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University Microfilms international 300 N. Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Ml 48106 8316444 Christopher, Beverly Bailes FAULKNER’S VERITIES: POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE ILLUSTRATIONS IN YOKNAPATAWPHA Middle Tennessee Stale University D.A. 1983 University Microfilms International300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106 Copyright 1983 by Christopher, Beverly Bailes All Rights Reserved FAULKNER'S VERITIES: POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE ILLUSTRATIONS IN YOKNAPATAWPHA Beverly Bailes Christopher A dissertation presented to the Graduate Faculty of Middle Tennessee State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Arts May, 1983 FAULKNER'S VERITIES: POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE ILLUSTRATIONS IN YOKNAPATAWPHA APPROVED: Graduate Committee: Major Pri ssor Committee Membe Comifritteeyji Member Head of JtJje Department of English ///^) Dean of tSne Graduate School ABSTRACT FAULKNER'S VERITIES: POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE ILLUSTRATIONS IN YOKNAPATAWPHA by Beverly Bailes Christopher The fourteen novels that William Faulkner set in Yoknapatawpha County illustrate his belief in the eternal verities. The presence of these qualities enables man to endure and sometimes to prevail; their absence explains his failure to find life meaningful. Chapter one examines Faulkner's beliefs and identifies Yoknapatawpha as the proving ground. The quality of love is the primary virtue; honor and pride are essential also. Possession of the virtues is not enough; they must be expressed in positive action. Closely related is the emphasis on the individual. Faulkner presents the spectrum of humanity; those possessing the virtues as well as those violating them are drawn with great diversity. In general, the order of composition is followed. Chapter two focuses on Sartoris and The Sound and the Fury. Both treat decaying aristocratic families of Jefferson. Major characters rarely exhibit the verities, but Jason Compson provides a dramatic negative example. Beverly Bailes Christopher Chapter three examines less prestigious groups. A low-class white family exhibits strong determination and endurance in As I Lay Dying. Sanctuary treats degeneracy and perversion; Ruby Lamar reveals active virtue. The protagonist of Light in August experiences alienation; his associates provide negative examples. Other characters reveal man's essential goodness. Chapter four investigates codes that govern men's lives yet deny the sacredness of life. The protagonist of Absalom, Absalom! is totally lacking in the primary virtue. The protagonist of The Unvanquished realizes the hollowness of an inherited code. Chapter five shows Faulkner's most sustained negative example, tracing the virtueless Flem Snopes from The Hamlet to The Town and finally to The Mansion. Chapter six considers four novels with unlikely characters who endure and prevail. Go Down, Moses shows the secondary virtues dominating the primary virtue. Intruder in the Dust depicts an unusual trio performing daring, positive action. In Requiem for a Nun, a black prostitute exhibits sacrificial love. In The Reivers, a child experiences the virtues in an assumed negative environment and from questionable characters. Chapter seven concludes that knowing Faulkner and under­ standing his affirmations can be accomplished by knowing the Yoknapatawpha characters. TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. FAULKNER'S BELIEF IN THE VERITIES ............. 1 II. THE FADING ARISTOCRATS: SARTORIS, THE SOUND AND THE F U R Y ............................ 24 III. THE LOWER CLASSES: AS I LAY DYING, SANCTUARY, LIGHT IN AUGUST ................. 73 IV. THE INFLUENCE OF CODES: THE UNVANQUISHED, ABSALOM, ABSALOM!............................. 142 V. THE SNOPES: THE HAMLET, THE TOWN, THE MANSION................................... 183 VI. THE LAST NOVELS: GO DOWN, MOSES, INTRUDER IN THE DUST, REQUIEM FOR A NUN, THE REIVERS........................................250 VII. CONCLUSION............................... 320 BIBLIOGRAPHY.............................................. 338 ii Chapter I FAULKNER'S BELIEF IN THE VERITIES William Faulkner, the man and the writer, is fasci­ nating to the readers of his fiction. However, Faulkner was adamant about his privacy and was frequently uneasy when questioned about his craft. He was always reluctant to grant interviews, although following the Nobel Prize recognition and especially in the last decade of his life, his growing literary reputation and his subsequent role as a public figure brought more demands to reveal the author. Trying to defend his tendency "to react violently to personal questions," Faulkner emphasized to an inter­ viewer in 1956, "The artist is of no importance. Only what he creates is important."1 Calvin Brown, who grew up with Faulkner in Oxford, Mississippi, recalls the early privacy established by the author, ten years Brown's senior. Impressed that Faulkner, then a young man, was never dominating nor condescending to a group of teen-age boys, Brown describes Faulkner's own independence 1 Jean Stein, "William Faulkner: An Interview," in Faulkner: Three Decades of Criticism, ed. Frederick J. Hoffman and Olga W. Vickery (East Lansing, Mich.: Michigan State Univ. Press, 1969), p. 67. 1 2 and his respect for the independence of others.2 At the 1977 Conference on Faulkner at the University of Mississippi, Albert Guerard, analyzing the mature author and his work, identified a similar temperament in speaking of the inward self, "notably aloof, evasive, ironic, involuted, infinitely complex, unmistakably self-protective . Faulkner . maintained considerable distance between himself and his fictional world, and between himself and his reader.1,3 Although not quite so secretive of his craft of composition as he was of his private life, Faulkner often responded to direct questions vaguely, flippantly, or by focusing on character rather than composition. Faulkner in a rare interview in the late thirties told Robert Cantwell of Time magazine that when halfway through the writing of Sartoris, "suddenly I discovered that writing was a mighty fine thing— you could make people stand on 4 their hind legs and cast a shadow." In the late fifties, 2 Calvin S. Brown, Jr., "Billy Faulkner, My Boyhood Friend," in William Faulkner of Oxford, ed. James W. Webb and H. Wigfall Green (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1965), pp. 46-47. 3 Albert J. Guerard, "The Faulknerian Voice," in The Maker and the Myth: Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha, ed. Evans Harrington and Ann J. Abadie (Jackson, Miss.: Univ. of Mississippi Press, 1978), pp. 26-27. 4 Robert Cantwell, "The Faulkners: Recollections of a Gifted Family," in Three Decades, p. 56. 3 while writer-in-residence at the University of Virginia, Faulkner fielded numerous questions on writing technique. When questioned on the importance of style, he responded: "... anyone who is busy writing about people hasn1t got time enough to bother with style.11 ^ Discounting an audience or a particular reader, Faulkner commented that he wrote "for years before it occurred to me that strangers C. might read the stuff, and I've never broken that habit." Discounting critics also, Faulkner insisted, "Mine is the 7 standard which has to be met." Yet asked his purpose in writing when he first appeared for university lectures in the late forties at the University of Mississippi, Faulkner recognized the worth of the question but said he could not answer. He did admit, however, that it was "probably because of the hope that someone somewhere might say 'Yes, that's true.'"® Joseph Blotner, author of the most comprehensive biography, cites Faulkner's recognition and 5 William