreigner. That you never come from around here.” “It’s different from that, even. More than just a foreigner. You cant guess.” “What? How more different? ……………………………………………………………….. “I got some nigger blood in me.” (Faulkner 196) Her reaction is stillness, and then she responds, “I don’t believe it” and Joe leaves it there, but this is the first time in the novel that Christmas admits aloud that he is aware of his ambiguous difference. By revealing this to Bobbie, the closest person he has ever had in his life, he hopes that she will accept him despite his black blood; then perhaps he too can accept himself. There also is a part of Christmas that anticipates rejection, which would be another way for him to reaffirm his less than status, and an excuse to further participate in his own self-loathing. By her refusal to believe that he has black blood, Christmas is forced once again to hide his identity and he does this by utilizing another defense strategy that Anzaldúa herself used: “In order to escape the threat of shame or fear, one takes on a compulsive, repetitious activity as though to busy oneself, to distract oneself, to 57 57 keep awareness at bay” (67.). And accordingly, Christmas throws his attention into drinking, smoking, and sex to distract himself both from the knowledge that Bobbie is indeed a prostitute, and also that he is of mixed blood. By keeping himself distracted he is able to separate himself from the truths in his life. One night after McEachern finds Christmas with Bobbie at a dance, Christmas finds that he can no longer take the physical abuse and fights back when he is punched in the face. He hits McEachern in the head with a chair and knocks him out cold. Whether or not he actually killed McEachern is unknown, but after that moment Christmas becomes an outlaw. He does not ever show remorse for his action and instead responds, “I said I would kill him some day! I told him so” (206). Christmas takes McEachern’s horse and rides back to his farm to steal Mrs. McEachern’s secret stash of money. He rides back to Bobbie’s place to take her with him and in hopes of running away together and getting married. This is where she ultimately rejects him and brings up his black blood to justify her refusal of him: “He told me himself he was a nigger!” (218). Although as a prostitute Bobbie herself lived outside the margins of society, her fear of being involved in the murder forces her to use his blackness as a reason to condemn him. Bobbie looks at his attempted murder of McEachern as a threatening disruption that is brought into her life and she wants nothing to do with it. She aligns herself with the white point of view that by killing a white man Christmas is no longer acceptable to be around and she thereby rejects all of him. When Bobbie rejects Christmas, he finds himself in a state of shock. Part of him really wanted to believe that he could be accepted for who he is, but with her rejection Christmas runs away, traveling for fifteen years from the North United States to as far South as Mexico. It is in these fifteen years that Christmas embraces the marginalized world into which he was forced into all his life. 58 58

Anzaldúa similarly reflects on his dichotomy and states: “Not only was the brain split into two functions but so was reality. Thus people who inhabit both realities are forced to live in the interface between the two, forced to become adept at switching modes” (59). Likewise, in his fifteen years of travel Christmas tries to find his place with white folks and later switches modes and lives with black folks, yet something in him always forces him to be at conflict with the other. Faulkner writes that “he had once tricked or teased white men into calling him a negro in order to fight them, to beat them or be beaten; now he fought the negro who called him white….He lived with negros, shunning white people” (225). Once again Faulkner depicts Christmas as a man torn between black and white. Although he constantly tried to find acceptance with one group or another, even if he did “pass” as black or white, something in him did not fit and he found ways to propel himself back into the margins. Christmas seemed to be running from more than just the murder; indeed, instead of accepting both sides as a part of his being he ran away from the black side of himself as well as the white side of himself. At one point in the story Christmas tells a white prostitute that he is black to get a reaction as well as get out of paying her for her service. When she responds that she has been with men of color before, he attacks her fiercely. He thoroughly rejects the idea that “there were white women who would take a man with a black skin” (Faulkner 225). His awakening to this knowledge is something that he seems to not want to accept and it utterly upsets him for two years. This is very telling of how he sees himself in public eye because it reveals that even he subconsciously feels that blacks are inferior to whites. When Christmas tried to settle down for a while with a black woman we see his desire to reject his white half: 59 59

