00001.tif

PDF

Download

Open document

Flip pages

Copy asset link

Request this asset

Transcript (if available)

Content THE POWER OF MR. COMPSON IN ABSALOM, ABSALOM!:
HEROlSM/HOMOEROTlCISM/APPROACH-AVOlDANCE TOWARD WOMEN
by
Marla Trissell Knutsen
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(English)
June 1978
Copyright by Marla Trissell Knutsen 1980
UMI Number: DP23061
All rights reserved
INFORMATION TO ALL USERS
The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted.
In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript
and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed,
a note will indicate the deletion.
Dissertation Publishing
UMI DP23061
Published by ProQuest LLC (2014). Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author.
Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC.
All rights reserved. This work is protected against
unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code
ProQuest LLC.
789 East Eisenhower Parkway
P.O. Box 1346
Ann Arbor, Ml 4 8 1 0 6 -1 3 4 6
U N IVER SITY O F S O U TH E R N C A LIFO R N IA
T H E G R A D U A T E S C H O O L
U N IV E R S IT Y P A R K
L O S A N G E L E S , C A L IF O R N IA 9 0 0 0 7
This dissertation, w ritten by
MARLA,. TRISSELL . KNIJTSEN...................
under the direction of h f *....... Dissertation
Committee, and approved by all its members, has
been presented to and accepted by the Dean of The
Graduate School, in partial fulfillm e n t of the re
quirements fo r the degree of
D O C TO R OF PH ILO SO PH Y
* P h - J L
t
;7 8
WILLIAM W. MAY
Dean
D a te........
DISSERTATIO N CO M M ITTEE
. / u i U o u . ..JrL
Chairman
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter Page !
I. THE STRENGTH OF THE UNCONSCIOUS............................. 1
II. THE HEROIC AND HOMOEROTIC IDEAL: MR. COMPSON............. 28
III. WOMAN AS AMORAL TEMPTRESS AND MORAL EXEMPLAR: '
MR. COMPSON, SHREVE AND QUENTIN ............68
IV. THE ATTRACTION OF. INCEST: QUENTIN.........................110
V. IMPLICIT PATTERNS IN FAULKNER'S NOVELS:
FROM WOMAN TO L A N D ..................................143
APPENDIX A: FAULKNER’S VACILLATION ABOUT WHEN MR. COMPSON
WOULD KNOW OF CHARLES BON'S RACIAL MAKE-UP AND
CONNECTION WITH THOMAS SUTPEN ...................... 158
APPENDIX B: THE POWER MR. COMPSON GAINED WHEN FAULKNER
EXPANDED "EVANGELINE," INTEGRATED "WASH," AND
REVISED THE MANUSCRIPT TO THE PUBLISHED TEXT .... 163
APPENDIX C: THE CRITICAL TREATMENT OF HOMOEROTICISM
IN FAULKNER.......................... 173
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................... 177
ii
CHAPTER : I '
THE STRENGTH OF THE UNCONSCIOUS j
|
Absalom, Absalom! is a complex novel. In what may be his greatest;
work, William Faulkner created an almost seamless web which resists the,'
paraphrase and factoring out ordinary in critical discussion.
The novel's plot is multilayered. On one level, it tells the
story of Thomas Sutpen, a poor, young white boy from the mountains of ;
the territory now known as West Virginia. In 1817, when Thomas was ten
years old, he moved with his father and sisters to Tidewater Virginia.
!
When Thomas was 14, he was turned away from the door of a mansion as
he tried to deliver a message from his father. Reacting to this affront,1
Thomas formed a design for achievement that he pursued with deter
mination throughout the rest of his life. He left home immediately.
He went to the West Indies, where he served as foreman on a sugar
plantation. When Thomas courageously ended a slave uprising, his
grateful employer wed the young man to his daughter, but Thomas set
aside both his wife and their son when he discovered that both were not
of pure white blood. Leaving part of his newly-acquired wealth with
his first wife and son, Thomas took the rest and used it to acquire
the largest plantation in Yoknapatawpha County. A single-minded and
tireless worker, Thomas used the few wild negroes he had brought from
the West Indies to help him clear the land, plant it, and build the
1 . . . . ;
largest mansion Yoknapatawpha had ever seen. After living alone in the|
mansion for three years, Thomas courted and won Ellen Coldfield, a
daughter of one of Jefferson's most respectable citizens; she bore him
a son, Henry, and a daughter, Judith, to inherit his wealth and '
I
position. Yet his "design" was destroyed by societal and family
circumstances. Thomas lost most of his holdings in the devastation
which accompanied the Civil War; his dreams of establishing himself
through progeny were ended when Henry murdered ;Judith's Jfiance, Charles
Bon, then fled himself. !
This synopsis provides an entree to the novel's second level of
meaning, which concerns itself with the efforts of various narrators
and reporters in both the past and present time to determine why
Sutpen's design worked out as it did. Sutpen's sister-in-law, Rosa
Coldfield, the first present-time narrator, is old enough (74) to have
seen all but one of the major participants;iy.et. she was too young in
the 1850's and 1860's to have been told why they behaved as they did.
Since her life was deeply affected by the events of the Sutpen story,
she wants to understand it. She also believes that the actions are not
concluded/::Mr. Compson, the second present-time narrator, has appeared
before, in The Sound and the Fury and in several short stories about
the Compson family. His interest in the Sutpen legend comes not
because he has seen any of the participants himself but because he has
heard.: much about them from his father. (General Compson, whose past
time reports and speculations are recalled by both his son and his
grandson, was Thomas Sutpen's closest friend and only confidant.)
In addition, Mr. Compson, a lawyer and apparent cynic, has a penchant
31
for speculating on the actions of others and is piqued by the ambi- ^
guities of the Sutpen legend. His son, Quentin, an eighteen-year-old j
Harvard freshman, has heard part of the story from him. Quentin has
also been summoned by Rosa to hear her version of it and to aid her in :
searching for more information. He listens to Rosa, and hears two
more versions of the story from his father, in September, 1909. In
January, 1910, Quentin receives a letter from Mr. Compson telling of
Rosa's death. This letter initiates Quentin's report of the legend to.
I
i
his Harvard roommate, Shreve Me Cannon. Shreve, the third present
time narrator, begins as a slightly interested listener but eventually ■
becomes so involved in the tales that he contributes to the speculative
narrative creations begun by Rosa and continued by Mr. Compson. The
omniscient author, whom I shall call the "nameless narrator," also
moves from a distanced stance at the novel's beginning to increasing
involvement in the creative narrative process, taking over the narra
tion of several crucial episodes in the story of the second generation
of Sutpens. He should be seen as the fourth present-time narrator.
A third level of meaning is formed by the internal reactions of
Quentin Compson, whose point-of-view serves as the reader's entry into
the story for much of the novel. As Quentin passively transmits the
material reported and created by the speculative narrators, he is
forced to confront the events of the Sutpen legend. He reacts strongly,
amplifying and interpreting those events that carry intense psychic
charge for him.
The novel's structure is as complex as its content. Faulkner
chose to present the Sutpen legend through several narrators and one
'reporter, each with unique characteristics of diction. Each narrator
, gives a distinctive version of the legend, sometimes repeating material
which has been given before, sometimes adding material which has not
been mentioned, and sometimes merely re-interpreting what others have
suggested. 'Pwo:iofTithesetadd±tibhsgaferpr.esehtedvasLnewj.:iSubstantiated
data which have just been discovered; but most additions are the specu
lative creations of the narrators or are Quentin's internal reactions.
By releasing the legend in this disjointed yet incremental fashion,
Faulkner heightened the reader's suspense and maintained a pervasive
.sense of ambiguity which is never dispelled during the course of the
novel.
Any discussion of Absalom, Absalom! is further complicated by the
fact that the published text cannot be considered definitive. As Noel
Polk has pointed out, the published text deviates markedly from the
author's final typescript setting copy,'*' and no one yet has collated
the manuscript, the typescript, and the published text. Gerald
Langford's Faulkner's Revisions of ABSALOM, ABSALOM! does not cover the
subject adequately because it deals only with the holograph manuscript
and the published text, ignoring the intervening typescript setting
2
copy. At the present time, at least four texts should be consulted in
addition to the published book if one is to approach some textual
veracity: the unpublished story "Evangeline," the published story
3
"Wash," the holograph manuscript, and the typescript setting copy.
Studies of Absalom, Absalom! need the foundation which will be provided
;when we have a collation of the manuscript, the typescript, and the
published text. Such a collation should also include the "Evangeline"
material so that one can see which elements of that story— much more
the proto-Absalom, Absalom! than is the story "Wash"-— were carried into
4 i
the novel. "Evangeline," which uses "Don and I" as narrators and
I
focuses on the story of Henry and Judith Sutpen and Charles Bon, was i
evidently composed in the spring of 1931, an indication that the
Absalom, Absalom! material had begun to interest Faulkner early on.
"Wash" was evidently composed and submitted for publication from
June, 1933, to February, 1934."*
Since this discussion bases its conclusions on larger, repetitive
elements in the novel, minute textual distinctions are not crucial.
The conclusions develop from close reading of the published text, with
the additional use of Langford, Joseph Blotner's and Estella
Schoenberg's descriptions of the "Evangeline" story, James B. Meri
wether's bibliograhical work, and Thomas McHaney's description of the
g
unpublished "Elmer" materials.
Critics deal with the complexity of Absalom, AbsalomI in several
ways. Some have chosen to discuss the novel's content, including
comments on form only when a technical device has a direct effect on
the story.^ Restricting the discussion in this manner, however, does
not eliminate the complexity caused by the novel's impacted stories of
Thomas Sutpen and his children, the present-time narrators, and Quentin
Compson's anguished reactions to the creations ^of. the Sutpen legend.
Since those who choose this course usually focus either on the Sutpens ■
g
or on Quentin, the resulting discussions are incomplete. Although
Thomas Sutpen does seem to dominate the legend that is given and
Quentin's despair is the most striking feature.among the present-time .
characters, neither Thomas nor Quentin dominates this novel in the way ;
that Herzog dominates Saul Bellow's novel or Stephen Dedalus dominates 1
I
the story he tells in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The few'
discussions giving attention:: to both the Sutpen legend and Quentin's
9 1
reactions have still fallen short. Though they recognize that neither1
character alone dominates the novel, they continue to overlook the fact.
that a third character, Mr. Compson, exerts the major control over both'
the re-creations of the Sutpen legend and the youth who responds So
I
I
intensely to them.
Some critics have chosen to discuss form. These studies call
attention to the use of incremental repetition in the narrative, to the
withholding of parts of the legend and the presentation of other parts
out of order to increase suspense, to the particularization of narrators;
through unique diction styles or, conversely, to the shared diction of
all the narrators. * * " * Most critics tend to overlook the density and
subjectivity of the narratives. Even those who begin their studies by
noting that much of the novel involves speculative reconstructions
based on very little observed or substantiated evidence then proceed to
discuss those reconstructions as fact.** Such oversight obscures the
fact that Mr. Compson greatly controls the subjective presentation of
the legend.
The narrative structure of Absalom, Absalom! is dense. One must be
aware throughout that one is "hearing" overlapping narratives and
reports. At the least, the reader is given either Quentin's internal
additions or reactions to the legend, or Henry's memories of his talks
at the battlefront. with his father and with Charles Bon, as each is
created by the nameless narrator. At Its densest, the narrative texture
l
contains, in reversed order of closeness to the reader: the nameless ,
1
narrator, Quentin (and/or Shreve), Mr. Compson (or Rosa Coldfield), ;
General Compson (or Grandmother Compson, who may in fact have told j
General Compson rather than Mr. Compson), and Thomas Sutpen (or Judith |
’ I
12
Sutpen. The Sutpen legend is received as a "told" story which is
further influenced, for the reader alone, by the unspoken additions and
reactions of Quentin Compson. One must never forget that, except for !
one or two details which have been substantiated by witnesses or by
concrete evidence, what one is hearing is based on the memory of second
hand reports or on speculation. For this reason, "narrators" will be
used whenever it is important to be alert to the ultimate subjectivity
of the material being presented.
In addition, this study contends that the distinction between
Quentin as solely a transmitting reporter and the other present-time
characters as creative narrators is crucial if one is to understand and,
appreciate Faulkner's use of both content and form to illustrate Quentitfs.
impotence. It has been observed that in both the Compson novels
Quentin often thinks that he is ineffectual, but no one has noticed
that in Absalom, Absalom! Quentin's impotence is demonstrated formally
by his inability to participate in the creative narration. His
internal expansion of the legend causes him intense pain, but he can
articulatefheifcher. the scenes'he creates nor his resulting agony.
In order to highlight this separation, I shall distinguish quite ;
arbitrarily between "narrators" and ’'reporters." "Narrator" will be
used for.those characters-who.both.describe what..they.have, seen or .
heard and verbalize speculative additions. ^"Reporter" will be used for
Quentin, who merely repeats what he has heard or seen, adding no !
■ speculative details to the stories he tells. While Quentin definitely.
I
projects his own concerns into the story of the second generation of i
»
Sutpens, he does not voice these concerns to any of the other speakers <
during the course of the narrative activity. Only the nameless narra
tor and the reader are privy to these thoughts and feelings.
I
The narrative confusion can be reduced if Absalom, Absalom! is ■
13
regarded as a type of frame story. The diagram of the novel which
follows suggests the narrative pattern:
iitnm w rm rn rr
-nameless narrator
-Quentin
■Mr. Compson
^».»»»»« Rosa Coldfield
*»*»»»**Shreve
9|
I
I
In the early chapters, the nameless narrator reports, with little ;
I
comment, the stories of the Sutpens and of Quentin’s growing agitation.;
i
Quentin’s thoughts are nearly always present to the reader, and
Mr. Compson is ever-present in Quentin's thoughts. While Quentin adds j
details to his internaleconstruction of the legend, he injects little [
new material into the verbal interplay. Instead, as the diagram indi- ■
cates, it is Mr. Compson whose speculations shape the legend most |
profoundly. His versions of the legend becomesdominant, as most of ;
their major elements are continued by Shreve and Quentin. In addition,'
Compson's homoerotic and misogynistic habits of mind are present in
Shreve and Quentin, so his influence extends to the narration and
reporting of the legend.
