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William Faulkner's Memphis: Architectural Identity, Urban Edge Condition, and Prostitution in 1905 Memphis Justin Faircloth University of Arkansas, Fayetteville

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William Faulkner's Memphis: Architectural Identity, Urban Edge Condition, and Prostitution in 1905 Memphis Justin Faircloth University of Arkansas, Fayetteville Inquiry: The University of Arkansas Undergraduate Research Journal Volume 6 Article 4 Fall 2005 William Faulkner's Memphis: Architectural Identity, Urban Edge Condition, and Prostitution in 1905 Memphis Justin Faircloth University of Arkansas, Fayetteville Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarworks.uark.edu/inquiry Part of the Architectural History and Criticism Commons Recommended Citation Faircloth, Justin (2005) "William Faulkner's Memphis: Architectural Identity, Urban Edge Condition, and Prostitution in 1905 Memphis," Inquiry: The University of Arkansas Undergraduate Research Journal: Vol. 6 , Article 4. Available at: http://scholarworks.uark.edu/inquiry/vol6/iss1/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UARK. It has been accepted for inclusion in Inquiry: The nivU ersity of Arkansas Undergraduate Research Journal by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks@UARK. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. Faircloth: William Faulkner's Memphis: Architectural Identity, Urban Edge Co 4 INQUIRY Volume 6 2005 WILLIAM FAULKNER'S MEMPHIS: ARCHITECTURAL IDENTITY, URBAN EDGE CONDITION, AND PROSTITUTION IN 1905 MEMPHIS By Justin Faircloth Department of Architecture Faculty Mentor: Dr. Ethel Goodstein Department of Architecture Abstract: This assertion was fallacious and was quickly squelched, but this It has been said by wags that Memphis (Tennessee) is the attempt was not the last of Memphis's trying to break from largest city in Mississippi. Unquestionably, Memphis is the Tennessee and unite with north Mississippi. As Memphis historian commercial and cultural capital of the Mississippi River delta Gerald M. Capers claims, the people of Memphis wanted to be country north ofVicksburg. As such it figures prominently in the a part of Mississippi so that its cotton would receive the higher 4 works of southern writers, especially William Faulkner. ratings that Mississippi cotton garnered. The people ofMemphis Faulkner's characters seek out Memphis as a place ofexcitement also were displeased with their status in Tennessee and their and escape. This paper deals with Faulkner's description of treatment by the Nashville government, a condition that continued Memphis as it existed in the early decades of the twentieth in Memphis history. Memphis sought to form a new state, which century; the focus is on passages of The Rievers, but passages was to include portions of west Kentucky, west Tennessee, and from other works are included as well. Because so many of the north Mississippi. It was to be named Jackson, Chickasaw, or events he portrays deal with the exploits ofyoung male characters, Memphis, with Memphis being the favorite choice. The popular 5 the red light district ofMemphis (called the Tenderloin) receives Andrew Jackson even supported it. No attempt was made, particular attention. However, other portions of the city-the though, at realizing the goal until the issue was reintroduced in downtown area and the cotton offices that filled the buildings on 1841. After much debate the measure was defeated in the Front Street facing the river are included as well. An interesting Tennessee legislature.6 picture of the mid-south's major Metropolis as it existed some By the tum of the twentieth century, Memphis was being one hundred years ago emerges. called the capital of north Mississippi because of the great flux of Mississippians who were populating Memphis. In 1900 there For William Faulkner, Mississippi "begins in the lobby of were 14,600 Memphis citizens who had been born in Mississippi. 7 a Memphis, Tennessee hotel" and ends at the Gulf of Mexico. 1 Not only was Memphis siphoning population from the Mississippi This statement, loaded with meaning, carries great significance countryside, it also enticed Mississippi residents to frequent its when analyzing Faulkner's treatment of Memphis in his works. hotels and numerous saloons. Many farmers from the surrounding It is possible Faulkner "reived" this characterization from the countryside took an annual or biannual escapade to Memphis as sociologist David L. Cohn. In his 1935 study of the Mississippi a celebration, probably corresponding to planting or harvest.8 Delta, God Shakes Creation, Cohn says, "the Mississippi Delta begins in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel and ends on Catfish One such excursion is the framework around which William Row in Vicksburg."2 Whether or not Faulkner was familiar with Faulkner's comedic masterpiece and last novel, the last of his Cohn's work is inconsequential. What is noteworthy is that they fourteen Y oknapatawpha novels, The Reivers, is built. In a May share the awareness of the importance ofMemphis on Mississippi. 