The Writing of Nation: Faulkner and the Postbellum South By ©2012 Adam B. Long Submitted to the graduate degree program in English and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. ________________________________ Chairperson Dr. Doreen Fowler ________________________________ Dr. Marta Caminero-Santangelo ________________________________ Dr. Susan K. Harris ________________________________ Dr. James Carothers ________________________________ Dr. Jennifer L.Weber Date Defended: March 30, 2012 ii The Dissertation Committee for Adam B Long certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: The Writing of Nation: Faulkner and the Postbellum South ________________________________ Chairperson Dr. Doreen Fowler Date approved: March 30, 2012 iii Abstract This dissertation argues that William Faulkner, drawing on a conversation begun by earlier Southern writers, writes his anxiety about the South’s assimilation into the nation. Specifically, I argue that his early works show repulsion to the idea of the South’s assimilation, while his later works show more comfort with assimilation, along with a greater willingness to participate in the national imperial project. I begin by establishing the conversation in writers who are active in the postbellum period, and then I explore the ways in which Faulkner draws on this conversation to present his own complicated and changing depiction of nation. Central to this discussion is recognition of an anxiety about the role of the South in the creation of national identity. iv Table of Contents: Introduction: Faulkner’s Public Narration of Nation 1 Chapter 1: The Undercutting of Narratives of Descent in Charles Chesnutt’s 20 The House behind the Cedars and William Faulkner’s Light in August Chapter 2: Miscegenation and Regional Assimilation in Absalom, 49 Absalom! and George Washington Cable’s The Grandissimes Chapter 3: National Masculinity and the Fear of Assimilation in 83 Go Down, Moses and Thomas Nelson Page’s Red Rock Chapter 4: Faulkner’s Shift toward Assimilation and the Postbellum 116 Use of the Uncle Tom Character Type Chapter 5: The Communist Other in Faulkner’s Revision of the 148 Southwest Humor Tradition Conclusion: Faulkner’s Conflicted Portrayal of Assimilation in 181 His Most Famous Public Speech Works Cited 184 1 Introduction: Faulkner’s Public Narration of Nation I. Critical Overview of Faulkner’s Statements about Race In his September 1956 letter to Ebony (titled “A Letter to the Leaders in the Negro Race”), William Faulkner addresses controversial statements he had been quoted as making in regards to the school integration crisis in the South.1 He explains: Recently I was quoted in several magazines with the statement that ‘I…between the United States and Mississippi…would choose Mississippi…even (at the price or if it meant) shooting down Negroes in the street.’ Each time I saw this statement, I corrected it by letter to this effect: That is a statement which no sober man would make nor any sane man believe, for the reason that it is not only foolish, but dangerous, since the moment for that choice and that subsequent act will never arise. (Essays 107) This public apology is irksome for several reasons. First, Faulkner does not deny having made the statement; instead, he denies that he would have made the statement while sober. In fact, such a carefully worded apology from a man known for drunkenness perhaps raises more red flags than no apology at all. Second, Faulkner’s reasoning why this statement is “dangerous” is troubling. He is less concerned with racial violence, and more concerned with the foolishness of believing that the circumstances which would justify such violence would arise. He argues that it is dangerous to believe in the possibility of a second Civil War, not that it would be dangerous 1 Recently, historians such as Elizabeth Jacoway have returned to the school integration crisis of the American South seeking to examine complexities that historical criticism has long overlooked. Specifically, they seek to explore the various and complex sociopolitical conditions that led initially to racial segregation and ultimately to the move for integration. Jacoway examines the incident at Little Rock’s Central High School in which President Eisenhower called up the National Guard to force the integration Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus had sought to prevent. Rather than focusing the study on Faubus’s racism (as most have done), Jacoway additionally explores the various external forces at work on Faubus, as well as his political opportunism, concluding that his primary motive was not his personal feelings about African Americans, but rather his attempt to appeal to a crucial part of the electorate. Such studies importantly highlight the political underpinnings of racism. 