An Analysis of the Poor Whites in Faulkner's Snopes Trilogy

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,Light in August, 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 The Hamlet, 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).

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