International Conference on Social Science and Technology Education (ICSSTE 2015)

An analysis of the Poor Whites in Faulkner’s Snopes Trilogy Huang Xiuguo School of Interpretation & Translation, Shandong University. Weihai, Shandong Province, 264209

Abstract—The American literary canon 2. About Faulknerian life experiences. witnessed the abundance of poor whites. In From the earliest inklings Faulkner had various works over different epochs and genres, about Yoknapatawpha in the early 1920s, he for example, Mark Twain's The Adventures of knew a central transformation to be reckoned Huckleberry Finn and George Washington with was the rise of the some so-called Harris’s SutLovingood, depression-era destitute ‘rednecks’ from the dead end of tenant farming farmers and nowadays the trailer trash, these into the ranks of newly-forming middle class. poor whites with their frontier tall tale tradition (Matthews, 2009: 124) and local color dialect, had occupied important positions. The denigration of poor whites could Then and there it was the transformation of “the be traced back to 1728 when William Byrd forgotten”—the poor whites that had been depicted the lazy woods folk that lived in the denied land and economically profitable labor in deep mountains in Virginia in History of the the antebellum South turned out to be the Dividing Lineand Other Tracts: History of the instigators of a new economic order. However, Dividing Line (1866). Ever since, the poor they were also the “least understood stratum in whites have remained humorous and comic in Faulkner’s social structure” (Brooks, 1963: southern literature. In Erskine Caldwell’s vii)and often overlooked. Compared with the Tobacco Road (1932)and George M. Weston’s myth and decline of the Southern domineering The Poor Whites of the South(1856), one might white aristocracy and the misery and racial also find the well-established stereotype of poor discrimination suffered by the blacks, the poor whites as being a “shiftless, illiterate and often whites had hitherto been marginal figures. He vicious group of people” (Brooks, 1963: 11). produced powerful depictions of poor white These mountain poor were related to “a range of characters and families in works likeAs I Lay values that provoked disapproval” (Kidd, 2004: Dying,, Absalom, Absalom! and 115). Naturally, there were exceptions, among also the Poor Whites Trilogy. which John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath Southern nostalgic literature tended to (1939) of the great depression drew wide romanticize and idealize the Jeffersonian sympathy and recognition. yeoman farmer as pastoral heroes and heroines. KEYWORDS: Poor whites; Faulknerian In I’ll Take My Stand (1977), for example, the 1.INTRODUCTION Southern agrarianism compared the Southern Poor whites had also lingered in Faulkner’s agrarian society to a lost paradise that human Yoknapatawpha world, though it was only after felt nostalgia for. The Twelve Southerners Absalom, Absalom!that they became central distinguishedthe traditionalSouthern agrarianism figures. from the modern Northern industrialism. According to John Crowe Ransom, distinct from

© 2015. The authors - Published by Atlantis Press 186 the industrial order that wasdedicated to writing skills and returned to the realistic ploy to material prosperity, the Southernersembraced work his way through the peasants. his work because it permitted “the activity of Faulkner said he was writing about “the intelligence” and in the antebellum era “labor furious motion of being alive”, which meant the itself was leisurely” (Twelve Southerners, 1977: protest of the human spirit against the limits put 12, 14). These unrealistic portrayals of Southern on its freedom to fulfill itself and all those poor whites resulted in “the whitewashing of the forces alien to its purposes. And poor whites historical record” (Hubbs, 2008: 470). had always been the core of furiousness and Faulkner’s 1930s poor white fiction countered rage. It was a kind of impotent rageagainst both this unrealistic representation of leisurely the upper white planters and the “racially labor.In contrast with this, Faulkner’s portrayal inferior” blacks. Poor whites’ rage would of poor whites was more realistic. Eudora Welty, explode in two directions: “racial hatred and also a Mississippian, grasped the keen point but class resentment” (Doyle, 2003: 313). also overstated a little when she commented that Faulkner’s treatment of these people had often Faulkner’s , been misunderstood simply as condescension In the most thorough and faithful picture of and ridicule, but it was far more subtle and a Mississippi crossroads hamlet that you could sympathetic than that. He explored their inner ever hope to see. True in spirit, it is also true to psychology of class and racial resentment and everyday fact… in all its specification of detail, the social and historical context that gave rise to both mundane and poetic, in its complete their ‘impotent rage’. adherence to social fact. (Welty, 2003: 126) To evaluate Faulkner’s delineation of poor whites, one has to take the established tropology Long before The Hamlet, when Faulkner started of poor whites image in mainstream literature out to work on the Yoknapatawpha series, poor into consideration. It was safe to say that peasants have presented themselves. In Light in Faulkner tended to engraft many canonical poor August, Faulkner’s philosophical contemplation whites characteristics in the creation of his of the dilemma of Joe Christmas as an Snopes clan, for example, the grotesque obesity incarnation of modern split-personality was set that was believed to a label of some of the poor mainly in the rural area. From this novel whites. The specification of Flem’s twin emerged the wide-acclaimed Lena Grove who sisters’burlesque obesity was particularly became the embodiment and also the mirror of stressed by the delineation that“two big rural virtues. In his avant-garde masterpiece As I absolutely static young women … postulated lay Dying Faulkner again made use of the down that immobile dreamy solidarity of statuary” (H trodden poor whites to symbolize the plight of 20). And also these two girls werecharacterized modern world. Cantwell had written that as “big, identical, like two young tremendous Faulkner regarded himself as “a social historian, cows”, “monstrous” and “oppressive” (H 48). who hopes that by recording the minute changes Their lethargy showed itself when Ratliff in Oxford’s life he can suggest the changes that recalled their behavior when they got to are transforming the Whole South” (Blotner, Frenchman’s Bend. 1991: 406). In his later works, like Poor Whites And also for Eula, besidesthe pastoral Trilogy, Faulkner abnegated the experimental fantasy that she embodied, there was alsoher