2 to “shoot down Negroes in the street” should sectional violence again erupt. Finally, Faulkner’s apology comes at the beginning of a letter than many leaders in the African-American community (as well as many critics over the past 50 years) have found troubling. This letter, as well as many similar public statements by Faulkner, led to a vocal, public response from writers such as Ralph Ellison and W.E.B. Du Bois. According to Grace Elizabeth Hale and Robert Jackson, such statements resulted in Du Bois’s invitation for Faulkner to join him in a public debate: “Du Bois challenged Faulkner to debate integration. Insisting again on the need for more time, Faulkner replied by telegram: ‘I do not believe there is a debatable point between us’” (42). Despite Faulkner’s assurances that he supported gradual integration, he continued to be challenged for the contradictory nature of some of the statements about his gradualist approach. A clear example of this is his “Letter to a Northern Editor,” originally published in Life and titled more generally as “A Letter to the North.” In it, Faulkner seems initially to make his gradualist position clear: From the beginning of this present phase of the race problem in the South, I have been on record as opposing the forces in my native country which would keep the condition out of which this present evil and trouble has grown. Now I must go on record as opposing the forces outside the South which would use legal or police compulsion to eradicate that evil overnight. I was against compulsory segregation. I am just as strongly against compulsory integration. (Essays 86). While maintaining this gradualist position, however, Faulkner seems to not realize the difficulty of speaking for another group. On one hand, he says, “the Northerner, the liberal, does not know the South. He cant know it from his distance” (90). On the other hand, he entitles himself to speak on behalf of the African-American community, a fact seen as hypocritical by many, such 3 as Ellison. Ellison writes, “Bill Faulkner can write a million letters to the North as he recently did in LIFE, but for one thing he forgets that the people he is talking to are Negroes and they’re everywhere in the States and without sectional allegiance” (116-7). Ellison, then, objects to Faulkner’s speaking on behalf of another group, even if Faulkner’s intentions are benevolent. The most egregious example of Faulkner’s speaking on behalf of the African American community immediately follows the apology cited above. In this letter, Faulkner says, “So if I were a Negro, I would say to my people: ‘Let us be always unflaggingly and inflexibly flexible. But always decently, quietly, courteously, with dignity and without violence. And above all, with patience. The white man has devoted three hundred years to teaching us to be patient” (Essays 111). Faulkner’s speaking for African Americans is laced with a reappropriation of the traits that Southerners assigned to slaves. The description minimizes the needs of the African- American community (for education, for jobs) in favor of the traits that will not inconvenience whites. This reappropriation is not lost on Ellison: “Faulkner has delusions of grandeur because he really believes that he invented these characteristics which he ascribes to Negroes in his fiction and now he thinks he can end this great historical action just as he ends a dramatic action in one of his novels” (116-7). Ellison sees in Faulkner’s gradualist approach a latent paternalism. While teaching at the University of Virginia later in his life, Faulkner attempts to explain his earlier statements and defend himself against claims of racism. Faulkner continues in his mistrust of the Supreme Court and of the NAACP. He says of integration, “It won’t come into Mississippi or anywhere else because of any decision by any court” (University 148). He further explains, “I myself think that integration as they mean it now will never occur, that the Negro doesn’t want it either” (215). Still evident is Faulkner’s presumption that he is able to 4 speak on behalf of African Americans, a belief that is central to his theory of integration. At the same time, however, Faulkner remains benevolent, wishing equality if not integration: “I think that the only thing that will solve that problem is not integration but equality, for the Negro to know that he has just as much and just as valid rights in this country as anybody else has” (227). Faulkner, then, seems to believe that the only difference concerning integration between him and Du Bois is a difference in what should be done to accomplish a common end. Ellison, however, points out a latent paternalism in Faulkner’s statements, a paternalism which Ellison sees as a (perhaps benevolent) form of racism. It would be easy at this point, as many critics have done, to dismiss Faulkner as a well- intentioned but oblivious racist and to celebrate the progressive and realistic vision of Ellison and Du Bois.