As the diagram suggests, Absalom, Absaloml resembles the "Marlowe"
frame stories of Joseph Conrad. Unlike the Conradian nameless narrator,
who simply provides an entry into and retreat from Marlowe's presence,
this nameless narrator exerts increasing control over the novel.
Literary convention traditionally gives the nameless narrator the
most credence. Although the knowledgeable reader of thermodern novel
understands that one of the conventions of contemporary literature is
that no one is omniscient, this tendency to trust in the ultimate
narrator— the one nearest the reader— continues on a subconscious level
when that narrator is not clearly presented as a distinguishable
personality. In Absalom, Absalom!, the nameless narrator has been
overlooked because his diction is modified to blend with that of the
prevailing named narrator, but he definitely uses his. implicit power
to support or refute_certain elements of the Sutpen legend. His
comments become increasingly intrusive during Shreve's narration, as hej
assumes more and more control over the Sutpen story. The narratives of
I
the meeting between Henry Sutpen and Eulalia Bon, of the last meeting— j
(
i
at the battlefront— between Thomas and Henry, and of the conversation j
I
that Henry had with Charles Bon directly following that meeting— these 1
are all delivered by the nameless narrator, without the intervention of;
•Quentin's consciousness between the nameless narrator and Henry. As
\
i
the strain of repeating the Sutpen stories causes Quentin to lose j
control of his physical and emotional composure, the nameless narrator
takes over his story also, describing Quentin’s physical tremors and
his emotionally ambiguous response to Shreve's question,"Why do you
hate the South?" (p. 378).^
The narrative structure posited here, then, contains four present
time "creative narrators": Rosa, Mr. Compson, Shreve, and the nameless
narrator. Quentin is merely a reporter. The narrators use the few \
verifiable things they have been told to create their own legends of
Sutpen and his children. They are overtly involved in the speculation
which is the principal novelistic action. In addition, the nameless
narrator uses his implicit power to provide additional support for
some of these speculations. Quentin's role is different. Within the
narrative action, he passively transmits all or parts of the various
creations of others. He makes, only one overt contribution which affects
the created legend: after his meeting with Henry Sutpen in September,
1909, Quentin tells Mr. Compson that Henry killed Charles Bon because
he believed that Charles was his 'and Judith's part-negro half-brother.
Quentin's further speculations, while crucial and intensely affecting
11 j
i
to him, are known only to the nameless narrator, who transmits them !
to the reader.
The present-time narrators create from a few verifiable pieces of ;
evidence. They have only seven concrete artifacts from that time to
i
work with. The Sutpen mansion still stands; there are tombstones in '
the Sutpen graveyard for Thomas, Ellen and Judith Sutpen, and for
Charles and Charles Etienne de Saint Velery Bon. The Compsons have the I
,!
letter written by Charles Bon to Judith Sutpen. !
There are also a few details supplied by Rosa's or General Compson's
first-hand interactions with one or more of the Sutpens, and Quentin
has seen Clytie Sutpen, Jim Bond (the son of Charles Etienne), and
Henry Sutpen. In addition to the events described in the earlier
synopsis, the reader learns that Rosa, General Compson and the town saw
Henry bring home a college friend named Charles Bon, after which Ellen
Sutpen began discussing Bon as Judith's fiance. During Bon's third
visit to Sutpen's Hundred, Thomas and Henry had a quarrel on Christmas
Eve which caused Henry to leave immediately with Charles. Judith and
Thomas continued to behave as though everything were the same, but Ellen
went into seclusion, remaining there until her death two years later.
Thomas, Henry and Bon alliserved in the Civil War, Henry and Bon
enlisting in the same regiment. Near the end of the war, Bon sent
Judith the letter urging her to marry him and saying he was coming soon,
to claim her. Henry prevented this marriage, however. He returned with
Bon, killed B'onrat the gate to Sutpen's Hundred, informed Judith that
shelcould not marry Bon, and fled. The week after Judith buried Bon,
she brought his letter to Grandmother Compson. Judith paid for Bon's
tombstone and for part of his son's tombstone. She allowed Bon's !
i
octoroon mistress and his son to visit and mourn at the grave. Thomas
!
Sutpen returned from the war,immediately began rebuilding his plantation,
and sought a mate to produce another son. His proposal to Rosa !
Coldfield, now living at Sutpen's Hundred, was accepted, but his
i
subsequent proposition that they breed first and marry only if the issue
were male., was not. Instead, Thomas bred with the granddaughter of
j
Wash Jones, his poor white retainer, but did not marry the girl. When
Thomas rejected both the girl and her newborn daughter, Wash Jones
killed him, the girl and the baby. Judith and Clytie Sutpen continued '
to run the greatly reduced property. They eventually brought Charles
Etienne de Saint Velery Bon to live with them, caring for him from the
time he was about thirteen years old until his early death. Charles
Etienne's rebellious nature led him to seek rejection and confrontation,
but Judith and Clytie always rescued him. When Charles Etienne
contracted yellow fever, Judith nursed him until the disease killed her;
it eventually killed him, too. Clytie paid off the balance of his
tombstone. She remained at Sutpen's Hundred in 1909, caring for Charles
Etienne's retarded son, Jim Bond. In several conversations with General
Compson, Thomas Sutpen told of the early rejection which initiated his
design, of the time he spent in the West Indies accumulating his first
fortune, and of the wife and son he set aside there because they would
not fit his plan. In September, 1909, Henry Sutpen told Quentin why
he killed Charles Bon.
From these details, the present-time narrators create individual
legends, the male narrators building on the versions which Rosa, General
Compson and the town have developed. The reader telescopes these
■ j
legends, and the internal additions and interpretations that they i
I
elicit from Quentin, to create the montage perceived as the ultimate
I
legend of the Sutpens.
i
While no one has been willing to accept Rosa’s demonized view of
Thomas Sutpen and his actions, many readers and critics have accepted
Mr. Compson's, Shreve’s and Quentin's composite version of the story of .
j
the second^generation of Sutpens. It is neither possible nor necessary.
i
to determine whether all of the elements of the Sutpen story as it
finally coalesces for the reader are true. Nor is the ultimate veracity
of the details a central concern of the novel. The assumption that the
composite legend created at the novel's end represents facts has caused
a misplaced emphasis in critical discussions. If Absalom, Absalom! is
read as the ultimately true story of the actions, motivations, conver
sations, and thoughts of the Sutpen family, the highlight falls on them
rather than on the creators of the stories and on the stories themselves
as created things.
Instead, a central question in this novel and in the other novel
which centers on the Compsonsis epistemological: how do we know? The
emphasis is on the knower and the process of knowing rather than on the
material known. In The Sound and the Fury (1929), Faulkner dealt with
this question himself, as the omniscient author who chose four different
points of view from which to look at some central events, and one
central individual, in the Compson family. The first three views are
limited— Benjy's by his mental retardation, Quentin's and Jason IV's by
their respective obsessions. Faulkner presented a more encompassing
14 |
I
l
point of view within the body of the novel in the "Dilsey" section. In!
Absalom, Absalom! (1936), two major changes were made. The concern s .
about how we know is expressed by the present-time narrators themselves,
I
and the coalescent overview must come externally, since no reliable |
; ■ |
narrator comments on the total story. j
Mr. Compson is the main exponent of this epistemological concern.
I
Near the end of his first attempt to understand why Henry murdered
Bon, Compson says, '
It just does not explain. . . . We have a few old mouth-to-
mouth tales; we exhume from old trunks and boxes and drawers
letters without salutation or signature, in which men and
women who once lived and breathed are now merely initials or
nicknames out of some now incomprehensible affection which
sound to us like Sanskrit or Chocktaw; we see dimly; people
. . . in whose living blood and seed we ourselves lay dormant
and waiting, . . . performing their acts of simple passion
and simple violence, impervious to time and inexplicable—
.... They are there, yet something is missing; they are
like a chemical formula exhumed along with the letters from
that forgotten chest, . . . Almost indecipherable, yet
meaningful, familiar in shape and sense, the name and
presence of volatile and sentient forces; you bring them
together in the proportions called for, but nothing happens;
. . . you bring them together again and again nothing happens;
just the words, the symbols, the shapes themselves, shadowy
inscrutable and serene, against the turgid background of a
horrible and bloody mischancing of human affairs (pp. 100-
101).
The lack of substantive evidence forces the narrators to practice ,
what Albert Guerard calls "narration by conjecture.Guerard believes
that one of Faulkner's major contributions to the evolution of the
modern novel is his great use of this technique, with the added device
(used also by Conrad) of dramatizing the conjectured events as though
they were true. In this type of presentation, "Conjecture . . . becomes
15
,a point-of-view and basic vehicle for real story-telling and for the
plausible creations of time, place, .atmosphere, emotions, events."
(Italics Guerard’s) The act of conjecture moves to the forefront,
having importance equal to, if not greater than, the results of that
conjecture.
If the focus in Absalom, Absalom! is on the act of conjecture, it
is also on the "conjecturors." Guerard makes the further point that,
unlike Conrad, Faulkner refused on occasion to define his cognitive
authority or lack of it. As a result:
All conjecture, even the most biased, can be made credible,
since Faulkner is a skilled novelist— through the authori
tative or passionate ring of a narrator’s voice, and the
scrupulous quality of his mind; through vivid details and
surrounding circumstances; through skillful, virtually unseen
modulation from the indisputably known to the speculative.
But Guerard cautions that "not all conjectures in Absalom,
Absalom! have the same degree of truth, nor does Faulkner want us to
think they do. Only the novel in its entirety is true." This warning
should caution the reader against grasping at one or another version of
the Sutpen legend as factual.
One must further qualify the statement that the book as a whole is
: ! ’true." The truth here is not the factual truth of the courtroom.
The novel presents the reader with many speculative details which are
emotionally true for the narrator(s) but which can never be substan
tiated. So, too, the novel’s final truth is the truth of the emotions,
not the truth of facts.
16 !
Since all the named narrators create their legends from material |
which is emotionally true rather than factually so, the male narrators;
are as unreliable as Rosa. This discussion presents that unreliability
16
and suggests some causes for it. The contention is that Mr. Compson;
i
and Shreve, the narrators who have been considered the most detached i
and therefore the most reliable, exert shaping influences on the
Sutpen legend which reflect their own concerns. Quentin's biases have,
been recognized, but no one has seen how great they are nor how much !
they reflect his father's influence. Nor, until recently, has anyone
noted the extent to which Quentin's intensity in this novel is
directly related to his concerns in The Sound and the Fury.^
Another, ethical, concern parallels the epistemological in both
Compson novels: after such knowledge, how should one act? As
Mr. Compson exhibits the most interest in the process of knowing, so
Quentin wonders what reactions such knowledge requires. His ultimate
decision appears in The Sound and the Fury; the knowledge of that
decision must influence one's view of him in Absalom, AbsalomI.
Even Guerard, who argues that Absalom, Absalom! is not closely
aligned to The Sound and the Fury and that a knowledge of the earlier ,
novel is not necessary for a complete understanding of the later one,
mentions a letter to Harrison Smith in which Faulkner said, "Quentin
Compson, of the Sound & Fury tells /Absalom, Absalom! / or ties it
together . . . I use him because it is just before’ he is to commit
18
suicide because of his sister." Faulkner's comment at the University
of Virginia also suggests that the two Quentins are consistent. He
said that Quentin "approached the Sutpen family with the same
17!
1
opthalamia that he approached his own troubles . , . he probably never'
I
saw anything clearly 1 1 ; his was just one of the thirteen ways to ,
look at Sutpen, and his may have been the— one of the most errofe'l^ i:, V
.,19 ;
neous. .
Faulkner was capable of making statements like these at one time :
while refuting them, or making antithetical statements, at another, so
they cannot be offered as conclusive proof that he consciously sought i
to shape Absalom, Absalom! as a closely connected precedent to the
already written The Sound and the Fury. Yet it appears that strong,
unconscious motivations, growing out of concerns which will shortly
be discussed, compelled Faulkner to deal in this work with many of
the same elements as in the earlier novel.
Quentin's decisions about how to react to the Sutpen legend are
heavily influenced by his father. Mr. Compson communicates, by his
example in both novels and by his answers to Quentin's desperate
questions in The Sound and the Fury, what courses of action he believes
are open to the present generations. He clearly thinks that certain
heroic options are no longer available, yet he strongly implies that
such actions were glorious and are to be admired. Quentin's responses
to the re-tellings of the Sutpen legend reflect his struggles to deal
with the contradiction between his father's explicit and implicit
/ -
messages.
Since Quentin is merely a transmitting reporter, much of the
material usually attributed to him (Chapters VI and VII, part of
Chapter VIII) is actually his recalling and repeating his father's
second version of the Sutpen legend, created after Quentin had told
18
Mr. Compson why Henry killed Charles. Of the remaining material j
assigned to Quentin, much presents his internal expansion, interpre- i
tation and reaction to the legends created by Rosa, Mr. Compson and
Shreve. At this point, the distinction may seem a fine one, but it is I
necessary if one is to appreciate Faulkner's technical artistry.
The detailed biography by Joseph Blotner:and similar works about t
Faulkner's personal and literary life and times in Mississippi and
elsewhere, are helpful in understanding the novels and the man. But j
i
j
by now it is apparent that Faulkner was such an intensely private '
individual, and so willing to lie about his life and his motivations
for writing to protect this privacy, that studies based on his state
ments about these matters are suggestive at best.