At night he would lie in bed besides her, sleepless, beginning to breathe deep and hard. He would do it deliberately, feeling, even watching, his white chest arch deeper and deeper within his ribcage, trying to breathe into himself the dark odor, the dark and inscrutable thinking and being of negros, with each suspiration trying to expel from himself the white blood and the white thinking and being. And all the while his nostrils at the odor which he was trying to make his own would white and tauten, his whole being writhe and strain with physical outrage and spiritual denial. (Faulkner 226) This symbolic and physical rejection of the black blood that Christmas tries to use to override the white blood reveals that no matter what, one will not allow the other part to be washed out. He breathes in deeply the black blood, the black smells, and tries to allow them to take full control of his other half, to fully assimilate into black identity; and yet, despite his desire he cannot fight his body that physically rejects the notion of being black. His own nostrils find disdain in the smells of his other half, his black half, and he is once again stuck between the two. His life becomes a paradox of identity. His physical reaction is triggered by a conception of his psychological thoughts that black is truly repulsive. Christmas has internalized white society’s beliefs of race and can no longer see black as acceptable and good. This passage exposes how Christmas has embraced society’s assumptions of race in believing that whites and blacks think differently. Christmas has become a believer in the rhetoric that blacks do indeed hold “dark and inscrutable thinking” compared to “white thinking and being” (Faulkner 226). Watkins’s analysis is such that “Faulkner excavates…the number of possibilities attached to a person who is simultaneously a part of, yet outside, of society” (11). Faulkner asserts that this is the true plight of the mulatto—due to his biracial status 60 60 he was unable to find acceptance from himself or from others due to a hierarchy of social construction deeming whites as superior. It is at this part of the story that many of the similarities with Anzaldúa’s identity as a mestiza, and Christmas’s as a mulatto, end. For Anzaldúa, she was able to learn to—“stand and claim my space, making a new culture—una culture mestiza—with my own lumber, my own bricks and mortar” (1022). She did this by ultimately accepting all parts of her identity and created the mestiza consciousness. Anzaldúa no longer fought each part, nor tried to only be one or the other. She found empowerment in embracing all parts of her identity. Try as he might, Christmas was never able to actualize a version of his identity that he could accept. Although Christmas makes various attempts to find his place with white society, then later within black society, he eventually finds himself to be worse off as the marginalized of the marginalized, finding himself once again in the category of the “other.” He hated the part of him that was white, as well as the part of himself that was black. Unlike Anzadúa, whose theory describes an acceptance of all parts of one’s identity, an acceptance that eventually brings about a better strength by pulling the good aspects from each identity, it seems that Christmas could only focus on the bad aspects from his black and white heritage. Although Faulkner tried to reveal the societal dilemma of the rejected mulatto, he still was only able to see this issue as tragic and hopeless and not as the advent of a new acceptable aspect of society. Faulkner could not picture a world in which blacks and whites would ever be on the same level nor equally acceptable forms of identity. Joe’s rage at those who label him and his self-loathing come to a head at the end of his fifteen years of travel when he sets foot in Jefferson, Mississippi, and begins a dysfunctional relationship with a white woman named Joanna 61 61

Burden. Burden is described as a woman in her forties who has lived her whole life on her family estate. The history of her family is that they were originally from France then moved to the North United States, and were later sent to the South to help support black voting rights. The Burdens seem to be past racism. In the South they were seen as Yankees and were never accepted in Jefferson. Burden tells Christmas of how her grandfather and brother were killed by the infamous Colonel Sartoris due to their political stance and avocation of black voting rights. Burden herself is a supporter of black education and is advisor for many involved in black educational endeavors. Like Christmas, because of her family history and her own advocacy for black rights, Burden is outcast to the rest of Jefferson. She lives in the margins between black and white societies. Christmas and Burden’s relationship quickly becomes a main focus of the storyline and represents a breakdown of the depth and damage of attitudes of racism that stretched out far from the South to the rest of the United States. However, despite her claim to be a supporter of black rights, Burden herself has