Abschlussarbeit zur Erlangung der Magistra Artium im Fachbereich Neuere Philologien der Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Institut für England- und Amerikastudien Writing against the Odds: The South’s Cultural and Literary Struggle against Progress and Modernity 1. Gutachter: Prof. Dr. Olaf Hansen 2. Gutachterin : Prof. Dr. Susanne Opfermann vorgelegt von: Julia Kristina Merkel aus: Heidelberg Einreichungsdatum: 22.01.2008 1 “Well, in the South we had so many servants. Gone, gone, gone. All vestige of gracious living! Gone completely! I wasn’t prepared for what the future brought me.“ Amanda Wingfield in the Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams 2 Contents Introduction: Resisting and Loathing Modernity p. 4 1. Southern Literary Tradition p. 8 1.2. Historical, Cultural, and Literary Roots p. 12 1.2.1. Historical Roots p. 13 1.2.2. Cultural Roots p. 19 1.2.3. Literary Roots p. 22 2. Southern Avoidance of Progress and Modernity p. 30 2.1. Form: Novel and Short Story p. 34 2.2. Motifs, Themes, and Symbols p. 37 2.2.1. Humor p. 38 2.2.2. Despair and Brutalization p. 39 2.2.3. Place p. 44 2.2.4. Nature p. 53 2.2.5. Man and Beast p. 57 3. Cultural and Literary Identity p. 67 Conclusion: “The Grave in the House” p. 81 Appendix p. 87 Bibliography p. 88 3 Introduction: Resisting and Loathing Modernity “The past is never dead. It is not even past” (Faulkner 1976: 81), the lawyer Gavin Stevens unforgivingly says to Temple Drake in William Faulkner’s Requiem for a Nun during the trial against her maid Nancy, who is accused of killing Temple’s child.1 Temple has told him, “Temple Drake is dead” (ibid. 80) to emphasize her allegedly changed and improved self and to express her determination not to take any responsibility for her actions in the past. She wants to put everything that has happened behind her and open a new chapter in her life. Stevens can neither accept nor understand such an attitude. For him, Temple’s plan to entirely leave the past behind is futile and impossible to ever become reality. Nothing is ever forgotten or overcome, and the past will influence and haunt anybody trying to escape. The past not only won’t but can’t be subdued. The ever-reappearing topic of the past overshadowing the presence and determining the future is a Southern subject par excellence. A persistent urge to look back and an almost loathing attitude toward progress and the modern way of life and fast-paced society are omnipresent in Southern culture, literature, and life. Author Allan Gurganus2 says about his childhood and youth in North Carolina in the 1950s that it was like growing up in the nineteenth century. The South’s past is in its present almost to the point of complete denial of the latter (see Grant 105f.). The Civil War and the Reconstruction Era left the South economically and culturally isolated. But the War Between the States only finished what had started much earlier. The Southern claim to a special position, its feeling of moral and cultural superiority and distinctiveness, and its chosen isolation have its roots as early as in the beginning 18th century. These feelings and the need to cultivate and preserve a certain type of community and individual perceived as being superior only recurred even stronger after the shameful defeat the 1 Requiem for a Nun is the sequel to Sanctuary. Eight years have passed since Temple Drake, the daughter of a rich judge who ended up being a prostitute, was raped and abducted by the psychopath Popeye. She now is married with two children. Her nanny Nancy is tried and sentenced to death for murdering Temple’s infant daughter. 2 Allan Gurganus (1947-) is a contemporary author from North Carolina. His best-known novel is Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (1984). 4 South suffered. The gap between the North and the South deepened tremendously, and soon the extreme isolation and seclusion became both voluntary and involuntary. The downfall and the exploitation during the era of Reconstruction left a scar that has been hurting until this present day. The unique situation first brought forth a literature that was mainly concerned with the conflict caused by a vicious, mostly Northern, antagonist but soon shifted to looking inward for the source of conflict, despair, and misery (see Tate 1968: VII). Literature became the expressive means of the peculiar Southern situation and its history of the war that had left the inner and outer Southern landscape wounded and drained. Reviewing Southern literature and the cultural development of the last century, formulating a set of typical characteristics, and investigating the changes and developments, one will soon find that the works of contemporary authors like Barry Hannah, Larry Brown, or Cormac McCarthy3 still circle around and debate the old themes and issues already disputed during the Southern Renaissance. They are in their core entirely