187 grotesque flesh composition, perverse fecundity how Flem first paid no heed to Mink’s cry for and inertia despite Faulkner’s efforts to defy her. help and then racked his brains to frame From her childhood, she tried to make as little Montgomery Snopes to double Mink’s sentence. movement as possible and had to be carried to And other negative qualities are embodied in another place. Even at eleven, she occupied a portrayal of the meteoritic rise in politician body that violated its own limits, because “there Clarence Snopes who was “unprincipled and was too much—two much a leg, too much of without morals” and the extreme avarice in breast, too much of buttock; too much of Lump Snopes who charged fees for the peep mammalian female meat” (H 100). Her very act show of the bestiality between Ike Snopes and of being was an assertion of the grotesque. Huston’s cow. This list went long. There was also the vivid representation of However, while it is certainly of great idiocy, exemplified by Ike Snopes, who significance to be aware of Faulkner’s stumbled onto the stage in Poor Whites Trilogy, assimilation of popular stereotypes, it is even salivating, empty-eyed, and trailing a more important to comprehend homemade toy by a filthy string after him. Faulkner’scontribution to the rectification and Besides the physical appearance, the supplementation to the domineering discourse emphasis of lack of kindred and emotional on poor whites. While some of the characters in attachment in the Snopes family is also his Poor Whites Trilogy are created in light of significant, another derogative association with the same “humor and horror” as their literary the poor whites. Despite the fact that they were precedentswere, Faulkner bestows them with kin, there was no kinship between them. They “more sensitivity and greater believability” were actually the “men (who) established the (Cook, 1976: 39). foundations of their existences on the currency Faulkner’s delineationis everything but of coin” (H 202). The most notable example monolithic, which reflects essential gradations was the domestic apathy and alienation as it has between the more popularly villainous Snopeses been analyzed and presented in the previous and other exceptionally positive characters. For chapters. In Flem’s eyes both his wife and his example, though under the same family name daughter functioned as nothing more than tools Snopes, Eck Snopes and his family couldn’t be to win more economic gains. If not for this more different from his namesake. The previous purpose they were beneath his notice. This state investigation into Eck’s upstanding personality of affairs was not limited to his family, but ran had proved that he was everything but atrocious. unchecked throughout the clan. For example, He “was a good man, everybody liked him” (T Eck Snopes, who knew nothing about iron, 99), who kept a sack of raw peanuts and handed initially was made a blacksmith to evacuate the them out to the passing children. After his old blacksmith from Frenchman’s Bend. calamitous death, “more people than you would Subsequently he was assigned a job in Flem’s have thought sent flowers” on his funeral (T 99). newly opened grillroom in Jefferson. Because He also held deep affection for his family, he wouldn’t connive with other Snopeses to particularly illustrated by his solicitude for his cheat customers, he was deserted by the clan son Wallstreet (later changed into Wall by his and became a night watcher of the town’s oil teacher) in the episode of spotted horses’ storage tank. Also, there was the illustration of auction. He couldn’t help speaking in a shaking