learned racial attitudes taught to her by her father: “the curse of the black race is God’s curse…the curse of the white race is the black man who will be forever God’s chosen own because He once cursed him” (253). As much as Burden advocates for black’s rights she still cannot get past these racial attitudes. Undeniably, she believes that blacks are black because God cursed them and thereby caused them to not be equal to whites. She also believes that this curse has caused whites to also be cursed, as the curse God placed on blacks will forever cause whites to by brought down by the curse of blacks. That night when Christmas first enters Jefferson he walks into Burden’s kitchen and grabs a plate of peas. When Burden goes downstairs to see who’s there, she is not startled by his presence. Instead there is a sexual encounter 62 62 between the two of them that marks the first of many to come. This relationship is very odd as it each time they have an encounter it is as if they play out a rape scene: the black man that rapes the white woman: And when he entered the house at night it was as he has entered it that first night; he felt like a thief, a robber, even while he mounted to the bedroom where she waited. Even after a year it was as though he entered by stealth to despoil her virginity each time anew. It was as though each turn of the dark saw him faced again with the necessity to despoil again that which he had already despoiled…” (Faulkner 234) Despite his role as rapist Joe begins to feel that Joanna is still in charge of this sexual relationship. He is somehow threatened by their relationship as it stands and states, “It is like I was the woman and she was the man” (Faulkner 235). Interestingly, each time he walks up to Joanna’s room, she does not fight back. Instead, Burden truly is the puppet master behind the encounter. She gives him a false sense of control but she is the one that controls the environment. Even in their lovemaking Joanna constantly calls him a “negro,” and finds sexual satisfaction in this role-play. This fantasy entails Christmas playing the black, corrupted and vile rapist that takes advantage of the weak white woman. She dominates him in this sense and this is why he feels that she is the man in the relationship. This lack of control on Christmas’s part eventually enrages him as he resents the fact that she holds power over him. This is what Faulkner deems the first phase of their relationship Christmas decides to teach Burden a lesson. Thus, began the second phase. He goes up to her room and forcefully attacks and rapes her. He feels anger at that the power she had over him and fights to take it back. As he thinks of himself as 63 63 black he does not like that his race has allowed Burden to weaken and feminize him in their relationship. Christmas states, “I’ll show you! I’ll show the bitch!”(236). Once again, she does not resist the encounter. After this scene, Christmas believes that he has taken control. After a few days of keeping his distance he is amazed to find her at his cabin, sitting on the cot. He realizes that she has surrendered herself to him as a woman and they sit and talk for hours. After this Joanna reveals herself to be very much in want of their sexual relationship. In “Focusing on the Margins: Light in August and Social Change” Al- Barhow analyzes this taboo relationship between Christmas and Burden: The details of Christmas’s relationship to Joanna demystify some of the community’s basic assumptions about the relationship of white women to African American men. Even though Christmas and Joanna communicate verbally, their relationship remains sexual first and foremost. And contrary to usual rumours about “black” sexuality—it is important to stress that both she and Christmas assume that Christmas is partly black—it is Joanna’s sexuality which is presented as excessive. (60) Al-Bahow zones into Faulkner’s method of undermining the assumption that blacks are sexual deviants by portraying a white woman that proves to be more the sexual deviant. Burden uses her sexuality as a way for her to rebel against societal norms. She rebels against the standard culture and breaks the taboo of miscegenation. Then the third phase of their relationship begins. One night Burden tells Christmas “she wanted him to take over all her business affairs—the correspondence and the periodical visits—with negro schools” (Faulkner 268). 64 64