Ultimately, the best source of data to determine the "truth"
about Faulkner and his work may be the study of the unconscious, a
study which is imprecise at best. The unconscious concerns of an
individual are revealed when he often deals with them. When an author
presents certain concerns in emotionally intense ways and returns to
them repeatedly in his work, he indicates their importance. Faulkner
dealt with heroism, homoeroticism, misogyny, and incest repeatedly.
One or more of these motifs ate central in each of the major works, and
is peripheral or implicit in most of the others.
Of the readings of literature which use the tools of psychoanalysis,
Robert Rogers's A Psychoanalytic Study of the Double in Literature is
especially sound. Discussing the significance that doubling and
dissociation have had in myth, literature, and psychoanalysis, Rogers
makes some important connections among the three.
The present study utilizes Rogers*s illuminating concept of latent
doubling and dissociation. In his preface, Rogers notes:
I
Not only does the literary artist sometimes create . . .
doubles . . . for some of his characters, he often does so
without knowing it. Neither he nor his reader grasps that j
two or more apparently autonomous characters in a story may
be component portions of a psychological whole. While
doubling in literature usually symbolizes a dysfunctional
attempt to cope with mental conflict, there is nothing
abnormal or malign about this phenomenon considered as part ■
of the artistic process. On the contrary, enormous formal
gains can result when endopsychic conflict presents itself :
in the guise of a relationship between ostensibly independent
characters in f i c t i o n . 20
Rogers contrasts manifest doubles, which the author has clearly
created as intentional parallels, with latent doubles, in which the
correspondences between or lamong characters are implicit and may have
occurred as an unconscious strategy on the part of the author. Using
a physical-chemical analogy to make the point that latent doubling and .
dissociation are never so clear-cut as manifest doubling, Rogers says:
The elements of the psyche as they find expression in
manifest and latent doubles are analogous to the state of
elements in mechanical mixtures and chemical compounds.
Elements merely mixed together can be separated with
relative ease, whereas those in a compound can be separated
only by analysis, often with considerable difficulty. The
elements which form the constituent parts of the compound
may bear little resemblance in their pure states to the
characteristics they have when combined. To extend the
analogy, if it is more difficult to analyze latent than
manifest decomposition, the goal is more worthwhile because
the constituent parts of the composite character have been
compounded or fused within the crucible of art by the
catalytic heat of creative fire. In art, at least, the
compound is esthetically superior to the mixture.21
Given this esthetic compounding, or dissociating, one cannot expect the
same point-to-point correspondence found in manifest doubling. I will;
!
I
make no attempt to force such , correspondences, either between
characters in Faulkner’s novel or between Faulkner and any one of his
f
male narrators. j
I
Rogers suggests several reasons why latent decomposition is more
l
effective than manifest doubling for the reader and the author.
Several are pertinent here: '
I
I
The literary deployment of the manifest double involves
several inherent limitations which can be stated in psycho
logical terms. A crucial drawback lies in the reader's
awareness that some kind of esthetic distance resulting front
this transparency allows incipient guilt and anxiety feelings:
in the reader to inhibit deep identification with the
characters. Where decomposition is latent, the reader can
identify with the protagonist consciously and with the
antagonist unconsciously, but where decomposition is manifest;:
the reader's awareness„ ■ that the "bad guy" is somehow part of
the "good guy" tends to block his identification with both
of them. A corresponding factor operates in the mind of the
composing artist which deters free and spontaneous play of
his fantasy powers. This assumption is based on the concept
known in ego psychology as "flexibility of repression." The
artist's special talent for temporarily reducing repression
in order to dredge up id material and then subsequently
manipulate such material in a relatively conscious, critical,
ego-oriented fashion withoutawareness of its unconscious
significance is handicapped when he deals in manifest
doubles. A third factor, related to the other two but
dynamic in its essence, concerns the relative absence of
shifts in psychic distance by both reader and writer stemming
from insufficiency of ambiguity in /works involving^ manifest
doubling/.22
The Compson/Faulkner use of latent dissociation in Mr. Compson's
narrative sections seems to fit several of these criteria. The impli
cit nature of the decomposition allows the reader to identify at some ;
point with each of the members of the Sutpen legend. There are few
good-versus-bad divisions in the Compson versions; indeed, Compson's
211
j
conscious attempt to remain distanced from the legend, as he tries to !
t
remain disengaged from life, precludes such judgmental involvement, !
though he does betray his enthusiasm for certain elements and people j
through his manner of depicting them. The Compson/Faulkner creations !
also show the working of the artistic "flexibility of repression," j
since several of the things which Compson chooses to discuss would have
been taboo topics at that present-time period in the South. In addition;
the use of latent doubling maintains the ambiguity which seems to have j
been central to Faulkner's conception of Absalom, Absalom!. (Not inci- !
dentally, the ambiguity here parallels the ambiguity which Faulkner
constantly created in statements about his private life and about his !
fiction.) In contrast to the Compson/Faulkner dissociation, the
doubling in Quentin's internal expansion of the legend seems latent for
him but manifest for Faulkner as his creator.
When an author uses artistic "flexibility of repression" to release
id material and manipulate it in latent doubling, he often engages in
what psychoanalysis calls "projection." Two commonly accepted defini
tions describe projection as: 1) "A defense mechanism by which a person
protects himself from awareness of his own undesirable traits by
attributing those traits excessively to others'-' ;and 2) "A defense
mechanism in which the individual foists off or projects onto other
23
people motives of his own that cause him anxiety." Certainly not all
the elements that the male narrators include in their versions of the
legend can be said to fit these definitions precisely, but many do.
Mr. Compson and Shreve project both traits and motives in their
narratives, as Quentin does in his internal expansions and reactions.
This concept is implicit in Angus. Fletcher's.study of allegory.
Fletcher suggests that the allegorical hero may be said to "generate"
secondary personalities which constitute partial aspects of himself,
agents who react with or against him in a "syllogistic manner."
Fletcher uses the term "generate" because
the heroes in Dante and Spenser and Bunyan seem to create the
worlds about them. They are like those people in reali life
who "project," ascribing fictitious personalities to those
whom they meet and live with. By analyzing the projections,
we determine what is going ori in the mind of the highly
imaginative projector. . . ._/l/n this sense the subcharacters,
the most numerous agents of allegory, may be generated by the
main protagonists, and the finest hero will then be the one
who most naturally seems to generate subcharacters— aspects
of himself who become the means by which he is revealed, facet
by facet.24
While skeptical about applying this theory to the characters in allegory,
I
who are not telling their own stories, I believe it has definite value
in the analysis of Absalom, Absalom!, where the main activity is the
creation of one generation of fictional characters by another genera
tion of fictional characters.
Rogers makes a further point relevant to the discussion of
Mr. Compson, Shreve, Quentin,and Faulkner;
Decomposition in literature and the related phenomena of
dissocation and autoscopy in clinical practice always reflect
psychosexual conflict, however obliquely, with the sole
exception of organically caused cases of autoscopy. Stanley
M. Coleman arrives at essentially the same conclusions: "In
both the male and the female, a conflict between libidinal and
other aims is a fundamental factor for the postulation of
doubles." . . . At times this libidinal factor can be per
ceived with relative ease. . . . But most of the time the
psychosexual genesis of doubling lies so deeply buried that
only profound analysis will unearth it.25
Each present-time male character shows, either by his direct choice
of material to include in the legend or by his unquestioning acceptance 1
of this previously-created material, that he has intense psychosexual
conflicts. The resulting emphases on homoeroticism, misogyny and incest
i
26 ^
profoundly shape the Sutpen.story. 1
Notes to Chapter I
1. Noel Polk, "The Manuscript of Absalom, Absalom!Mississippi .
Quarterly 25 (Summer 1972): 359-367. Polk is reviewing Gerald Langford's,
Faulkner's Revisions of ABSALOM, ABSALOM!: A Collation of the Manuscript
and the Printed Book (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971). Polk
criticizes Langford's book on several counts; his essay is imperative
for anyone who must use Langford. Starting from the obvious criticism
that the book is not a complete record of Faulkner's revisions, Polk
goes on to note that Langford ignores all previous critical and textual'
scholarship. Polk adds that the Absalom, Absalom! typescript, ignored ,
by Langford but crucial to any genuine study of the revisions, is the '
most heavily and worst edited of any of the Faulkner typescripts that
he has seen (excluding "Flags in the Dust"). Polk's collation of this
copy with the published text reveals at least 1400 variants, most of
them editorial in origin, with evidence of at least three editorial
hands.
2. Faulkner's Revisions of ABSALOM, ABSALOM!: A Collation of the
Manuscript and Printed Book (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1971).
3. The "Evangeline" manuscript and extended typescript, found at
Rowan Oak in 1971, are located in the Jill Faulkner Summers Archive at ;
the Alderman Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville. The holo-1
graph manuscript and typescript setting copy of Absalom, Absalom! are
located at the Humanities Research Center of the University of Texas at
Austin. The manuscript contains 175 pages, numbered by Faulkner "1-172"
with 3 additions; they have been renumbered in pencil "1-175" for easier
study. Any page reference in this discussion will be based on the pencil
numbering.
4. See Appendix B for a discussion of the way these two stories
became part of Absalom, Absalom!.
5. Joseph Blotner, William Faulkner: A Biography, 2 vols.(New York
Random House, 1974), pp. 696,891. See also James B. Meriwether, ed.,
The Literary Career of William Faulkner: A Bibliographical Study (1969;
reprint ed., Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1971),p.172. :
6. Blotner, pp. 696-697; Estella Schoenberg, Old Tales and Talking
Quentin Compson in William Faulkner's ABSALOM, ABSALOM! and Related
Works (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1977), pp. 30-46;
Meriwether, The Literary Career, and "The Short Fiction of William
Faulkner: A Bibliography," in PROOF: The Yearbook of American Biblio
graphical and Textual Studies, vol. 1, ed. Joseph Katz (Columbia:
University of South Carolina Press, 1971), pp. 293-329; and Thomas
•McHaney, "The Elmer Papers: Faulkner’s Comic Portrait of the Artist," i
Mississippi Quarterly 26, no. 3 (Summer 1972):281-311, reprinted in i
A Faulkner Miscellany, ed. James B. Meriwether (Jackson: Published for !
the Mississippi Quarterly by the University Press of Mississippi, ■
1974), pp. 37-69. ;
i
|
7. See, for example, Melvin Backman, Faulkner: The Major Years ]
(Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1966), pp. 88-112; |
Gleanth Brooks, William Faulkner: The Yoknapatawpha Country (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1963), pp. 295-324, 424-443; Olga Vickery, The
Novels of William Faulkneri A Critical Interpretation, rev. ed. :
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1964), pp. 84-102; and .
John T. Irwin, Doubling and Incest/Repetition and Revenge: A Speculative,
•Reading of Faulkner (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins Press,1975)
8. For discussions focusing on the Sutpens, see Backman; Brooks;
Vickery; and Hyatt Waggoner, William Faulkner: From Jefferson to the ■
World (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1959). For discussions
centering on Quentin, see Richard P. Adams, Faulkner: Myth and Motion
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), pp. 175-214; Michael
Millgate, The Achievement of William Faulkner (New York: Random House, ,
1966), pp. 150-164; Schoenberg; and Lawrance R. Thompson, William_
Faulkner; An Introduction and Interpretation (New York: Barnes and
Noble, 1963), pp. 53-65.
9. See Duncan Aswell, "The Puzzling Design of Absalom, Absalom!," •
Kenyon Review 30 (1968):67-84; Irwin; and Richard B. Sewall, The Vision
of Tragedy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962, c 1959), pp. 133-147.
10. See Albert J. Guerard, The Triumph of the Novel: Dickens Dosto
evsky, Faulkner (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), pp. 354-370;
Cleanth Brooks, "The Narrative Structure of Absalom, Absalom!," Georgia
Review 29, no. 2 (Summer 1975):366-394; Lynn Gartrell Levins, "The Four
Narrative Perspectives in Absalom, Absalomi," PMLA 85 (January 1970):
35-47; Joseph W. Reed, Jr., Faulkner's Narrative (New Haven and London:
Yale University Press, 1973), pp. 145-175; and Marvin K. Singleton,
"Personae at Law and Equity: The Unity of Faulkner’s Absalom, AbSaloml,"
Papers in Languages and Literature 3 (Fall 1967):354-370.
11. See Brooks, Irwin.
12. The textual ambiguity presents a problem here, causing a criti
cal argument about how much General Compson, Mr. Compson and Quentin
each knew about Charles Bon; also there is disagreement over how and
when Quentin learned the information. Of course there are also those ;
who claim that Quentin invented both of the "discovered" details about
Charles Bon. See Appendix A for a complete discussion of both the
possible causes for the textual ambiguity and the resulting arguments
about Faulkner’s intentions.
26
13. Schoenberg (p. 74) refers to Absalom, Absalom! as a frame |
story, but only in passing.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i
14. All quotations from Absalom, Absalom! are taken from the
Modern Library College Edition (New York: Modern Library, 1936, 1964). j
Page numbers will appear in parentheses after quotations.
15. The following discussion is based in part on Guerard, Triumph, 1
pp. 332-333. The next three quotations appear on page 333. ;
16. Rosa's unreliability has been amply discussed, In fact, I
can think of no one who defends her as reliable on anything but the
barest observable details.
i
17. Irwin and Schoenberg have begun the discussion. Irwin's book ;
is a brilliant exercise in Freudian theory, but it soon leaves the j
Faulkner works behind as it pursues its thesis concerning the two
psychological pairs. Schoenberg, who stays closer to the works,
presents a convincing chronology of the events in Quentin's life,
especially those from late summer 1909 to June 10, 1910, to demonstrate
that the events of Absalom, Absalom! contribute to Quentin's steady
movement toward suicide; see pp. 7-29. As I will indicate in the dis
cussion of Quentin in Chapter IV, Schoenberg still ignores or misinter
prets many important elements of Quentin's story in Absalom, Absalom'..
