Building Yoknapatawpha: Reading Space and the Plantation in William Faulkner Edward Clough 0458406 Doctor of Philosophy University of East Anglia School of American Studies April 2014 This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognize that its copyright rests with the author and that use of any information derived there from must be in accordance with current UK Copyright Law. In addition, any quotation or extract must include full attribution. i Abstract. This thesis is about the Southern plantation in Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha fiction: how it is represented and constructed, how it is narratively articulated and experienced as both space and symbol. But as its full title suggests, Building Yoknapatawpha is equally about narrative structures and spaces too: about how Yoknapatawpha textually fits together; about how this spreading oeuvre was constructed by Faulkner and how it may equally be reconstructed by the reader. It is about both the reading of space and the space of reading – about how the architectural spaces and social order of the Southern plantation and the narrative structures of the novel inform, complement, and challenge one another, and how their affinity may ultimately be used to generate a new “spatialized” model of literary reading. Foregrounding tensions between narrative “details” and “design” and conceptions of “ruin” and “restoration”, this thesis explores how Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha novels function simultaneously as “open” and “closed”. It considers how Absalom, Absalom! (1936) attempts to recuperate the repressed historical connections present in Flags in the Dust (1929), only to erase them once more through death, destruction, and narrative closure. It considers how Go Down, Moses (1942) offers models of black domesticity that resist the oppressions of segregation and lynching – but which are dispersed through black diaspora and narrative exclusion. It considers how The Mansion (1959) revises and integrates details from earlier Yoknapatawpha texts to create a richly layered textual space – but which is in constant tension with the process of the historical “whitening” of the Southern post-plantation landscape which it ultimately depicts. Building Yoknapatawpha concludes by attempting to resolve these tensions into a new model of literary reading: deconstructing Yoknapatawpha to reassemble it as a layered “mapping” of multiple parallel narrative paths and connective links, which resist the mastery – and erasure – imposed by linearity and closure. ii Contents. Abstract ii Contents iii Notes on Texts & Abbreviations vi List of Illustrations vii Acknowledgments viii Introduction. The Plantation & the Mansion i. [Reading Rowan Oak] 1 ii. Reading Space & the Birth of the Novel 7 iii. The Plantation: How the South was Built 12 iv. Rival Geographies & Resistant Reading 15 v. Passing: Darkened Plantation, Whitened Mansion 21 vi. Plotting & Reading: A Methodological Approach 25 vii. Details & Design: Chapter 1 27 viii. Faulkner & the Everyday: Chapter 2 30 ix. Ruin & Restoration: Chapter 3 34 x. Conclusions: Models for Spatialized Reading 36 Chapter 1. The Plantation System; or, Judith & Clytie’s Hundred I. Introduction: Maps & Thresholds 40 i. “We had ourselves a living map”: The Unvanquished 42 ii. Building Sutpen’s Hundred: Absalom, Absalom! 45 II. Mapping the Mansion: Repressed Connections in Flags in the Dust i. In Medias Res : A Structure of Returns 52 ii. Revenant Spaces: Old Bayard’s House-Tour 55 iii. The Doll’s House: The Benbow Mansion 62 iv. Lost Return: Caspey’s Failed Resistance 66 III. “So I went to the West Indies”: Recuperated Details & Reproduced Designs in Absalom, Absalom! i. Mapping Absalom, Absalom! 70 ii. Pettibone’s Shoes: Reading Sutpen’s Reproduction 76 iii IV. “…something that might make a mark on something that was once”: The Alternative Patterns of Judith’s Loom i. Eulalia’s Silence: The Space of Female Communities 82 ii. Caryatids: The Burden of Southern Womanhood 86 iii. “Aunt Judith”: Forming Judith & Clytie’s Hundred 93 iv. Weaving/Unraveling: Judith’s Ill-Fated Resistance 98 V. Resolving/Dissolving: Resistance & Autoeradication i. Ringo’s Sketchbook 102 ii. The Burning of Sutpen’s Hundred 105 iii. Ink Marks & Grave Markers: Writing & Self-Erasure 109 Chapter 2. The Plantation Site; or, White Maps, Black Routes I. Shadow of the Plantation: Black-White Division & the Everyday in Go Down, Moses i. The Bed, the Table: Marking Domestic Dynamics 114 ii. Legible & Illegible: the McCaslin Plantation Order 120 iii. The Failed Hearths of Mr. Hubert & Mr. Hubert 128 II. Violence & the Hearth: Lynching Practices & Black Domesticity in Light in August and Go Down, Moses i. Violent Suspension: Southern Lynching Culture 132 