For her, it makes sense for Christmas to fully embrace his black side as she thinks he can do much in the progression of black education and later as a lawyer, for black voting rights. It is this event that changes their relationship and is where Christmas begins to resent and want to kill Joanna. For years Christmas has tried to give up his black status and seek acceptance into the white world. Agreeing to go to a school for blacks would mean that he would have to fully give up his label and control of his identity—this is something that he has decided that he could not do. As Slabey’s analysis in “Joe Christmas, Faulkner’s Marginal Man” reveals: “Joe could not agree to Joanna’s plan to go to a Negro college because this would go against everything he had been trying to achieve—against his own definition of himself” (Slabey 274). His definition of himself now was a mixture of his black and white and he began to realize that he could not reject one or the other. Thus, Burden’s requirements are what lead to her eventual murder. Christmas is outraged that she would force something on him that he has tried to escape from his whole life. When Burden demands him to get on his knees and pray with her, he tells her no. Burden is at a point in her life when she wants to find salvation and forgiveness, and wants the same for Christmas. She is also in the midst of menopause, which has caused her to reflect on life in a different manner than before. Burden continues to ask him to pray with him, saying, “I dont ask it, It’s not I who ask it” (Faulkner 282). Christmas, who was forced by his stepfather McEachern to read the Bible and pray, would never allow anyone to force him like that again. This encounter perhaps brought back memories of McEachern and his rage took over. When Christmas still does not do as she asks, Burden points a pistol at him. What happens next is not entirely clear but Joanna Burden is killed, the house is set on fire, and Christmas has the pistol in his hand. Perhaps this was self-defense, but Christmas knew, just as he knew with McEachern: “I had to do 65 65 it” (Faulkner 280). History has thus repeated itself. Christmas is once again forced into a corner and told to be something he does not want to be, and his primal reaction is to destroy the opposing power structure. In his murder of Burden, as with McEachern, Christmas was attempting to free himself of imposed restrictions of whom he can and cannot be. Christmas’s internal separation from people can also be seen in his partnership with Brown. Christmas and Brown’s partnership was created by their rejected status in the town. Christmas does not interact with the rest of his coworkers and mostly keeps to himself. His separation from the rest of the group is perhaps a way of making sure that no one find out about his ambiguous heritage. Brown likewise is an outcast in the town as he is a drifter that does not believe in settling down in one place for too long. Brown forces his way into Christmas’s confidence and the two team up. Christmas only allows himself to make contact with Brown because he notes that Brown is a “fool” and is someone that will listen to what he is told to do (Faulkner 270). Brown, who we later find out to be Lucas Burch, is a liar and a manipulator. Soon after Brown makes connections with Christmas he moves into the cabin with him. They both participate in bootlegging and do so well that they quit their jobs at the mill. After the murder of Burden, Brown is obsessed with catching Christmas and getting the reward money. He uses his knowledge that Christmas is black to his advantage. Because of Brown’s guilty situation of being at the scene of the crime, the Sherriff throws Brown into jail. Brown uses the fact that he is a white man, and Christmas is a black man, to prove his case of innocence, as it had to have been the black man who killed the white woman. In order to get the reward money and free himself from jail, Brown tells the Sherriff that Christmas was a hostile black man and that he knows he 66 66 killed Joanna. Though he does not ever get the reward money, he does eventually get out of prison and away from Jefferson. Along with exploring the psychology of the South’s hidden mulatto, Faulkner was interested in the reaction of a Southerners who realizes that the person they thought was white is not as pure as they thought. After Joe Christmas is found out to have killed Burden, the gossip of his murder and of his race is spread around Jefferson and the shock is most evidently noted in Hightower’s demeanor when Bryon gives him the news: “Christmas is part nigger…” “Part negro,” Hightower says. His voice sounds light, trivial, like a thistle bloom falling into silence without a sound, without any weight. He does not move. For a moment longer he does not move. Then there seems to come over his whole body, as if its parts were mobile like face features, that shrinking and denial, and Byron sees that the still, flaccid, big face is suddenly slick with sweat. (Faulkner 89) This description of Hightower’s response as he slowly processes the information of a white man suddenly marked black, is very revealing. We see him completely motionless, trying to comprehend what he is told. His body then reacts to the news with a physical trauma, trying hard to reject what he is told, but forcing himself to fully understand that the perception he previously held is now shifted. Hightower ends with his body covered in sweat as if he were physically drained. This passage speaks volumes of how well hidden the truth of the mulatto was from the society at large, and how difficult it was to believe that such a prohibited conduct could even occur. Hightower, an outcast himself, is likewise affected by this knowledge because he truly understands that this knowledge is