188 voice due to his worry over his son’s safety. getting at least an equal trade-off if not more in Faulkner also portrayed how they shared a plain return. lunch.This loving and caring atmosphere was To rectify the established but also the core of any human community but it was stereotypical discourse on poor whites, besides alien to other Snopeses. the characterization of positive figures who What Faulkner was against was not trade served as a foil to Snopeses like Flem and Lump, and market itself, but the humanity crisis Faulkner also enabled the previously muted to incurred by it. He was very affirmative about speak out their inner thoughts. For example Wall’s practice in his enterprise and his there was the employment of massive commercial booming. The trilogy as a monologues in the Poor Whites Trilogy. What’s commentary on American commercialculture more, with a better knowledge of the plight of showed how Flem “through shrewdness and a the poor whites, Faulkner revealed more sheer capacityfor reproduction, transcends the empathy and understanding towards them. For family legacy of sharecropping to construct example Mink was reshaped from a vengeful arural business empire” (Skinfill, 2005: 134). and callous murderer into an awe-inspiring Literary works on this subject were of tragic fighter. Even towards the most heinous magnitude, among which Theodore Dreiser's criminal Flem, Faulkner conferred certain praise Sister Carrieinaugurated the discourse at the on him, when he commented that the turn ofthe century and preceded Faulkner in and the De Spains had been born into money their scrutiny of themarket's effects on American and respectability, but Flem had to “earn both of life. However, what distinguishes Faulkner’s them snatch and tear and scrabble both of them work is the historical frame of engagement, the outen the hard enduring resisting rock … with commercial history and class identity, one bare hand” (M 148). More than a mere community values and humanity maintenance. rectification of the popular image of poor whites, The introduction of Flem’s modern trading at the end of Faulkner even mode and his inclination for universal progressed to claim that the evils were not commodification in The Hamlet dramatically exclusively Snopes but “one of the foundation affected the Community that had already seen rocks of our national character itself” (M 287). its first sign of disintegration. The Town saw Based on this we can conclude that like his “the victory of unmasked greed and lust” transcendence over the geographical restriction, (Gordon, 1997: 29) and the last efforts of Faulkner the great “transindividual” has Community to boycott the alien influence exceeded both his family origin and the embodied in the abstract commodity in the form superficialness of popular cry. of money. In Flem, the successful headman of Like other great works composed by the Snopes clan, Faulkner revealed the Faulkner, who engagedhimself in the individual predicament of members of modern society in world but still could transcend the limitation and which the interdependence and empathy prejudice of his personal background, the trilogy vanished and each individual was only for reflected the common consciousness. Despite oneself. Everyone was an interest-maximizer the diversion and change, Faulkner’s emphasis and all the things were offered for the sake of on humanism remained the cornerstone throughout his literary production. After getting

189 tangled with the ghost of past for decades and present of commodity culture and a future of devoting the major part of his lifetime of fetishization. painstaking work to the romance of notable To a certain extentthe Snopes Trilogyis not families like the Sartoris, the Compsons and the an allegory of foreign and alien force that erodes Sutpens, Faulkner “in the last years of his life the Camelot but an admonition for the possible spoke frequently of writing a Doomsday Book plight of extreme commodification rationality in of , a kind of genealogy the future.What distinguished Faulkner’s literary of the different families” (Millgate, 1989: 250). production was not his nostalgia for an idealized In a sense the Poor Whites Trilogy drew past or the vain efforts to eulogize an together the threads of the Yoknapatawpha irrevocable decadence, but the abundant material and served as an epilogue to his humanity that prevailed throughout his works. Yoknapatawpha stories. And the story of the This was most notable in his compassion for poor whites not only occupied a predominating both the bereavement of the downfallen ruling position in the chronicle of Yoknapatawpha but class and the torture suffered by insulted and the also entered into the discourse on poor whites in downtrodden. The Snopeses’ collapse also American Culture. It was clear that Faulkner’s indicated that it was the humanism values characterization of the Snopeses didn’t merely within us that made us human and its absence function as a passive background but also implicated our doom. In his fierce denunciation actively participated in the current social life, of the inhumanity inclination represented by which was a interaction between literature and Flem resided Faulkner’s deep apprehension over reality in its real sense. the excessive instrumental rationality and Though works like Absalom, Absalom! also commodification with the arrival of modern revealed the underlying toil upon which white society based on free-contract. In Flem’s final plantation privilege was grounded, still it death at the hand of his consanguinity, however, constituted of Faulkner’s attempts to recapture also contained Faulkner’s wishful hope or the past. In the Poor Whites Trilogy, Faulkner romantic conviction that the inalienable and moved his fictional theatre to the present. Flem undying humanity that dodged somewhere Snopes’ aggressive struggle to climb out of would eventually counter back and deliver poverty to social and economic prominencewas humans from the final destruction. reminiscent of Sutpen’s “design” to When the battle comes it always produces a accomplisharistocracy through material wealth. Roland. It doesn’t mean that they will get rid of But distinct fromSutpen of Absalom, Snopes or the impulse which produces Snopes, Absalom!Flem did not fall victim to his own but always there’s something in man that don’t fantasies. “Flem’s compound ability to sell like Snopes and objects to Snopes and if without buying allows him to cope with the new necessary will step in to keep Snopes from industrial age and the commodity culture images doing some irreparable harm. (Gwynn&Blotner, that this age generates.”(Kaiser, 2006: 6) In this 1977: 34) sense Sutpen was depicted as a synecdoche 3.CONCLUSIONS figure for the idealized old south when pure will The majority of existing criticism tended to could achievemagnificence. Flem indicated a considerthat Faulkner was preoccupied with formal experimentation to the pint of