18. Guerard, pp. 310-312. The letter may also be found in Blotner,
p. 830.
I
19. Faulkner in the University: Class Conferences at the University
Of Virginia 1957-1958, ed. Frederick L. Gwynn and Joseph L. Blotner
(New York: Vintage Books, 1959), pp. 75-76.
20. A Psychoanalytic Study of the Double in Literature (Detroit:
Wayne State University Press, 1970), p. viii. Rogers uses the terms
"doubling" and "dissociation" interchangeably to describe any literary
situation in which two or more characters in a work seem to possess a
number of similar or antithetical traits. He notes that both
dual and multiple fragmentation can be described satisfactorily
by the term "decomposition," but this concept is not well
known outside of psychoanalytic writings and not even used
consistently in them. This study . . . will use the terms
doubling, splitting, fragmentation, and decomposition as i
synonymous. . . . These terms generally will refer to
characters which may be thought of, from a psychological point
of view, as directly portraying, or indirectly generated by,
conflict which is essentially intrapsychic or endopsychic.
(p. 4) .
The "latent" versus "manifest" distinction simply means that in the
former the doubling is implicit rather than explicit.
27
I prefer to use the term "doubling" for dual situations and "dis- I
1sociation" for multiple situations. I also prefer to use "doubling" for
.manifest situations and "dissociation" for latent situations where the
correspondences are not so programmatic. |
21. Rogers, p. 40. ,
22. Rogers, pp. 31-32.
23. Ernest R. Rilgard, Richard C. Atkinson and Rita L. Atkinson, :
Introduction to Psychology, 6th ed. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
1975), p. 612; Jerome Kagan and Ernest Havemann, Psychology: An !
Introduction (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976), p. 561. ;
24. Angus Fletcher, Allegory: The Theory of a Symbolic Mode !
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1964), pp. 35-36.
25. Rogers, pp. 15-16; he is citing Stanley M. Coleman, "The
Phantom Double: Its Psychological Significance," British Journal of
Medical Psychology 14 (1934):254-273.
26. I choose to use "homoeroticism" rather than "homosexuality"
to describe the male/male relationships in Faulkner. Although the
standard dictionaries suggest the words are synonymous, there is a
subtle connotative distinction/which is important in discussing this
aspect of Faulkner's work. Since Faulkner exhibits an almost patho
logical distaste for all the physical aspects of sexual congress, the
term "homosexuality," with its clear indication that the men in question
desire physical union, does not seem fitting. "Homoeroticism" puts the
emphasis on the emotional and intellectual aspects of the relationship
which exert strong attraction for Faulkner's male characters.
CHAPTER II
THE HEROIC AND HOMOEROTIC IDEAL:
I
MR. COMPSON |
As he agonizingly reports the Sutpen legend, Quentin thinks that
!
maybe he and Shreve are "both Father.... Maybe happens is never once
but like ripples maybe on water after the pebble sinks.... Yes, we are
both. Father" (pp. 261-262). This clear attribution, coupled with r .'
Quentin’s recurrent thought that he or Shreve sounds "just like Father,"
has been available to readers of Absalom,Absalom!. Yet such statements
have been taken simply as an indication that Quentin feels impotent to
deal with life, that he cannot take responsibility for his own feelings'
or. actions, so'.credits the man whom he sees as his greatest influence.
In Faulkner's conscious design of the novel, this explanation is most
acceptable and complies with his stress on the great influence that all
past events and people have on the present.
Yet such an explanation does not carry far enough. Mr. Compson's
influence is so great in magnitude and so powerful in its effect, both
on the characters within the novel and on readers, that further explan
ation is in order. Mr. Compson's quantitative importance alone would
demand increased attention. He influences 310 of the novel's 378 pages.
| (
;He speaks directly or writes on 123 pages,and he is quoted indirectly or
his ideas or presence are recalled in the remaining 187 pages.
I No one has recognized the sheer bulk of material which Faulkner ‘
•gave to Mr. Compson. Nor do I believe Faulkner recognized it himself. !
i . |
The various studies of the revisions of Absalom,Absalom! show that
■ " . j
I
Faulkner consciously revised to increase Quentin's importance, but the . !
i
same studies also show that Faulkner's conscious allegiance to Quentin j
was paralleled by, and sometimes subordinated to, his unconscious
affinity for Mr. Compson.* When the revisions of Absalom, Absalom! :
were completed, Quentin's role had been somewhat increased while
Mr. Compson's had been increased much more.
Joseph W. Reed, Jr.'s, assignments of the narrative sections in
Absalom, Absalom! are typical. He assigns Chapters I and V to Rosa;
Chapters II, III, and IV to Mr. Compson; and Chapters VI to IX to Quentin
2
and Shreve.
A close reading of the text, however, will not support assigning so
much narrative to Quentin and Shreve. Instead, one becomes aware that
Mr. Compson's quantitative and qualitative influence on the Sutpen
legend, on Shreve as narrator, and on Quentin as reporter is impressive
enough to attribute much more of the narrative to him. Chapters VI and
VII are so markedly shaped by Mr. Compson that they must be called his
second narrative. In the 43 pages of Chapter VI (pp.'.173-216), Mr.. Comp son's
speech or writing is quoted directly on 25 pages (pp. 173, 188-211); he
is quoted indirectly or his presence is felt on another three pages ;
, (pp. 181, 211-212). Similarly, in Chapter VII (pp. 217-292),
Mr. Compson is quoted directly on three pages (pp. 278-280), while he
is quoted indirectly or his influence is felt on all but one page of 1
'the chapter (pp. 218-292) . ___ _________
| What has not been recognized is that Faulkner chose to have the j
I nameless narrator and Quentin present two versions of the Sutpen legendj
by Mr. Compson. Chapters II through IV represent his speculations - '"i
before he knew, or recalled, Henry Sutpen’s reason for killing Charles !
Bon. Compson told Quentin this version on the afternoon and early
I
evening in September 1909, as Quentin waited to accompany Rosa to
Sutpen’s Hundred. The following day, Quentin told his father what he
had learned from Henry Sutpen. Compson then created a new version of
the legend incorporating the information that Charles Bon was thought
to be Thomas Sutpen’s first, part-negro son, set aside with his mother
3
when Thomas discovered their black blood.
Faulkner's intentio’ h-r that Mr. Compson develop two episodes is
evident in the fact that when he revised the manuscript he added three
sections indicating that Mr. Compson created the first version without
benefit of information which he had when he created the second. The
section that Faulkner added to introduce Quentin's first reverie in
Chapter VI includes Quentin’s thought that.Shreve sounds "Just exactly
like father if father had known as much about it the night before I_
went out there as he did the day after I_ came back"(p. 181). In
Chapter VII, Faulkner added two remarks by Shreve calling attention to
the difference between Compson's first and second versions of the legend.
As Quentin reports the version which presents Charles Bon as Thomas
Sutpen's son, Shreve says, "Your father ... seems to have got an awful
lot of delayed information awful quick." Quentin replies that h< 2 told *
Mr. Compson, "The day after we— after that night when we— ." Shreve
31
finishes the thought, "after you and the old aunt. I see" (p. 266).
Later in the chapter, Shreve again asks if Mr. Compson was ignorant of
the information about Charles when General Compson told him the story. '
i
Quentin answers yes (p. 274).
The two Compson narratives are separated by Chapter V, the rest of'
Rosa Coldfield's narrative. It is clear that Rosa's version was
delivered in one sitting, on the September after in 1909. Chapter V,
the continuation, seems to begin in medias res: "So they will have told
you:. " doubtless already" (p. 134). A little later, Rosa says, "Do you
mark how the wistaria sun-impacted on the wall here distills and 1
penetrates this room" (p. 143), recalling the same two elements which
opened Chapter I (p. 7). This repetition serves as subliminal indi
cation that Chapter V's lyrical effusion took place at the same time as
Chapter I's demonized condemnation of Sutpen. A further connecting
item is that Chapter V ends with Rosa's explaining why she has called
Quentin to her, as she insists that there is something hidden at Sutpen's
Hundred and demands that he go with her to uncover it (p. 172).
Building from a few substantiated details, Mr. Compson creates
more of the Sutpen legend than any other narrator. A straightforward
listing suggests the degree of his influence on both the presentation
of the legend and its reception.
1. He completely controls his first narrative section (Chapters II-
IV); he almost completely controls Quentin's reporting section
(Chapters VI-VII); and he substantively controls Shreve's
narrative section (Chapter VIII).
| 2. He decides that the men of the past were stronger, more heroic,'
J j
j more decisive in thought and action. i
i ’ |
I 3. He shifts the focus to Henry and Judith Sutpen and Charles
i
I i
! Bon. |
4. He immediately attributes homoeroticism to the relationship
I
between Henry and Charles. 5
5. He attributes pessimism and fatalism to Charles, fatalism to i
I '
Henry. ■
i
6. He injects the sybaritic and the sensual, especially into the !
relationships of Charles and Henry, and Charles and the
octoroon.
I
7. He androgynizes Charles Bon.
I
1 8. He decides that Henry killed Charles to protect Judith from
i the stain of being married to a man who had already copulated
! with a woman of color.
I
9. He injects misogyny. (This aspect is fully discussed in
chapter III.)
; 10.. He introduces the monetary/legal, military, and Greek tragedy
motifs, and greatly amplifies the water motif which Rosa has
I
1 initiated.
!
| 11. His January 1910 letter notifying Quentin of Rosa Coldfield’s
t
j death initiates Quentin's reporting to Shreve and QuentihJs j
j agonized re-examination of the story of Henry, Judith and '
| Charles. ;
I
In both of his versions of the legend, Mr. Compson projects aspects
|
of himself and attributes qualities that he admires into the participants
in the story, producing latent dissociation of parts of himself into i
various Sutpen characters. Though this dissociation is not so apparent;
as manifest doubling, one senses that Mr. Compson is satisfying his own
I
needs, despite his ignorance that he is doing so. Faulkner showed a j
similar lack of awareness about Compson's- dissociation, in contrast to i
his conscious use of doubling in Quentin's internal expansion of and
I
reactions to the story of Henry, Judith and Charles. !
Rogers says that dissociation arises from psychosexual conflict. |
Latent dissociation makes it possible for the authorial "flexibility ofi
repression" to dredge up id material and manipulate it "in a relatively
conscious, critical, ego-oriented fashion without awareness of its
' < 4 ^
hidden significance." Several of the elements which Mr. Compson (and
Faulkner, through him) handles with the most emotion would have been
condemned as wrong or perverted both at the time of the events of the
i
novel and at the time of the novel's composition. All of those traits
or attitudes which seem projected are clearly psychosexual. Mr. Compson
projects intensely positive homoerotic feelings into the characters of
: Henry Sutpen and Charles Bon, both assumed dead and thus beyond censure^
He creates Bon as a sybaritically sensual person who introduced Henry
to that sensuality. Compson also portrays Bon as misogynous.
The racism that Compson attributes to both Henry and Charles has
historical validity, but Compson's racism also appears to originate in
fears of sexual impotence. The sexual connection is clear here, since
: the racism is expressed in the rejection of or condescension toward
black women. Paradoxically, it is also clear that Compson can only
associate/ pleasurable sex . with black women. I would suggest that
34
'racist fears originate in male feelings of inadequacy. Men of any : ^
racial or cultural group tend to fear the sexual potency of men from
any other group. This fear spurs their attempts to use economic, poli
tical and psychological power to debase the men-— and by extension the
■ women— in the feared groups, and in their desires to protect the women
of their own group against men from all other groups. Thus, the
ultimate fear for white racists is that a black man will have sexual
1
intercourse with a white woman and satisfy her sexual needs more fully '
, than a_ white man can.
Several other attributions represent either traits Mr. Compson
cultivates in himself or qualities he unconsciously admires and may
wish to have. He seeks to maintain a fatalistic and pessimistic stance
to achieve some distance from the events of his life, and he decides
;that Charles Bon did the same. He also decides that Henry Sutpen was ,
fatalistic. However, Mr. Compson's explicitly stated preference for
rationalized disengagement is undermined by his implicitly communicated
desire for greater active involvement in life. He glorifies the active
heroism which was evident in past generations,even as he claims that
such heroism is not possible in the present day.
All of Compson1s speculations about the emotional and intellectual
traits motivating the actions of the second generation of Sutpens are
without basis in the details he is said to know. Besides projecting
unacceptable elements and attributing desirable ones, Mr. Compson
may be using his versions of the legend to reassure both himself and
s
l
Quentin. When Compson suggests that heroism was possible in the past
^because times and people were simpler then, he may be
justifying his present disengagement and reassuring Quentin that
‘Quentin's inability to act either to seduce Caddy or to preserve her
;purity resulted from the complexity of the times and the perfidy of
women, rather than from an inherent weakness in himself.
That Mr. Compson seems .to see himself and Quentin in the Sutpen
figures is apparent when he creates Charles Bon and Henry Sutpen as
latent doubles of himself and his son. Charles is rational, disengaged
'sophisticated, observing Henry's passionate activity with amusement.
■Like Compson in his talks with Quentin, Charles is the tutor slowly
and subtly shaping the raw youth.
Though they are speculative, most of Mr. Compson's first and
second narratives are accepted and perpetuated as fact by Shreve,
Quentin, the nameless narrator,and the reader. Compson's strong
influence can be explained by the fact that although he is never charac-
,terized as the sort of person who would force others to agree with him,
he can win this acceptance using the same persuasive qualities that
Albert Guerard sees in Faulkner. Like Faulkner, Mr. Compson has "the
authoritative or passionate ring of . . . voice, and the scrupulous
quality . . . of mind" which allow him to present his versions of the
legend, and his opinions, "through vivid details and surrounding circum
stances; through skillful and virtually unseen modulation from the
undisputably known to the speculative.""*
Both Shreve and Quentin continue Mr. Compson's views in.some way.