ii. In Lena’s Shoes: Everyday Identity in Light in August 137 iii. Sweeping the Yard, Lining the Grave 143 III. Passing Possibilities: Black-White Relations after Moses i. Intruder in the Dust and the Great Migration 156 ii. Building the Courthouse: Requiem for a Nun 161 Chapter 3. The Plantation Space; or, Loom of Her Father’s Dreams I. Ruin & Restoration: Passing & the Mansion i. The Many Mansions of The Mansion 169 ii. Post-structural Structures: Ruin &Restorative Violence 171 iii. Paths and Threads: Shaping Yoknapatawpha 179 II. The Vanishing Pear Tree: Ruin & Desire i. The Pear Tree & the Rainpipe: Cowley’s Dilemma 180 ii. Eula, White Trash Desire, & the Old Frenchman Place 185 iii. The Loss of the Pear Tree: “Appendix – Compson” 192 iv III. The Vanishing Plantation: Restorative Violence & the Rug i. Ruin & Passing: “Wash” & “Barn Burning” 194 ii. Picking the Anonymous Bones: Writing Pioneers 204 iii. The Rest is Silence: Flem, Linda, & Erasure 214 IV. Redemptive Sentences & the Ends of Yoknapatawpha i. Transported: The Othered Space of Parchman Farm 221 ii. Mink’s Return: Lost Paths & Derelict Structures 227 Conclusion. Deconstructing Yoknapatawpha, Expanding Yoknapatawpha i. Decentering & Difference: Resistant Readings 234 ii. Models for Reading: Maps, Cut-Ups, & Hypertext 238 iii. Yoknapatawpha & the View on Southern Spaces 244 Bibliography 248 v Note on Texts and Abbreviations. References to Faulkner’s fiction are made in parenthesis within the text, and use the abbreviated titles accepted by The Faulkner Journal and The Mississippi Quarterly . The abbreviations used in this thesis are listed below: AA Absalom, Absalom! CS Collected Stories of William Faulkner ESPL Essays, Speeches, and Public Letters (rev. ed.) FD Flags in the Dust GDM Go Down, Moses H The Hamlet ID Intruder in the Dust KG Knight’s Gambit LA Light in August M The Mansion PF The Portable Faulkner RN Requiem for a Nun S Sanctuary (1931 version) SF The Sound & the Fury T The Town US The Uncollected Stories U The Unvanquished vi List of Illustrations. Cover Photograph of Wakefield (1858), Holly Springs, Mississippi (Reproduced courtesy of the author ) * Fig. 1 Photograph of Rowan Oak, Oxford, Mississippi 2 (Reproduced courtesy of the author ) Fig. 2 Photograph of Rowan Oak, rear-view 5 (Reproduced courtesy of the author ) * Fig. 3 Graph of keywords in Yoknapatawpha novels (19 novels) 49 Fig. 4 Tom Gauld, untitled illustration of “Absalom, Absalom!” 71 (Reproduced courtesy of Tom Gauld ) Fig. 5 Tom Gauld, “Controls for ‘Rhett Butler; the Videogame’” 72 (Reproduced courtesy of Tom Gauld ) * Fig. 6 Table of mansion/plantation fates in Yoknapatawpha 175 Fig. 7 Approximate location of Yoknapatawpha mansions/plantations 176 Fig. 8 Map of mansions/plantations across Yoknapatawpha 177 vii Acknowledgments. Thanks, first and foremost, to Thomas Ruys Smith and Sarah Garland, who supervised this thesis, and its author’s progress, with such care and dedication. Thanks also to Sharon Monteith and Sarah Churchwell for examining this thesis with incisive thoroughness, and for offering such productive suggestions for both its immediate correction and its future development. Especial thanks are due to Sharon for her editorial comments above and beyond what might reasonably have been expected. Stephen Benson provided invaluable criticism of an earlier version of Chapter 2, and helped me gradually realize that it is in the details, above all else, that my love of Faulkner lies. A version of the discussion of lynching in Chapter 2 appears in the Mississippi Quarterly , issue 65.3 (Summer 2012); my thanks to the editors and anonymous readers for their highly productive comments and encouragement. Thanks are also due to Tom Gauld, who not only kindly gave permission to reproduce his cartoons but supplied high-definition versions. Last, but by no means least, I offer my gratitude to my parents for all their enduring support. viii Introduction. In the spring of 1930, William Faulkner purchased the Sheegog-Bailey place, a dilapidated plantation mansion on the outskirts of his hometown of Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner was then 32, an author of four novels finally beginning to find his literary voice. In the two novels he had published the previous year – Sartoris and The Sound and the Fury – he had conceived and begun to develop his fictional county of Yoknapatawpha (at this point called “Yocona”), and made his first substantial venture into modernist experimentation. His novels had been critically well-received but without securing popular or financial success. His prospects as a professional author remained uncertain, but he had also recently acquired a family, marrying his childhood sweetheart, Estelle Oldham, and adopting her two children from her previous