190 obliviousness and indifference to the tenor of [9]. Gwynn, Frederick L and Joseph L Blotner, eds. Faulkner the times. However, the critical analysis here in the University: Class Conference at the University of demonstrated that Faulkner’s works especially Virginia, 1957-1958. Charlottesville: Charlottesville his late fiction was “far more politically University of Virginia Press,1977. challenging and politically radical”(Urgo, 1989: [10]. Hubbs, Jolene. “’s Rural Modernism.” 4) than it had been acknowledged to be.The Mississippi Quarterly 61.3(2008):461-475. Snopes Trilogy gave us “remarkable insight [11]. Kaiser, Wilson. Exchanging Values: a Comparison of into Depression history and culture on the basis Flaubert’s Concept of Irony in Madame Bovary and of his expansive social vision” (Atkinson, 2005: Faulkner’s Reading of Commodity Culture in Absalom, 8). Among all the subjects, the poor whites Absalom!.Diss.University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, characters as the core of indignation expect 2006. more recognition and exploration. [12]. Kidd, Stuart. “Visualizing the Poor White”. A Companion to the Literature and Culture of the American South. Eds. References: Gary, Richard, and Owen Robinson. Malden: Blackwell [1]. Atkinson, Ted.Faulkner and the Great Depression: Publishing, 2004. 110-130 Aesthetics, Ideology, and Cultural Politics. Athens: [13]. Matthews, John T. “Many Mansions: Faulkner’s Cold War University of Georgia Press, 2005. Conflicts.” Global Faulkner: Faulkner and [2]. Brooks, Cleanth. William Faulkner: the Yoknapatawpha Yoknapatawpha, 2006. Eds. Annette Trefzer and J Ann Country. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963 Abadie. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2009. [3]. Cook, Sylvia Jenkins. From Tobacco Road to Route 66: 3-24 the Southern Poor White in Fiction. Chapel Hill: [14]. Millgate, Michael. The Achievement of William Faulkner. University of North Carolina Press, 1976. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1989. [4]. Doyle, Don Harrison. “Faulkner's County: the Historical [15]. Skinfill, Mauri. “The American Interior: Identity And Roots of Yoknapatawpha.” Journal of Southern History Commercial Culture in Faulkner’s Late Novels.” The 69(2003): 291-326. Faulkner Journal 21. 1/2(2005):133-144. [5]. Faulkner, William. The Hamlet. New York: Random [16]. Urgo, Joseph. Faulkner's Apocrypha: , Snopes, and House, 1940. the Spirit of Human Rebellion. Jackson: University of [6]. ____. The Town. New York: Vintage, 1961. Mississippi Press, 1989 [7]. ____. The Mansion. New York: Vintage, 1965. [17]. Welty, Eudora. On William Faulkner. Jackson: University [8]. Gordon, Ḥayim. Fighting Evil: Unsung Heroes in the Press of Mississippi, 2003. Novels of Graham Greene. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1997.

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