Shreve retains the misogynistic stance, going even further in his
negativity, especially in his portrayal of Eulalia Bon and in his
.comments on heterosexual love. Quentin's reactions to the legend as
he perceives it lead ultimately to his suicide. His perceptions, his I
reactions, and his decision to die are all influenced by his father. j
Quentin rejects the disengaged stance which Mr. Compson consciously j
i
promotes because he completely accepts Compson's implicitly stressed j
[ I
belief in the glory of heroic and decisive action. Recognizing that he
has been unable to act, Quentin dies in despair.
In his first version of the legend, Compson introduces the idea
l
that the; earlier generations were stronger, more heroic, more decisive :
I ■
than people of the present time. In making this assertion, he offers
i . - i
an almost direct contrast to the first half of Rosa s narrative, which i
has presented Thomas Sutpen as a demonic, destructive force and has
implied that the men in Jefferson who accepted his actions and even
helped him-at times were equally culpable. Rosa admits that Sutpen was’
brave, but she still insists that he and the others were flawed. She
i
believes thev.South lost the Civil War because the men who defended its
values were "men with valor and strength but without pity or honor,"
and she asks, "Is it any wonder that Heaven saw fit to let us lose?"
(p. 20). She is especially angry with her father for allowing Thomas to
attain respectability by marrying Ellen, but she also condemns those
"gentlemen" who visited Sutpen's Hundred, hunted there, and watched
Thomas wrestle his wild negroes.
The nameless narrator delivers the first ten pages of Chapter II, i
but his diction and tone so parallel Mr. Compson's that most readers
assume Compson begins speaking immediately. When he does take over, the :
narrative divides into two sections. The first section,:the rest of
Chapter II and all of Chapter III (pp. 43-87),reports
j the observed behavior of Thomas Sutpen and his family up to the time
j that Rosa was summoned to Sutpen’s Hundred to help bury Charles Bon.
j The second section, Chapter IV (pp. 88-133), contains Compson's
evocation of the tangled relationships of Henry Sutpen, Judith
| Sutpen, and Charles Bon. Compson wants to understand their inter-
' action so he can determine why Henry killed Charles.
Chapter II begins with Compson’s presentation of Thomas Sutpen’s
strength and single-minded willingness to pursue the goal which he
i
' set at the early age of 14 (p'.53) . Compson remembers hearing his father,
I
I
I
| General Compson, remark that Sutpen's power was evident in his face,
i
* "that anyone could look at him and say,'Given the occasion and the
i '
; need this man will and can do any thing*." (b. 46). Compson describes the
; animosity which Sutpen aroused in the town, but he clearly admires
Sutpen's determination- , 1 Sutpen’s pridei— which wanted the biggest
i
j plantation, the most beautiful house, "the stainless wife and the
: unimpeachable father-in-law"-— and Sutpen’s willingness to get these
things "at whatever costV~(p, 51). Compson softens Rosa’s harsh picture
; by adding such details as Thomas' courting Ellen ceremoniously with
■ the paper cornucopia of flowers and his protecting her from the
i
| rabble who came to jeer at their w e d d i n g X p P ) , ^7,-58) . Compson is amused
i ’
; at the way Sutpen tweaked the beards, and corsets, of established
I
; Jefferson society, eventually winning some of them over. Compson's
admiration for purposeful action continues in Chapter III, as he
describes Rosa's early life with her family, and continues presenting
i the actions of the Sutpens, this time as they must have appeared to
J
Rosa.
In this chapter, Compson introduces the monetary/legal, military,'
i
and Greek tragedy motifs which will play an increasing role in the j
j
I
story. He applies the monetary motif to Mr. Coldfield, a storekeeper j
■ |
who is said to have seen religious and moral issues in debit and j
[
credit terms. The military motif is appropriate, for Compson has now. j
I
brought the story up to the period before and during the Civil War.
i
But he shows the ironic side of his nature by applying military motifs1
to such seemingly non-military people as Rosa's aunt, Rosa^herself,andi
Mr. Coldfield, who refused to take part in the war. :
The Greek tragedy motif occurs as Compson sees analogies between
Rosa and the Cassandra of myth. He expounds on the significance of !
I
Clymnestra's name. He continues the motif by suggesting that even
as Sutpen was acting with purpose and authority, "Fate, destiny,
retribution, irony— -the stage manager, call him what you will— was
already striking the set and dragging on the synthetic and spurious
shapes of the next one'l(pp„>72-73)..The reader is slowly prepared for
the fatalism and pessimism which accompany the increased emphasis on
heroism in the creation of the story of Henry and Judith Sutpen and
Charles Bon.
I
Before moving on to the discussions of Mr. Compson's glorification
c£ heroism in the second generation of Sutpens, I call attention to
another motif. Introduced by Rosa, then greatly developed by Compson,
g\
the motif expands as the novel continues. ' This is the analogy
between water and human life. j
Mr. Compson first parallels rain with the tears Ellen Coldfield
shed during the intervals before and after her wedding to Thomas(pp. 52^
39
i58). He next uses the motif to describe the helplessness of the Sutpens,
I
, I
i 1
and the rest of the South, against the destructive tide of the impending;
i i
'Civil War- (This passage also prefigures the tragedy which will result j
i
from Charles Bon's introduction into the Sutpen family.) I
i
1
The time now approached . . . when the destiny of Sutpen’s j
family which for twenty years now had been like a lake
welling from quiet springs into a quiet valley and spreading, 1
rising almost imperceptibly and in which the four members of >
it floated in sunny suspension, felt the first subterranean 1
movement toward the outlet, the gorge which would be the j
land's catastrophe too, and the four peaceful swimmers t
turning suddenly to face one another,not yet with alarm or '
distrust but just alert, feeliiig__the dark set, none of them
yet at that point where man /sic/ looks about at his
companions in disaster and thinks When will I stop trying to
save them and save only myself? and not even aware that
that point was approaching (pp. 73-74).
Compson uses such analogies twelve more times. At various points he
describes Thomas, Ellen and Henry Sutpen, and Rosa Coldfield as carried '
salong by some current of circumstance (pp. 223,106,114,279). In addition',
Compson portrays Thomas's determined pursuit of his design as his
holding himself above the maelstrom, even though his rigid moral code
•refused "to swim or even float" (p. 275). To suggest the attraction
that Charles Bon felt toward Henry and his life, Compson says that Bon
saw that life as a "monotonous and provincial backwater" which would
iprovide "alleviation and escape for a parched traveler who had traveled
too far at too young an age in /its/ granite-bound and simply country ;
spring" (p. 108). ;
: Rosa increases her use of water imagery in the lyrical section of
i
her narrative (Chapter V). She connects water movement with the
! 40!
!passage of time and the course of events, and water with gestation and
birth. Her most vivid description in the first group is that of Thomas
trying to restore his plantation after the Civil War: "his old man's I
* . . . . |
solitary fury fighting now . . . against the ponderable weight of the !
I
changed new time itself as though he were trying to darir.a river with his
bare hands and a shingle(p. 162). The comparison of water with birth
which begins in this section has great significance in Quentin's inter
nalized "ripple theory" of existence. The most striking example occurs <
1 i
when Rosa compares herself during her fourteenth summer to a "blind
’subterranean fish" existing in the waters of the womb (pp. 144-145).
Shreve and the nameless narrator continue the water motif, each
contributing his own vivid pictures. When Shreve creates Bon's child
hood, he suggests that Charles
1 took it for granted that all kids didn't have fathers too
I . . . and that getting snatched every day or so . . . and
being held for a minute or five minutes under a kind of
busted water pipe of incomprehensible fury and fierce yearning
and vindictiveness and iealous rage was part of childhood
(p. 298).
Shreve develops another memorable analogy when he says that the
Dickensian lawyer, realizing that Judith and Charles were related and
might commit incest, paused, "thinking stopping right still then,
backing up a little and spreading like when you lay a stick across a
trickle of water, spreading and rising slow all around him . . . steady*
and quiet as light" (pp. 301-302).
The nameless narrator combines water and umbilical cord imagery
to suggest the closeness, the oneness, of Quentin and Shreve as they
become intensely involved in the story of Henry and Charles.
/B/oth young, both born within the same year: the one in :
Alberta, the other in Mississippi; born half a continent
apart yet joined, connected after a fashion in a sort of
geographical transubstantiation by that Continental Trough,
that River which runs not only through the physical land of
which it is the geologic umbilical, not only runs through the
spiritual lives of the beings within its scope, but is very
Environment itself which laughs at degrees of latitude and
temperature, though some of these beings, like Shreve, have
never seen it (pt 258). .
The mythical value of the River here implicitly expands the significance
of the many times that Henry and Charles, traveling from one experience:
to another, commit themselves to the literal River. This expansion is
even greater when one recalls the emphases given to Henry and Charles's. - 1
closeness and to the various transubstantiations which Quentin and
Shreve undergo as they identify with the two earlier young men.
Water imagery dominates Quentin's "ripple theory" of existence.
Since a detailed discussion occurs in chapter IV , I only note here that*
Quentin connects water with reality, with birth and with death. He
ponders this theory after all but two of Mr. Compson's water analogies
have appeared.
Compson shifts to the story most meaningful to him when he brings .
Quentin the letter from Charles Bon, the letter Judith brought to
Grandmother Compson the week after Charles was buried. Holding this
letter, Compson imagines what Henry, Judith and Charles must have felt
and experienced. His is the first narrative devoted so intensely to the!
younger generation. The story is so important to him that he devotes
half his first narrative to it (45 of 91 pages).
421
I
j
He immediately asserts that these people were more decisive and i
i
heroic than present generations, and that Henry loved Charles. While t
both elements can be seen as adjuncts to Compson's general Hellenizatlon;
!
!of the legend, the intensity with which he presses them, especially the,
homoeroticism, indicates that stronger motives compel him. j
Compson first uses the word "heroic" when he begins this section of
narrative, saying that the Sutpen generations were :
people too as we are, and victims too as we are, but victims j
of a different circumstance, simpler and therefore, integer ]
for integer, larger and more heroic and the figures therefore’
more heroic too, not dwarfed and involved but distinct,
uncomplex who had the gift of loving or dying once instead of'
being diffused and scattered .creatures (p. 89).
I
He continues this emphasis on heroism, especially in his portrayal of
Henry.
Compson believes that Henry chose Bon over Thomas without hesitation,
I
I
"the decision instantaneous and irrevocable between father and friend"
(p. 90). For Compson says that Henry was "given to instinctive and
violent action.rather than thinking," that Henry "felt . . . and acted
immediately. He knew loyalty and acted it, he knew pride and jealousy,
he loved grieved and killed, still grieving and . . . still loving
Bon" (pp. 96-97).
Compson may have several reasons to stress this decisiveness. At
the conscious level, he may be trying to help his son; for Quentin has ,
just experienced several episodes in which he failed to act. He has been-
unable to persuade Caddyvnot to sleep with boys; he has been unable to
ask her to sleep with him; he has not had the courage to implement his
murder-suicide pact with Caddy; and he has not succeeded in beating |
i
Dalton Ames, one of Caddy's lovers, in a fight— has even thrown away
f ' 1 ‘
the gun which Dalton gave him to use. ^ His father's suggestion that J
times and people are different now, that decisive actions occurred in
the past because people then thought less before acting and saw things
I
more simply, may be his way of suggesting that Quentin's indecisiveness
and ineffectuality are not signs of weakness. On the unconscious level, 1
i
Compson may be offering the same amelioration to himself. Throughout
[
The Sound and the Fury, and in all the other stories where he appears, '
I
Compson is a thoughtful observer, whose main activities are study,
speculative contemplation, analysis. The only way he seeks to .
I
influence others is through talking and writing, presenting the
philosophy which results from his pondering. In order to protect !
himself from his wife’s criticism that he does not act when he should,
Compson may have developed this evolutionary view of human events.
Yet one senses that on a deeper level Compson accepts the idea
that action is more valuable than thought. His accounts of such action
are tinged with admiration.
In his second version, Compson reminds Quentin of Thomas's repu
tation for determined behavior. He tells of Sutpen’s pre- and early
Jefferson years and stresses Thomas's unhesitating pursuit of his design.
He suggests that Thomas wavered at only two points. Thomas told
Grandfather Compson that he was torn about what to do after his initial
rejection by the negro butler?(pp.229-239). His second period of
hesitation is less obviously presented, but certainly his conversation
with General Compson during the Civil War (^>>260^275) indicates that he
[was uncertain about how to deal with Charles Bon's re-entry into his !
'life. Mr. Compson shows his negative feelings about contemplation
before action when he associates Sutpen's hesitation during the war, and.
in later instances after the war, with senility (pp. 271-272). j
i j
Compson's assertion that earlier generations were more heroically
decisive' is undermined as the book progresses, although it continues to;
I
shape Quentin's reactions. This undercutting is less obvious than
Shreve's outright rejection of some of Compson's other.speculations,butj
i j
’it is present. Shreve's flippant remarks about the Sutpen story (see,
for example, pp. 277,280) begin the process; his later sarcastic
comments to Quentin after the story is finished serve as a coda. The
tale of Wash Jones's disillusionment when Thomas callously rejected
Milly Jones and her daughter diminishes Thomas's glory. The nameless ■
narrator firmly rejects the idea that most Southern men were brave and i
honorable,when he says the South lost its battles in the Civil War ■
not alone because of superior numbers and failing ammunition
and stores, but because of generals who should not have been
generals, who were generals not through training in contem
porary methods or aptitude for learning them, but by the
divine right to say "Go there"_conferred upon them by an
absolute caste system; . . . /who/ captured warships with
cavalry charges but no grain nor meat nor bullets, who would
whip three separate armies in as many days and then tear out
their own fences to cook meat robbed from their own smoke
houses, who on one night and with a handful of men would
gallantly set fire to and destroy a million dollar garrison
of enemy supplies and on the next night be discovered by a
neighbor in bed with his wife and shot to death (pp. 345-346).