unchanged presenting themselves traditionally in form of the novel and short story. In my thesis I will argue that while modern society was on the rise and literary cosmopolitism was in full bloom in the rest of the United States, the South not only persistently ignored this, but also actively resisted and opposed such contents and agendas. Instead of too many choices, opportunities, and responsibilities, the Southerner is confronted with an impermeable, rigid society that draws both its pride and dysfunctions from its history and constant perpetuation thereof. In a first step I will shortly review the Southern literary tradition with its historical, cultural, and literary roots. Then, in a second step I will put analytical focus on the constantly perpetuating choice of theme and form of the period examined, which hasn’t undergone any noteworthy changes for the last century. This constant perpetuation results in a stubborn state of keeping alive 3 Barry Hannah (1942-), an author from Oxford, Ms, is a renowned author awarded with numerous prices, whose work was nominated for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Price. Larry Brown (1951-2004) was an author from Oxford, Ms whose work was coined Grit Lit due to its down-to-earth and realistic Southern content and language. Cormac McCarthy (1933-) is a native Tennesseean and the winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Price for his novel The Road. He is the author of The Border Trilogy. 5 the old motifs, ideas, and issues, and essentially in not overcoming the paralyzing state of guilt, depravation, and misery seasoned with a pinch of pride and a feeling of exceptionalism and peculiarity. In a third step I will investigate the literary and cultural reasons for the stagnation described and examine the Southern identity that derives from the living in the past on every level possible and its continuous melancholic look over the shoulder. Formally, the center of examination will be novels and short stories, which are to be analyzed regarding both literary and cultural background and origin. William Faulkner, Barry Hannah, Cormac McCarthy, and contemporary anthologized authors of short stories will be the main focus. The most prominent representative of the Southern literature and flagship of the Southern Renaissance is William Faulkner of Oxford, Mississippi, but the works and ideas of contemporaries and other representatives of the Renaissance, e.g. Allen Tate, Eudora Welty, or Flannery O’Connor4 are similarly important. From the end of that literary period in the 1950s until today many authors like Barry Hannah, Cormac McCarthy, Larry Brown and others, also show the specific characteristics defined by their predecessors. These unchanged choices and their reasons and consequences will be the main subject of this thesis. The answers to the question where the literary and cultural reasons and roots of this backwardness, this longing, melancholic living in the past lie, are of utter importance to reach a deeper understanding of both Southern literature and culture of the last century and the present, with all its symbols and extensive use of myths. Both the historical and cultural circumstances create a very fertile breeding ground for a unique type of literature; they form, define and distinguish it, setting it apart from literature from other parts of the United States or Europe. This distinct atmosphere creates a certain type of self- perception, which draws a lot of its pride and identity from an inferiority complex paradoxically mixed with a sense of moral and cultural superiority. 4Allen Tate (1899-1979) was a Southern poet, essayist, and literary critic from Kentucky. He was a member of the group of the Fugitive Poets and the Southern Agrarians at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. Eudora Welty (1909-2001) was an author, photographer, and literary critic from Mississippi. Her novel The Optimist’s Daughter won the Pulitzer Price. Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964) was a Southern Gothic novelist, short story writer, and essayist from Georgia with strong Christian tendencies in her writing. 6 This cultural and historical environment and its consequences lead to an innate melancholic longing for the bygone, for the South as it once was. May the missed have really ever existed or not. For Allen Tate the Old South was “the last great moment in culture” and “all that was left was […] to commemorate its glory” and realize the “loss and […] failure” (Gray 3). Such a heavy historical baggage has been academically described from several different angles and in diverse contexts. Wolf Kindermann examines the historical reflections and references in Southern literature and its genealogy from the early 18th century until the Southern Renaissance. He argues that historical references are one of the most important constituents of Southern literature.