THE SOOIAL IDEAS OF WILLIAM FAULKNER A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Department of English McGill University In Partial Fulf'illment of the Requirements for the Degree Master or Arts by James Eric Iversen September 1951 TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE INTRODUCTORY -- THE LEGEND • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 1 II. THE TRADITIONALISTS • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 20 III. THE ANTI-TRADITIONALISTS • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 50 IV. THE NEGRO • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 64 v. CONCLUSION . 93 BIBLIOGRAPHY • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 102 CHAPTER I Lying deep in Mississippi is an area known to many readers of' contemporary fiction as Yoknapatawpha County. Here, within an area or 2400 square miles, between the Northern bills and the fertile bottom lands of' tbat state, live appro:ximately firteen thousand people. This county and these people are the creations of' William Faulkner•s fertile imagination, and they f'orm the subject matter of' most of' his fiction. For Faulkner bas created, as Malcolm Cowley said, "a m,ythical ldngdom" -- a realm so complete in every respect tbat it bas not been equalled in modern writing. It is a dark, brooding land whose presence is vividly f'elt throughout all Faulkner 1s writings, one which extends from the outlying remnants of' the vast, primeval forest, • ••• that doomed wilderness whose edges were being constantly and punily gnawed at by men with plows and axes who f'eared it because it was wilderness •••• •1 to the edge of' the slow, somnolent Tallahatchie River. Yoknapatawpba County is painted with vivid and accurate brush strokes, and both the beauty and the ugliness of' this area are caretully detailed. Equally graphie is Faulkner1 s treatment of the inhabitants of this imaginary region. It is possible to learn from his novels and short stories not only of the various social levels and their representa­ tives but also of their modes of' speaking, dressing, eating, and thinking; and the reader becomes privy to the experiences and to the 11 1 William Faulkner, "The Bear1 Go I2.2!m Moses (Rs.ndom Bouse, New York, 1942) P• 193. 2 emotions of these mythical :Mississippians. Thus writing as he does, chronicling the history of an area and a people, it is possible to consider the fiction of William Faulkner as a legend of the South in which each novel is but a small unit in the development of this legend, or in the words of George Snell: ••• with the consecutive appearance of the novels, it became increasingly- clear that Faulkner had been building a vast, savage 1 demonic 1Tragedy- Humaine' of the A.merican South, or more specifically, of that section of Mississippi in and about what he calle Jefferson, which is Oxford, his home town.2 Faulkner1s imagiœtive interpretation or the South can be called legendary because it is not intended as an accurate historical account of the development of this country south of the Ohio River. William Faulkner was born in 1S97 in New Albany, Mississippi of an old distinguished family-. His great-grandfather, Colonel Falkner, had fought as a lieutenant in the Jle:xican War and as a Colonel in the Civil War. In 1889 he bad been elected to the Legislature of Mississippi, and on the day of his election Colonel Falkner was assassiœted in Ripley, Mississippi. William Faulkner1s grandfather, John w. T. Falkner, was also a prominent M:i.ssissippian, having built the first railroad in that area. Sbortly after his birtb1 Faulkner' s family moved to Oxford, the seat of the state university, where his rather was treasurer of tbat university. Faulkner•s early education consisted of the local grammar and high schools. At the outbreak or the first World War 1 however, he lert Oxford to enlist in the 2 Geo. w. Snell, •The Fury of William Faulkner,• Western Review, 11:29, Autumn, 1946. C8.!18.dian nying Corps. He served throughout the war wi th a British squadron and crashed twice. The second crash eut short his flying career as he broke both legs, one of them in three pla.ces, his scalp was torn, and severa! bones in his face splintered.3 He returned to O:x:f'ord for a short while and attended the university as a special student. Following this, he went to New York where he worked in a bookstore; he then went South, to New Orleans, where he was employed by a newspaper. It was during this period that he lived with Sherwood Anderson. In 1925, Faulkner visited Europe, and, except for a few recent trips to Holl1Wood, the rest of his life bas been spent in Oxford, Mississippi. In December, 1950 he was awarded the Nobel Brize for his outstanding contribution to American literature. It is only natural that Faulkner, wh()se roots