Beginning with his early insistence that Henry loved Bon, Compson
i ' ■
focuses much of his first narrative on the homoerotic relationship he
creates between the two men. Compson believes this affection explains
at least some of Henry’s actions, "because Henry loved Bon. He repu
diated blood birthright and material security for h'is sake" (p. 89).
Compson emphasizes his belief that Henry made a homoerotic choice by
repeating "Henry loved Bon" three times within the paragraph which
introduces this element into the legend.
•Compson says Henry knew that Thomas told the truth about Charles.
Charles had an octoroon wife and child,and intended to retain them when
he married Judith. In fact, Compson, projecting his own fatalism into
both Henry and Charles, says that Henry knew from the start that he
would have to kill Charles to stop his marrying Judith. In spite of
this intuitive knowledge, Compson believes that Henry, acting from
"his soul," chose Bon.
Compson's attribution of passionate homoeroticism to Henry and
Charles can be traced to none of the observed behavior or reported
conversations which the novel gives as reliable. Yet this affection is
so strongly presented in Compson’s first narrative and retained in all
subsequent narratives and reports that it becomes almost a given of the
9.
Sutpen legend, although most critics have chosen to ignore xt.
One cannot know whether Faulkner meant Shreve and Quentin to
sustain this interpretation because they share Compson’s opinions or
because neither can escape the power of Compson's influence. One can
find evidence to support both these possibilities. It is not clear
whether Faulkner recognized the prominence of homoeroticism in the
:.." ' " ' ~ 46|
novel. In revising the manuscript, he softened two homoerotic passages
f
and deleted a third, but his attraction toward homoeroticism was so j
strong that it remains central.^ ;
I
What one cannot avoid is that in;Absalom, Absalom! Mr. Compson, |
Shreve, and the nameless narrator reserve their descriptions of intensej
and passionate love for the attraction between Henry and Charles, or j
for Charles's yearning for recognition from Thomas. Thomas's marriage
to Eulalia is presented as a mere happening, with no preliminaries and
few regrets, on Thomas's part, at the close. Thomas's marriage to
Ellen represents the acquisition of an important element in his design--
*
a respectable woman to conceive and bear his heirs, though there is
the suggestion that Thomas and Ellen were fond of each other. Henry
and Judith are described as comrades. Quentin projects-sexual overtones
into the earlier relationship because he parallels it with his attrac-1. .
tion to Caddy. Charles and Judith's relationship is portrayed in
equally cool, comradely terms. At best, it seems to be the coming
together of two androgynous personalities. Charles's liaison with the
octoroon is presented as cooly sensual for him and submissively sensual
for her. Thomas's subsequent pairings with Rosa Coldfield and Milly
Jones are simply comings together— one figuratively, the other liter
ally— for breeding purposes, that Thomas might try again to perpetuate
his dynasty.
The importance of the homoerotic in the first Compson narrative
can be demonstrated quantitatively, since some homoerotic reference is ;
present on at least 24 of the 45 pages devoted to Henry and Charles's
relationship. In contrast, the heterosexual attraction between Judith
and Charles is mentioned only 18 times, and many of these references ;
present that pairing as a mere substitute, at least for Charles, for ;
I
the impossible culmination of the attraction between the two men or !
for the love denied Charles by his father.
When Judith is mentioned, she is seen as Henry's alter ego, the ,
- i
other half of "that single personality with two bodies" (pp.91-92)-which j
Compson says they formed. Their relationship parallels that ]
between two cadets in a crack regiment who eat from the same
dish and sleep under the same blanket and chance the same
destruction and who would risk death for one another, not for;
the other's sake but for the sake of the unbroken front of
the regiment itself (pp'i 79-80).
Later on in his narrative, Compson clearly states that he believes
it was not Judith who was the object of Bon's love or of
Henry's solicitude. She was just the blank shape, the empty
vessel in which each of them strove to preserve, not the
illusion of himself nor his illusion of the other but what
each conceived the other to believe him to be— the man and
the youth, seducer and seduced, who had known one another,
seduced and been seduced, victimized in turn each by the
other, conqueror vanquished by his own strength, vanquished
conquering by his own weakness, before Judith came into their
joint lives even by so much as girlname (pp; 119-120).
Even incest is a homoerotic act for Mr. Compson. Both here and in
The Sound and the Fury his view of virginity and incest, the two seem
curiously linked in his mind, stresses the ephemeral nature of the first
and the substitutional nature of the second. Here, he says that
48
; Henry , . . may have been conscious that his fierce provin
cial's pride in his sister's virginity was a false quantity
which must incorporate in itself an inability to endure in j
^ order to be precious, :to exist, and so must depend upon its loss, j
' absence,to have existed at all. In fact, perhaps this is the ;
pure and perfect incest: the brother realizing the sister's
virginity must be destroyed in order to have existed at all, l
J taking that virginity in the person of the brother-in-law, the I
man whom he would be if he could become, metamorphose into, [
the lover, the husband; by whom he would be despoiled, choose|
for despoiler, if he could become, metamorphose into the ji :
sister, the mistress, the bride (p. 96).
,The pure and perfect incest is the homoerotic union achieved through the
11
unfortunately necessary conduit of the sister. Albert Guerard says j
!
;that the maneuvering suggested here represents bisexual incest (Henry ;
'sharing sister and brother-in-law), later to be seen as doubly I
.incestuous when Bon is known as the blood brother. Guerard adds that
getting a loved male to couple with a loved female is a familiar homo-
12
sexual maneuver. Compson persists in his conviction that if Charles ;
loved Judith at all, he loved her
! •
after his fashion but he loved Henry too and . . . in a deeper
sense than merely after his fashion. Perhaps in his fatalism
he loved Henry the better of the two, seeing perhaps in the
sister merely the shadow, the woman vessel with which to
consummate the love whose actual object was the youth— this
cerebral Don Juan who, reversing the order, had learned to
love what he had injured (pp. 107-108).
Bon and Judith were seldom in proximity, and Ellen must have monopolized
Charles's time when they were, so Compson cannot imagine the two
together (p. 97) .
I
But he does imagine Henry and Charles together. Although he is not
I
quite sure which of them played the greater role in seduction, he is
certain that seduction took place and resulted in passionate
49 i
!
devotion on both sides. Just as Bon is said to love Henry with deeper |
I
I
devotion than he felt for Judith, so Henry is said to have given Bon :
"that complete and abnegant devotion which only a youth, never a woman,,
gives to another youth or a man" (p. 107). Compson says that Henry j
loved Charles "with the knowledge of the insurmountable barrier which
the similarity of gender hopelessly intervened" (p. 95).
Though Henry and Charles actually were members of a regiment,
Compson does not apply terms of comradery to them. In fact, his
description of the young Civil War recruits who trained in Oxford
suggests that his glorification of the homoerotic springs not just from ;
, 1
the"unique relationship he sees between Henry and Charles but also
from his attraction to young men, and from his belief that such youths 1
t
are worthier than women. For him, the scene of these men practicing
for war would have been
probably the most moving mass-sight of all human mass-
experience, far more so than the spectacle of so many virgins
going.to be sacrificed to some heathen Principle, some
Priapus— the sight of young men, the light quick bones, the
bright gallant deluded blood and flesh dressed in a martial
glitter of brass and plumes, marching away to a battle
(p. 122).
After initially suggesting that Bon seduced Henry, Compson decides
that Henry actively drew Charles to himself and to Judith, and drew
Judith and himself to Charles. Compson says that Henry caused Judith
and Bon to be attracted to each- other even before either saw the
other (pp. 97-98).
50
I
I
Compson reverses himself later, saying that Bon paid no attention ;
!• . . I
(
i when Henry talked of Judith, and did not try to court her, though he '
■ ' i
‘ had a reputation for prowess with women (pp. 98-99). Yet Compson must ;
I
* ■ !
| deal with the fact that four years later Henry had to kill Bon to keep ;
; I
him from marrying Judith. He explains this by saying that Henry drew j
I . i
Judith to Bon using the "telepathy" which he shared with her. Perhaps ;
i
1 Faulkner also meant to imply that Henry shared a similar unity with
Charles, through their bloodJbrotherhood. Compson asserts that Henry's i
I
seduction was successful, saying that Charles wrote Judith during her
seventeenth summer, and that Henry read all the letters "without
jealousy" (p. 105).
Unlike the heroic element, the homoero'tic is not diminished but
1 strengthened as the novel continues. Retained in Shreve's narrative
with Quentin's evident assent, it is supported by the nameless narrator,
who also suggests homoerotic ties between Quentin and Shreve.
Shreve makes a conscious attempt to elevate the importance of the
relationship between Charles and Judith but ultimately fails to do so.
His Bon is a bewildered young man whose major concern was attaining
recognition from the father who had abandoned him. Shreve describes,
this desire for recognition with the same intensity that Hr. Compson
shows in depicting Henry's love for Charles. When Shreve seems to shift
. to Charles and Judith by beginning a section with, "And now . . .
we're going to talk about love" (p. 316), he follows that remark with
] a description of Henry's growing attraction to Charles and Charles's
reaction to that devotion.
51 I
Shreve describes encounters between Judith and Charles in cool,
' 1 _ I
rational terms. Judith is merely Henry's sister "whom /Charles/ had
!not seen and perhaps did not have any curiosity to see" (p. 318).
I
After Charles saw Judith, she was the "lemon sherbet" which he knew he j
could have at any time. Charles concentrated his emotions on the !
j
agonized wait for some sign from his father.
Shreve's misogyny is so strong that he seems incapable of imagining
13
passionate, or even very tender, feelings for a woman. The clearest j
I
example of this inability is his creation of Judith and Charles's last ■
meeting. He says that Charles walked in the garden with Judith, talking
automatically to her while his thoughts centered on his continuing ;
frustration at Thomas's indifference. When Charles sensed that Henry
■had entered the library to talk with Thomas, Shreve says he j
I
stopped and faced /Judith/ with something in his face that was
smiling now, and took her by the elbows and turned her easy
and gentle, until she faced the house, and said "Go. I wish
to be alone to think about love " (p. 333),
Like Mr. Compson's Bon, Shreve's Bon is interested in Judith only when
•he cannot further a relationship with a loved male.
The nameless narrator adds his own homoerotic material both to the
Sutpen legend and the description of the present generation. As he
describes Henry's last meeting with Thomas, and Henry's conversation
with Charles after that meeting, he includes details of male affection. !
He softens the portrayal of Thomas, saying that Thomas embraced and
kissed Henry when the young man first entered the tent, and expressed
concern about Henry's wound. When Henry returned to his campfire after'
this interview, his interactions with Charles contained more tender- !
I
ness. Charles, concerned that Henry was cold, wrapped his cloak around!
the youth. Charles said that for four years he had thought only of I
Henry and Judith (the order is important here), but now he must think ’
!
of himself. He would marry Judith unless Henry stopped him. He offered1
his pistol, encouraging Henry to shoot him immediately and protect
Judith's honor. Henry's passionate devotion was too great, however,
|
to allow him to kill the man he loved above almost all else, even *
when Charles tried to help rouse him by taunting, "I'm the nigger '
that's going to sleep with your sister" (pp. 352-358).
The nameless narrator precedes these scenes with a statement which
i
stresses the way that .Quentin and Shreve have merged with Henry and
Charles. He suggests a homoeroticism which both mirrors that element
in the Compson version and continues the suggestions about Quentin
14
and Shreve from The Sound and the Fury. . Here, Quentin and Shreve
stare at each other during a pause in their storytelling, and the
nameless narrator says:
There was something curious in the way they looked at one
another, curious and quiet and profoundly intent, not at all
as two young men might look at each other but almost as a
youth and a very young girl might out of virginity itself—
a sort of hushed and naked searching (p. 229).
In the novel's last pages, Shreve cares for Quentin, who is shaking j
with emotion, as Charles did for Henry (pp. 360-361). '
As the discussion turns to Charles Bon, I would call attention to
the fact that these presentations of Charles suggest little about the
original. The narratives which focus on him are necessarily the most j
speculative. The letter is the only artifact of his existence, aside <
from his tombstone. Grandfather Compson and Rosa saw Thomas, Ellen, ^
Henry and Judith; Quentin has seen Glytie, Henry and Jim Bond. None of
the narrators has had direct contact with Charles. Consequently, the ,
Charles Bon presented is doubly projected. ;
First, more than any other character in the Sutpen story, Charles '
1
is a projection of the narrating personalities. His character in
Mr. Compson*s version is sophisticated, decadent, corrupting, pessi
mistic and disengaged. Shreve creates him as bewildered, capable of
great courage and compassion, intensely seeking his father's
recognition. The two elements present in both accounts are his ;
passivity throughout most of his friendship with Henry and the homo
erotic element in that friendship.
The second sense in which Charles is a projection is more
complicated, more difficult to describe. The narrators, faced with
only one piece of evidence which suggests Charles* personality, try to
extrapolate his character from what they know about Thomas, Henry and
Judith Sutpen. As a result, the Charles given is partially a projec
tion of the Sutpens. The narrators, knowing in part what action
Thomas, Henry, Judith or Ellen took toward Charles, say to themselves
and to each other, "Charles must have been the way I say he was for
these people, to act as they did toward him."
Mr. Compson decides that as Henry drew Charles to homoerotic love,
I
Charles introduced Henry to the sybaritic, sensual and androgynous I
" !'
life epitomized by feminized garments, catlike elegance, and an air j
I
of satiety. The presentation of this sensual world is closely woven |
I
with the homoerotic. The two complement and amplify each other. !
Compson relishes thispworldjehis tone caresses when he creates its
opulence; his metaphors are less cerebral, more tactile. He decides
that Bon, visiting Sutpeh's Hundred,came into "that isolated puritan
country household almost like Sutpen himself came into Jefferson:
apparently complete, without background or past or childhood . . .
surrounded by a sort of Scythian glitter (p. 93).