something that 67 67 the town of Jefferson cannot ever forgive, and the punishment for Christmas will be severe. In some ways, Hightower knows that because of Christmas’s new status as a black man, he will never have a fair trial and instead will be surrendered to an angry mob of whites demanding retribution. Hightower understands the unforgiving nature of the town because he was once victim to its unleashed fury when he violated the town’s expectations of his role as a minister. After it was rumored that his wife was with another man, and mysteriously died, he was forced to quit his position. Slabey explains the similar rejected status of numerous other characters in Light in August: Joe Christmas is a racial outcast (a "nigger,"a "foreigner"); Joanna Burden is a regional outcast (a "Yankee," an "outlander," a "nigger lover"); Hightower is a temporal outcast (he lives in the past) and a scandal to the self-righteous; Byron, a man of mystery among his fellow workers, is a religious outcast (his humility and sympathy are in opposition to the harsh Calvinistic spirit of the town); and Lena, who has been banished from "the woman race," is a cosmic outcast (she is Nature; and Nature is rejected by the people). All of these characters would be considered by psychologists as "marginal" in their status in the community in which they live. (267) At some point in the novel, all of these characters faced the same status as outcast and as marginalized. Each person’s outcast status differed, but ultimately their story represents a critique of the unaccepting nature of the townspeople. For Hightower, he feels a sense of sadness for Christmas when learning of his downfall as he understands that his punishment will be severe more so because he is black. 68 68

Light in August ends with the murder of Joe Christmas in such a brutal and animalistic manner that one cannot help but sympathize with his plight, despite his own sin of murdering Mr. McEachern and Mrs. Burden. Faulkner ironically shifts the perception of blacks as the animal by having a gang of white men kill him in pure savagery, bringing to mind the Ku Klux Klan. The one that takes the definitive duty of killing Christmas is Percy Grimm. Symbolically there is much to his name when one thinks of the Grim Reaper who is the bringer of death. Grimm believes that his responsibility is to maintain social order and protect the systems in place. His desire was to be a hero in war, but at a young age Grimm realized that he was “suffering the terrible tragedy of having been born not alone too late but not late enough to have escaped first hand knowledge of the lost time when he should have been a man instead of a child” (Faulkner 450). This was because he was just shy of being able to be in the war but still old enough to see heroes return and receive praise that he was envious to receive. Grimm had the ideology that “the white race is superior to any and all other races and that the American uniform is superior to all men…” (Faulkner 451). He eventually becomes a Captain of the State National Guard and leads his men with his ideology at the forefront. Grimm acts as a representation of the nation. With his men behind him, Grimm goes to great lengths to chase Christmas down and bring him to justice. Grimm finally takes Christmas’s life in a horrific and brutal manner. In his quest for what he feels is justice, Grimm castrates Christmas while he is still alive, stating: “Now you’ll let white women alone, even in hell” (464). Grimm takes it upon himself to castrate Christmas, to physically and symbolically prevent Christmas and any black man from ever having sex with a white woman again. This castration becomes a symbolic representation of the 69 69 town’s reaction towards miscegenation. Although many of the townspeople wanted to see Christmas dead, they did not have the stomach to see him castrated: When the others reached the kitchen they saw the table flung aside now and Grimm stooping over the body. When they approached to see what he was about, they saw the man was not dead yet, and when they saw what Grimm was doing one of the men gave a choked cry and stumbled back into the wall and began to vomit. Then Grimm too sprang back, flinging behind the bloody butcher knife. (Faulkner 464) The hatred and fear in attacking Joe Christmas ripples off the page. Grimm does not just kill Joe Christmas but tortures him to his very last breath. It is interesting that even the men in the manhunt find Grimm’s actions sickening and over the top. For Joe Christmas, “Joe, rejected as White, as Negro, as a human being, is treated as a thing. He attempts to give his life meaning by insisting on his right to be, to be human, to be himself. Several times he reminds himself that all he ever wanted was peace ‘That dont seem like a whole lot to ask,’” (Slabey 268). This peace that Christmas sought was to be accepted for who he was, but everyone throughout the novel tried to impose his or her version of Christmas. Christmas retaliated against this imposed treatment. In the end, Joe Christmas is butchered like a pig or cow would be, symbolic of the inferior views of the black race. Yet, although a reader may find Faulkner’s depiction of race to be offensive, this in itself allows for a full exposing of the truth that many did not want to face. The final scene of Joe Christmas indeed can be read as a call for agency and for awareness. That Joe Christmas was not just killed for his crime, but also continually slashed with a butcher knife reveals a graphic and sickening scene that no person, of any race, should ever deserve. In this final moment Faulkner uses 70 70