are so deeply imbedded in Jfississippi, writes of what is his natural heritage -­ the South, and more especially, that part of the South around Oxford. Using his own family history and gathering a fund of material from local courthouse and plantation records 1 word of mouth stories from tenant rarmers and negroes, Faulkner creates a brilliant, it often pessimistic, legend.. This legend is not or the usual romantic, cloying South, as pictured in many novels, but is rather a real1st1c probing of the social structure or the South. The economie pattern or the South bad been agrarian, and it was bolstered by the institution of slavery. Now, however, it is in the throes of transition. In order to compete with the North, the agrarian structure is being 3 Sherwood Anderson, lotebook (Boni & Liveright, New York, 1926) P• 109. 4 gradually replaced by one based on industry. This graduai evolution of the South is regarded by Faulkner with great misgivings. It represente to him not only a loss of a better way of life but a loss of funda.mental values which he, as an heir of the aristocratie or traditional way of life, cherishes. Though Faulkner regards the future with a qualified optimism, his favour seems to rest with the past, but he is fairminded and rea.li.stic enough to realize that the old traditional way of life was doomed, that it held within itself the seeds of its own destruction, and that these seeds were embodied in the institution of slavery and in man's exploitation and eventual destruction of the land he owned. These two points are continually reiterated by Faulkner in his effort to explain the predica.ment of the South. This myth or legend of the South is never consciously elaborated in 8J:1,1 one of his novels. Instead, eaeh novel or short story con­ tributes but one part to the totality, each presents but a facet of the myth as a whole. Faulkner1s legend is, in its briefest outlines, this: The land originally belonged to the Chickasaw Indiana, and they to it. Their tenure was based on respect for the land and its animal inhabitante; they hunted and fi shed, and took only what they needed. This natural balance was disturbed by invading white settl ers who succeeded in m.uleting the Indiana of their natural inheritance. The settlers were able to do this because the Chickasawe were incapable of evaluating their land in terme of cash. Thus ba.ving gained huge tracts of land, the plantera, with their Negro slaves, drove the Indiana westward. These early settlers were of two types 5 the Sartorises who were the aristocrate and the Sutpenè who were ambitious but whose origins were dubious. The former group, however, hoped to create a permanent social order, but despi te their virtue and their ability to live by a rigid set of values, their plan for a social order was cursed by slavery. This gu.ilt, implicit in their way of life, eventually brought about the Civil War and .frustrated their design. At the conclusion or the War, they tried to restore their plan .for a permanent Southern aristocracy .founded on pre-War values. The Sartorises and SUtpens were .frustrated by two factors, their own inherent weaknesses and the emergence of a new class, the Snopes, whose origine could be traced to the postwar carpetbaggers and who represented the new exploiting class. In the years that .followed, the aristocracy became more and more incompetent. They were unable to compete with the Snopeses because their own traditional code prevented them from using the Snopesian weapons of greed and cunning to overcome this rising class or opportuniste. Instead, most of the Sartorises withdrew from the reality of this contlict of values into a dream world where they continued to live amid memories of a faded past and or glorious defeats suff'ered during the War and to love only a Death that would release them from the harsh world. Or if they rebelled against what seemed to be their ordained rate, they adopted a Snopesism of the worst variety and became like Jason IV in Dl! ~ !!!!! ~ Fur:r. Whereas the Snopes "as a priee of their victory bad to serve the mecbanized civilization or the North, which was morally impotent in itself, but which, with the aid or i ts Southern retainers 1 ended by corrupting the Southem 6 Nation.•4 If' Faulkner's legend, as embodied in his novels and short stories, is taken as a realistic report of' lif'e in the South, i ts value is very limited. The myth arises, of' course, f'rom Faulkner's love of' the southern scene, but it is not a realistic copy of' tbat scene. It is, instead, a symbolic and ill-proportioned portrait whose essential nature bas been vivif'ied by conscious distortion. The majority of' his cbaracters have been marked with some nightmarish quality or other and they have an af'f'inity f'or acts of' violence and deeds of' evil.