Compson's metaphors suggest his pleasure at creating Bon's
sophisticated, enigmatic decadence. He says Bon found the Sutpens'
reactions to his having an octoroon wife and child
a fetish-ridden moral blundering which did not deserve to
be called thinking and which he contemplated with the
detached attentiveness of a scientist watching the muscles
of an anesthetized frog— watching, contemplating them from
behind that barrier of sophistication in comparison with
which Henry and Sutpen were troglodytes (p. 93).
Expanding this theme, Compson says that Bon watched Henry and Thomas
with that fatalistic and impenetrable imperturbability . . .
a certain reserved and inflexible pessimism stripped long
ago of all the rubbish and claptrap of people (yes, Sutpen
and Henry and the Coldfields too) who have not quite
emerged from barbarism, who two thousand years hence will
still be throwing triumphantly off the yoke of Latin culture
and intelligence of which they were never in any great
permanent danger to begin with (p. 94).
! 551
This Bon is androgynous, combining the intelligence and sophisti- !
i . - - - ' . ’ ' 1
cation that Compson elsewhere associates with the male and the sensuous,
I \
'and sensual hedonism he elsewhere glorifies in the octoroon3 as the J
prime example of the "female principle." Thus, he depicts Bon walking ]
1
, i
in "the slightly Frenchified cloak and hat he.wore," or j
i j
reclining in a flowered, almost feminized gown, in a sunny 1
window . . . handsome elegant and even catlike and too old to;
be where he was . . . not in years but in experience, with !
some tangible effluvium of knowledge, surfeit of actions done!
and satiations plumbed and pleasures exhausted and even (
forgotten (p. 95). >
Compson believes that the Oxford provincials reacted to Bon not with
ienvy but with "that sharp shocking terrible hopeless despair of the
young which sometimes takes the form of . . . in extreme cases like
Henry's, insult toward and assault upon any and all detractors of the
. subject"(p. 96) .
Compson decides that after Henry broke with his father, Charles
gave him a slow exposure to the voluptuous and passionate world of New
Orleans, introducing first Eulalia, then duelling, then the octoroon
wife and son. Throughout, Bon hoped that Henry's love for him would
bring acceptance of this world.
Compson enjoys describing these lessons in corruption, associating
Charles with sophistication and surfeited manhood, Henry with provincial
and puritanical youth. Henry's naivete and his rigid upbringing cause ’
fhim to find New Orleans,.confusing and decadent. He is an "innocent and
’ negative /photographic/ plate" (p. 110) which Bon slowly stroked into
corruption, or a "cramped and rocky field" (p, 109) which Bon would
56'
i
1 ' . ' ' " |
,cultivate and plant. (At a later.point, Shreve has Bon think of Judith j
as "a narrow delicate fenced virgin field" .already prepared for his '
i ;
planting /p. 3 . ) ;
As Compson revels in this story, he creates Charles and Henry as
ilatent doubles for himself and Quentin. Charles possesses Compson's ;
: i
homoeroticism, pessimism, fatalism, fascination with syharitic sensu
ality, and disengaged stance. In contrast, Henry, while equally fatal- j
istic and homoerotic, responds to these urges with unhesitating,
passionately intuitive action and reaction. Henry's agonized struggle ' !
.between the rigid moral code of his heritage and the situational code
presented by the man he loved may remind the reader of Quentin's intense
conflict, in The Sound and the Fury,between his passionate belief in
the value of Caddy's purity and his father's rationalistic discounting
of virginity and incest as meaningful concepts. Henry's strong love
for Bon echoes Quentin's apparent attraction to Dalton Ames and Shreve
in the earlier novel .
As Compson describes the decadent life in which an octoroon wife
was considered a necessary accouterment, he injects the first overt
16
racism into the Sutpen legend. The speeches he attributes to Bon and
the thoughts he gives to Henry are the first hierarchical distinctions
made between whites and blacks.^ Compson says Henry would not have
balked at the possession of an octoroon as a mistress, since he and
Judith had grown up with a negro half-sister, the product of such a
union. Such a relationship was acceptable because of the caste system
which existed in the South among "the other sex . . . ladies, women, and1
females" (p. 109). In this ordering, "females" were those negro slave
women used by their white masters,to satisfy sexual desires, thus
preserving the virginity of unmarried white women and cutting down on
;the sexual burden of the married ones (pp. 109-110). At the same time,
I
. Compson says, Henry would have found it difficult to accept the
I
|ceremony which joined Charles to the octoroon, "a ceremony entered into
to be sure, with a negro, yet still a ceremony" (p. 110).
The speeches Compson has Charles deliver about the value of the
octoroon and women like her seem to contradict themselves. On the one
hand, Bon says that the octoroon represents the highest evolution of
the female, while on the other hand he says that any contract with her
. is not worth worrying about because she is a "nigger" (pp. 116-118).
The overriding sense of these speeches denigrates the octoroon, however.
Throughout the discussion, Charles assumes a godlike stance as he talks
of the role he and others like him played in relation to such women.
Bon first tried to convince Henry that such women were special,
saying
we . . . made them, created and produced them. . . . We
cannot, perhaps we do not even want to, save all of them.
. . ..But we save that one. God may mark every sparrow, but
we do not pretend to be God, you see. . . . since no man
would want but one of those sparrows (p. 115).
Emphasizing the sensual, Bon said such a woman is "more valuable as a
commodity than white girls, raised and trained to fulfill a woman's
sole end and purpose: to love, to be beautiful, to divert" (p, 117).
She embodies
; a female principle , . . apt docile and instinct with strange[
■ and ancient curious pleasures of the flesh (which is all: !
; there is nothing else) . , . /she/ reigns, wise, supine and !
all-powerful, from the sunless and silken bed which is her :
throne (pp. 116-117).
! :
; I
j
• Charles is said to believe that these women "are the only true chaste j
■women, not to say virgins, in America, and they remain true and faithful
to J_a/ man not merely until he dies or frees them, but until they die" '
; (p. 117).18 I
l
Charles's godlike stance allowed him to shift to a negative view ;
of the octoroon when he realized that Henry wouid not be convinced \
i
through positive descriptions. To Henry's continuing objections that
I
Charles's contract with the octoroon made it impossible for him to !
approach marriage with Judith unencumbered, Bon asked, "Have you
forgotten that this woman, this child, are niggers?" (p. 118).
Compson*s racism continues in his second narrative. He uses
several speculative instances to support his contention that Judith
Sutpen believed in racial superiority, although these speculations are
clearly contradicted by Rosa's and General Compson's reports. Yet
Compson's power over the novel is so great that the assumption that
Judith was racist has dominated critical discussions of the period of
19
Judith's life following the death of Boh.
One of the examples used to support the view that Judith is racist
is Compson's suggestion that Clytie and Judith tried to preserve
j
Charles Etienne de Saint Velery Bon from the taint of negroes by keeping
him isolated from negro companions, with dire effects on his psyche. ,
This assertion demonstrates one mistake common among commentators on
59 j
i
J
Absalom, Absaloml: the conflation of the activities of Judith and Clytie*
I
with one credited for the actions of the other. In this case, General ,
Compson reported that Clytie kept Charles Etienne isolated, from both
negroes and whites. He never suggested that Judith had any connections j
with this action. Clytie^. s behavior was consistent with the way she '
keeps all Sutpen business to herself; it does not necessarily represent
Judith's influence.
When Compson recognizes the distinction between Clytie's and
Judith's behavior, he still asserts that Judith was racist, though he !
has no examples of racism in her observed behavior. He begins creating
this view of Judith when he suggests that during the octoroon's visit to
Charles Bon's grave, Judith forced Clytie to wait on her, not telling
Clytie that the other was also negro (p. 194). Such behavior goes
against the descriptions that Rosa Coldfield and General Compson give
of Judith's egalitarian actions toward Clytie, of Judith's willingness
to share in any work which was to be done at Sutpen's Hundred.
Those who accept Mr. Compson's premise that Judith was racist also
accept as factual his speculation that Judith forced Charles Etienne to
acknowledge his negro blood and thus his lower place in society. The
evidence given by General Compson does not support this view. General
'Compson did not know why or how Charles Etienne was brought to the
despair which made him attack blacks and reject whites as well, but he
was certain that neither Judith nor Clytie had prompted such behavior.
Judith did not treat Charles Etienne as an inferior, allowing him to
■sleep beside her own bed in the bed of a white child. Clytie guarded
the boy from all people with fierce protectiveness. So General Compson '
| 60
I
isuggested that Charles Etienne acted out of the bewilderment of being irt
1 I
■ a strange place, where the language was different and the treatment j
^different from any he had experienced before. He might not have known ■
how to interpret Judith's calm or.Clytie's forcefulness, knowing only '
.that these two owned probably the one plot of land where he had seen '
his mother cry.
Perhaps the most damning evidence used against Judith comes from the ,
discussion Mr. Compson createsbbetween her and Charles Etienne on the
evening of the day Charles Etienne returned home with his black, evidently
retarded, pregnant wife. Even though the passage is prefaced by.the
statement that "there was nobody to know what transpired that evening,"
the conversation is used to prove that Judith repented of some wrong she.
had done to Charles Etienne, since Compson presents the scene so vividly.
And who to know what moral restoration she might have contem-i
plated . . . what hurdling of iron old tradition since she
had seen almost everything else she had learned to call stable
vanish like straws in a gale . . . the cold level voice would
not be much!louder than the sound of the lamp's flame: "I was
wrong, I admit it. I believed that there Were things that
still mattered .just because they had mattered once. But JE was
wrong. Nothing matters but breath, breathing, to know and to
be alive. And the child, the license, the paper. . . . That
paper is between you and one who is inescapably negro; it can
be put aside .... And as for the child . . . . Didn't my
own father beget one? and he none the worse for it? We will
even keep the woman and the child if you wish; they can stay
here and Clytie will. . . . No: I . . . . will raise it. . . .
It does not need to have Any name; you will neither have to
see it again nor to worry . . . you can go . . . North . . . .
I Will tell them that you are Henry's son" (pp. 207-208).
i
Both Rosa Coldfield and General Compson deny such speculations
about Judith. Rosa, herself, believes that the white race is superior
I
! 61
to and should remain separate from the black, but she says that even in
t
childhood Judith never shared such sentiments. Rosa remembers, j
! I
i
as a child I . . » - more than once watched /Clytie/ and Judith 1
and even Henry scuffling in the rough games which they . . . ;
played, and (so I have heard) she and Judith even slept ■
together , in the same room but with Judith in the bed and |
/Clytie/.on a pallet on the floor ostensibly. But I have heard ,
how on more than orice /sic/ occasion Ellen . . . found them
both on theapallet, andoo.nce in the bed together (p. 140).
: i
Judith and Clytie also sat together in the loft watching Thomas wrestle j
i
his wild negroes. General Compson noticed that the egalitarian relation
ship continued into their adult years, for they ran the store jointly i
'after Thomas's death, and Clytie took over all responsibilities after ;
Judith died. !
I
Mr. Compson is partly right when he speculates that a concern with
racial matters caused Henry to murder Charles, but in attributing strong
feelings about racial superiority to Judith, Compson projects his own
feelings onto a person whose behavior did not indicate such a belief.
All of Judith’s actions deny any concern about racial differences. As
an adult, she seemed entirely motivated by concern for others, black and
white. As the discussion in chapter .IIl;vrtll indicate, Faulkner created
Judith as a moral touchstone for the novel. As such, she exhibits the
.most egalitarian behavior.
There remains one more example of Mr. Compson's influence on the
novel. As Rosa Coldfield's note to Quentin initiates the process of'
speculative recall which takes place in September 1909, so Mr. Compson's
letter telling of Rosa's death initiates Quentin's reporting, Shreve's
62
creative developing, and Quentin's agonized reaction to the legend in '
January 1910. !
In one sense, Absalom, Absalom! divides in two parts. Rosa's note-
i
frames the first (Chapters I-V),and Mr. Compson's letter frames the
second (Chapter VI-IX). In a purely formalistic sense, this description
l
is valid. In a deeper sense, however, the presence of Mr. Compson and ‘
his January 1910 letter are felt throughout the novel. Though the ;
letter is not mentioned until Chapter VI, it is clear, on a second
i
reading of the novel, that the force of the letter has been felt from •
the beginning. Within the first few paragraphs of the novel, Quentin ;
remembers that his father is the original source of his information
I
about Thomas Sutpen (p. 11).' While the quotation of the letter begins
Chapter VI (p. 173), the quotation of at least half of the letter is j
reserved for the penultimate page of theruiovel (p. 377). Furthermore,
the nameless narrator reminds the reader of the letter's presence in
the Harvard room twice in Chapter VI and four times in Chapter VII. He
says that Quentin seems to be brooding on the letter, even addressing
himself to it, during parts of his reporting (pp. 217-218, 265, 275).
Mr. Compson's letter seems at first to continue the slightly
detached, fatalistic stance that he has adopted throughout his life.
His rhetoric winds itself around the basic facts that Rosa Coldfield is
dead and was buried in the very cold earth. Nonetheless, the essence ;
i
of the letter is Compson's empathy with Rosa and his hope that she has ■
'attained some satisfactory resolution to her years of outrage. He ;
wonders if those who told him that Rosa died painlessly knew what they ;
said: 1
63
since it has always seemed to roe that the only painless death
must be that which takes the Intelligence by violent surprise;
and from the rear so to speak. . . . And if there can be !
either access of comfort or cessation of pain in the ultimate;
escape from a_ stubborn and amazed outrage which over a period
of forty-three years has been companionship and bread and
fire and all, I do not know that . . . perhaps there is i
(pp. 173, 174, 177). ' !
i
1
Compson decides that it
will do no harm to hope— You see I have written hope . . . 1
/that Rosa has/ gained that place . . . where the objects of j
the outrage and of the commiseration are no longer ghosts but I
are actual people to be actual recipients of the hatred and j
the pity (p. 377).