Joe Christmas’ death as an indictment of racism in Southern society and perhaps in the nation as a whole: The pent black blood seemed to rush like a released breath. It seemed to rush out of his pale body like the rush of sparks from a rising rocket; upon the black blast the man seemed to rise soaring into their memories forever and ever…It will be there, musing, quiet, steadfast, not fading and not particularly threatful, but of itself alone serene, of itself alone triumphant. (Faulkner 465) With this symbolic description of “black blood” being released from a “pale body” Faulkner is noting that the stigma of black blood weighs down and suffocates both blacks and whites. Race, it seems, haunts all Southern society and the rest of the Nation. Thus, for the men that witnessed this brutal murder, and the reader that reads Light in August, there will be no forgetting and no forgiveness of this event. Faulkner perhaps was suggesting the consequences of racism for the entire nation. This also relates to the other characters within Light in August that faced being ostracized merely because of aspects that society deemed “other.” Only through death can Joe Christmas finally reveal to the world his black blood, and not in embarrassment but instead in triumphant glory as if to say, ‘yes, indeed, I am a direct contrast to all that you ever thought or believed of race. The mulatto and blacks are real.’ Just as mulattos were forced into the margins, blacks were also forced into a subservient role, feared and abused for their differences. Although Faulkner attempts to reach an understanding of race, Joe’s death as a martyr is not where Faulkner chooses to end the novel. Instead, Faulkner ends the novel through an excerpt from the District, Attorney Gavin Stevens. Stevens is an educated man and although educated, he still preserves racism. 71 71

Stevens believes that the downfall of Christmas came from his disputing blood, attesting that black blood and white blood do indeed indicate the value of the man: But his blood would not be quiet, let save him. It would not be either one or the other and let his body save itself. Because the black blood drove him first to the negro cabin. And then the white blood drove him out of there, as it was the black blood which snatched up the pistol and the white blood that would not let him fire it. And it was the white blood which set him to the minister, which rising in him for the last and final time, set him against all reason… (Faulkner 449) Stevens’s passage represents Southern cultural ideology of race. By revealing that Christmas was fighting an inner struggle between his black blood and white blood the true tragedy is revealed in the inevitability of his demise. The overwhelming ideology of the nation was that that difference between black and white is more than skin-deep and is indeed an exemplification of purity or sin. Faulkner accurately paints the picture of a Southern and national ideology, and the detrimental effects of racism. In reading the mulatto character Joe Christmas through Anzaldúa’s Borderland theory, we see that Faulkner did indeed seek a deeper understanding of race issues and how fatal they are to the family, community and nation. The borderland was growing and that was inevitable. The mixing of races is something that Faulkner began to see not as a fear but as a possible future. He understood and saw the numerous examples of the mulatto and wanted the South, and America, to stop hating a people that they themselves create. For Slabey: “Light in August, an archetypal story of alienation, is the record of Joe’s quest for identity, self-knowledge, self-definition, and status in the world. The definition of the Self—its nature, cosmic and eternal destiny, social 72 72 relationships, duties and obligations—is one of the primary themes of world literature” (268). Unfortunately, unlike Anzaldúa who was able to actualize and claim her identity, Christmas was limited by the strict structures of the time period in the South and not able to fully achieve self-definition. By exposing these truths Faulkner began to confront his own racism, allowing for a more open understanding as black race as humane and equal to white race. Although he was not as advanced in his theories as Anzaldúa was in looking at this marginalized space, nor could he imagine that this marginalization could one day be an empowerment, Faulkner realized that this borderland was indeed man-made and it was only through men’s understanding that such a border could be torn down.

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