3, 1940, letter to Robert Haas, Faulkner's editor since Light in This, in turn, sheds light on Faulkner's use of Memphis in his August (1932), Faulkner outlined what would become The Yoknapatawpha works and on the value that his characters place Reivers twenty-two years before its publication: on it. Indeed, the narrator of Faulkner's The Reivers (1962) speaking of Memphis says, "Where else could anyone in north It is a sort of Huck Finn-a normal boy of about twelve Mississippi want to go. "3 or thirteen [Lucius Priest], a big warmhearted, courageous, honest, utterly unreliable white man with In the 1830s, the State of Mississippi contested its state line the mentality of a child [Boon Hoggenbeck], an old with Tennessee, saying that it had been drawn too far to the south. n~gro family servant, opinionated, querulous, selfish, Nevertheless, Memphis should have been a part of Mississippi. fmrly unscrupulous, and in his second childhood Published by ScholarWorks@UARK, 2005 1 Inquiry: The University of Arkansas Undergraduate Research Journal, Vol. 6 [2005], Art. 4 ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY AND THEORY: Justin Faircloth, William Faulkner's Memphis 5 [Ned McCaslinl and a prostitute, not very young Memphis has the potential to be an hi tori all inaccurate anymore, and with a great deal of character and portrayal or one that exaggerate certain aspect or phenomena. generosity and commonsense [Miss Corrie], and a Whether it is perfectly rendered by accurate historic detail i not stolen race horse which none of them actually intended as important as the lasting image of Memphi Faulkner provide to steaP for the reader, who. probably ha never experienced Memphi This original conception developed inro the nostalgic per onally and could never experience the Memphi of 1905- retelling of a parentally unapproved childhood trip to Memphis a tuming point in the city's development becau e it wa then. in 1905 and the comedic mania that ensues after the characters. despite fires and plague , that the city'. built form began to try from Faulkner' fictional Jeffer. on, Missis ippi, are stranded in to catch up to the growth that had re ulted from New South Memphis with a possibly stolen, mediocre racehorse. The. e Boo teri m and indu trialization. characters are stereotypical not only of Faulkner's own work Three pervading characteri ti s that contribute to 1905 (especially since most had already appeared in other work ) but Memphis' urban identity urface in The Reiver and other also of Southerner in general. This make the . tory and place works: the blurred edge condition of outh Memphis where the presented in it representative of the South, so that the view of line between the rural and the urban i ambiguous (and is Memphis it presents is not only a view of a pecific place and inextricably tied to the differing experiential qualitie when time, but representative of Southern cities and how they relate to entering Memphi by train or by automobile as de cribed in the surrounding (stereo)typically rural South. Both the pecific chapter five of The Reivers); the implied problem or condition of and the symbolic nature of the city and the characters that vi it Memphi 's lack of an architectural or ymbolic pre ence that it will be taken into account in this paper. constituted a recognizable identity of place in the built fabric; and the per a ive subject of prostitution and tl1e effect it has on built pace, in both the individual house and the tenderloin area, as well as on the perception of place. This paper's exploration of these i ues compare the de cription that Faulkner and his character from The Reivers and other work provide to the hi torical repre entation of Memphi - a view legitimized by the len of hi tory. Thi i enlightening because it reveal · whether Faulkner was exaggerating "reality" to stress an idea or the conditions that make up the urban image of Memphis or whether he was reali tically de cribing Memphi whkh would imply that he was concerned with an hi torical recreation that lend · a certain reality to his characters and their interactions with the city. Another point of con ideration i that Faulkner's portrayal of 1905 Memphis in The Reivers i · filtered through a view of Memphi as he saw it in 1960,ju t as other Faulkner work set in the Memphi of the past reflected a bia re ulting from his contemporary view of the city. Figure 1. Bales of cotton beiug loaded on n riverboat at Memphis's Cotton Row, While exan1ining the pecific phenomena of urban form 1910. and culnrre that are addressed in The Reivers and other Faulkner One of the specific qualities of 1905 Memphis is the work , it is important to evaluate the role Memphi. play for the importance it held for Mississippians, who with Memphian. character ·-how it changes or ha changed them and how they relied on Missis ippi lumber and cotton flowing into Memphis, comprehend the city. Adding thi · layer to the analysis not only the great distribution center. (Fig. I) (Mi. sissippi wa producing allow the investigation of the.
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