The letter shows the continuing split between the explicit
rational disengagement which Compson cultivates and the implicit
emotional involvement which he usually feels. For the most part, the
diction is learnedly distanced, with Latinate words in mellifluous
conjunction, yet the message of the letter is far from disengaged. For'
Compson calls Quentin's attention to the fact that he has written
"hope, not think." Compson hopes that Rosa is now finding some surcease
from outrage and thwarted involvement by acting, directing her
condemnation at Thomas and giving her sympathy and aid to Ellen, Judith,
Henry, and Charles Bon.
Throughout the novel, Compson is divided between that which he
would do on the conscious level and that which he is drawn to on the
unconscious level. He would be rational and disengaged from life, but
he glorifies decisive, intuitive action. He would be conventional in his
[
sexual preferences, but he insists on the higher value of the love of
men for each other. He would be free of prejudices, but he exhibits
64
strong misogyny and racism. ;
One cannot determine the genesis of theypsychological problems J
I
exhibited by a fictional character, especially one who is presented
only in his adult years. One can only note that these conflicts exist, '
]
,and that Compson unconsciously uses his power as "author" to deal with
some of these problems. The "flexibility of repression" mechanism ;
allows him to describe the homoerotic and sybaritically sensual aspects.
of his legend with love,although such topics would certainly not be
acceptable under the ordinary circumstances of the time. He can also
i
present misogyny and racism in neutral to positive tones. :
His portrayal of Charles Bon and Henry Sutpen as the latent doubles
of himself and Quentin can also be seen as therapeutic. He may be i,
trying to reassure himself and convince Quentin of -the value of the
coolyydistanced life by creating Charles as the more intriguing and
attractive of the two and by placing him in the tutorial position.
Certainly the puzzlement that Charles is said to experience at Henry’s
strong reaction to the possibility that Judith might marry a man already
connected to another woman parallels Compson's reaction to Quentin's
anguish at Caddy's loss of purity in The Sound and the Fury.
Yet Mr. Compson's attraction to the intuitively active life is
strong. Though he cannot understand such behavior, Compson admires the
capacity to act from one's "soul," as he decides that Henry did.
Compson's admiration for Thomas Sutpen's decisive actions adds to his
implicit endorsement of such an approach tollife.
Shreve and Quentin continue those aspects of Compson's versions
which are emotionally true for them. Specifically, Shreve retains
the homoeroticism and expands''the misogyny. Quentin assents to the
homoeroticism and responds to the heroic view of Henry Sutpen and
Charles Bon.
66
Notes to Chapter II
1. See Appendix B for a discussion of the affect that textual j
expansion, integration and revisions had on narrative assignments. See|
.also the studies by Langford, Polk and Schoenberg.
| 2. Reed, pp. 157-175. i
j 3. See Appendix A for the discussion of Faulkner’s vacillation j
[concerning when Mr. Compson would know about Charles Bon's relationship I
I to the Sutpens. j
4. Rogers, pp. 31-32. ;
I ;
j 5. Guerard, p. 333.
! 6. In Rosa’s first narrative section (Chapter I), the nameless
inarrator describes Rosa's voice as "not__ceasing but vanishing into and
[then out of the long intervals /of time/ like a stream, a trickle
.running from patch to patch of dried sand" (p. 8). Later, Rosa suggests1
ithat Thomas Sutpen was "evil's source and head" (p. 18).
: 7. Schoenberg suggests this also; see pp. 8-9, 100-102.
l
8. There are several instances of such splits within one person.
.Others are the two Quentins in Chapter I, the two Washes in Chapter VII,
the two Charles Bons in Chapter VIII. Also see Appendix B for a dis
cussion of the use of the "Don and I" narrators as early dual story
j tellers.
9. See Appendix C for a discussion of the inability, or refusal,
ito recognize or discuss the homoerotic in Absalom, AbsalomI.
| 10. Three passages were changed to soften or delete homoeroticism.
!I first reprint the original versions of the two shortest passages, then
give the combined-— and softened— version of these two which appears in
the text. I simply paraphrase the third passage from the manuscript,
1 since it is too long to quote here and since it was not included in any !
I form in the published text.
I
|
j 1) MS 42/18-21: "appeared more splendid— to the girl or to the
; youth, the one with, the old unfailing difference in sex 1
I to sharpenithe image, the other with the irrevocable
j difference /sic/ similarity of sex to Sharpen the image
! for the same identical reason." (Italics mine)
67
2) MS 42/21^-22: "possession; the other with the knowledge,even
the subconscious /?/ to the desire, of the insurmount
able." (Italics mine.)
i
When these two were combined, they appeared in the published text as i
95/9-11: "appeared the more splendid— to the one with hope,everi
| though unconscious, of making the image hers through possession;
j to the other with the knowledge of the insurmountable barrier
I which the similarity of gender hopelessly intervened." '
! ■-
;The third passage (MS 49/11-17), a description of Henry and Charles in
! New Orleans after Henry's break with Thomas, contains the line "Yet Bon j
|loved him them."
i 11- This view of virginity also appears in the "Quentin" section !
of the Compson Appendix; see The Sound and the Fury (New York: Vintage
Books, 1946,1959), p. 411. See also Compson's comments in the text, i
e.g. pp. 96, 143, 219-221.
12. Guerard, pp. 309-311.
13. The following chapter details specific examples of Shreve's
[misogyny.
' 14. The homoerotic suggestions from The Sound arid the Fury are
■detailed in the discussion in chapter 4.
j 15. The homoerotic attraction to Dalton, suggested early in the
jQuentin section of The Sound and the Fury, is clearly implied in the
'scene with Dalton on the bridge (pp. 98,130,197-200). The homoerotic
Irelationship with Shreve, or its suggestion, prompts Spoade to call
Shreve Quentin's "husband," a remark which angers Quentin.
16. Rosa's racist views are presented after the first Compson
[narrative. Thomas Sutpen's explanation of his racial rejection of Eulalia
and Charles Bon occurs during the second Compson version.
17. It is interesting to note that while this part of the Compson
[narrative was not reported to Shreve, he exhibits similar racist views.
j 18. The misogyny apparent in this whole section is discussed in
ithe following chapter.
i |
I 19. Use D. Lind, Olga Vickery, Cleanth Brooks,and R. P. Adams,all
'accept Compson's projection of racism into Judith's character. See
Lind, "Design," in Three Decades— -(I960),p.295; Vickery, The Novels of
[William Faulkner, rev. ed.(1964),p.99; Brooks, Yoknapatawpha Country
,Cl963),pp. 304,310,315; and Adams, Myth and Mdtion(1968),p. 208.
CHAPTER -III
WOMAN AS AMORAL TEMPTRESS AND MORAL EXEMPLAR: I
i
i
MR. COMPSON, SHREVE, QUENTIN !
I
| The preceding chapter notes that Mr. Compson is the first narrator
!to introduce misogyny into the Sutpen legend.1 Speaking perhaps for the
junconscious mind of his creator, Compson portrays women as ghosts, as
I
Jamoral, as sensual traps, and as poor substitutes for the impossible
Jphysical culmination of the love between males. His negative statements
i
iare repeated or amplified by Shreve, whose misogyny seems even more ;
i ;
;virulent. Furthermore, Mr. Compson has been preceded by his father,
iGeneral Compson, who voiced less hostility or condescension toward
, women, but who seems to have believed that women do not operate with
the same clear logic as men.
; Yet each of these speakers is faced with the reports- of the exem-
jplary behavior of Judith and Clytie Sutpen. In addition, Mr. Compson
clearly admires Rosa Coldfield's determination. (Quentin, as reporter,
I
jseems to accept all opinions and descriptions of women, contributing
jnone of his own.)
1
j Whether denigrating or complimentary, each portrayal of women is
1
jvividly expressed, backed by strong conviction. Ample support may he
[found for quite diverse interpretations. Thomas Lorch, for example,
i
!
iinsists that the women in Absalom, Absalom! are the major antagonists to
Thomas Sutpen's glorious design and■cause its failure, while Sally R.
Page is sympathetic to the women and sees them as victims of the |
I
2
design. Interestingly, neither Lorch nor Page associates the women j
with action; instead, the former sees, them as intransigent, inertial j
jbeings who refuse to be molded by the male's creative force, and the |
I j
|latter sees them as powerless respondents to the massive male ego. :
! A close reading of the novel discovers opinions disparaging women ;
1 . i
jjuxtaposed to descriptions of their commendable behavior. Remembering f
ithat Absalom, Absalom! is being told by unreliable and reliable narra- i
i ■ 1
itors, who blend speculative surmise with reports of observed behavior, 1
i one must weigh each view of women carefully. One begins to notice that'
1 slighting statements are expressions of opinion or grow from created
i ' ■
i
I scenes. Statements presenting women favorably are made when narrators :
i ' :
I report behavior they saw or come to conclusions based on that behavior.'
I
Even misogynistic narrators cannot deny the value evident in the actual
behavior they have seen or have heard described.
: Neither Rosa Coldfield nor the male narrators hold opinions about
! women which are supported by the actual behavior of the women in the
! novel. Rosa articulates her sense of victimization often, and attributes
|
: the same sense to the other women in the Sutpen legend. Certainly her
I
I
! experiences with her father, her aunt, and Thomas Sutpen justify her
)
i
; own feelings; however, she is too young to have been sufficiently privy
| to Ellen Coldfield Sutpen's thoughts to have known whether Ellen had
l
I
Isimilar feelings. Likewise, Judith Sutpen did not give evidence of
| such a sense of helplessness. Rosa overemphasizes female powerlessness;
; the male narrators also insist on this helplessness. Yet one can see
j
i that while the women have been denied power by the male-dominated
jsociety, some women— -such, as Rosa, Judith and Clytie Sutpen— -refuse to |
I . . . I
,be rendered ineffective. In fact, Rosa is the most effective present- 1
I
time character. The male narrators insist further that women are amoral.
I
... . !
Yet Rosa, Judith and Clytie do not lack moral standards. On the contrary,
I ' .. . . !
,all seem motivated by concern for others, and Judith's behavior becomes ;
I
; the moral standard of the book.
i 1
While one is always aware that Rosa's anger and disappointment ,
»
color her version of the Sutpen story, one may not be as sensitive to
i I
the strong misogyny which informs the versions told by the male narra-"
I /
(tors. This misogyny is so great that the men posit unbelievable moti- ;
vations and behavior forcJudithoSutp_en::which do not square with the
I
descriptions provided by those who saw her actions. One startling
example is Mr. Compson's claim that Judith believed in the superiority
lof the white race. General Compson, who saw Judith's actions toward
both Clytie Sutpen and Charles Etienne de Saint Velery Bon, refused to
entertain such a possibility; Rosa Coldfield also comments on Judith's
lack of racial prejudice.
Actually, the Sutpen story consists of a series of events in which,
'with one exception, men are saying "no" to human relationships or are
discounting them, while women, again with one exception, are saying
'"yes." Charles Bon's letter urging Judith to marry him provides the
•male exception; Rosa's refusal to breed with Thomas is the female
.exception. Thomas Sutpen's design, begun as a reaction to his being
I
;turned away from the front door of a plantation house, is pursued by
terminating or thwarting various human relationships which impede it.
:Henry Sutpen's initial involvement with Charles Bon is followed by his
repudiations of both his father and his friend. Goodhue Coldfield j
!
renounces the South's entry into the Civil War by withdrawing from life.!
I
Wash Jones responds to Thomas's dismissal of Milly Jones, his grand- I
I
|daughter, by ending Thomas's life. I
! ' i
| The women, in contrast, accept and assist in nearly every instance. 1
I
They are neither victims nor destroyers. Though they do not dominate ;
t
I the Sutpen story or set the original course of the design, their coop- |
| j
'eration at some points and their intransigence at others contribute to j
• its ultimate shape. In nearly every instance, they aid the: men.
'Sometimes they preserve and create in spite of male destructiveness.
1 _ I
; This discussion focuses only on Rosa Coldfield and Judith Sutpen; yet
i i
!
jat some time or other, Eulalia Bon, Ellen Coldfield and Milly Jones all ;
[offered their procreative power to further Sutpen's design. The octo-
i
room provided what may be Sutpen's only grandson. Judith and Clytie
preserved both the Sutpen and Bon heritages. Rosa's description of
I
! the way Thomas Sutpen used women is pertinent:
l
| /He was/ a walking shadow . . . completing his descending . . ■ .
! clinging, trying to cling with vain unsubstantial hands to
| what he hoped would hold him, save him, arrest him— Ellen
! . . ., myself, then last of all /Milly Jones/ (171) .
!
■ The male narrators insist on the treacherous nature of the female, ,
[however, even as they are forced to tell of exemplary behavior by
■individual women. Their misogyny, like their homoeroticism, seems rooted
l
I
an their fear of and repulsion from sexual intercourse, an act which
•Faulkner nearly always portrays as swallowing up the male. In addition
,to this fear of being consumed by the female, these men are evidently so
72
j fastidious that they feel disgust at the disordered clothes, the odors,j
jthe secretions—-the physical facts of the sexual act. They are also ;
!repulsed by the idea of menstrual blood, a visible sign of the female's
1 ' 3 1
iprocreative readiness. They intellectualize this basic abhorrence and
|find other things to criticize, claiming that women are helpless, |
t
|illogical, amoral,and escapist.
; Mr. Compson expresses negative feelings about the physical mani- . ;
| ’ r
!festations of the female and about sexual intercourse in both The Sound'
I ;
I and the Fury and Absalom, Absaloml. In June 1910, Quentin remembers '
I
that his father described the menstrual cycle and the vaginal secretions
I of women as "periodical filth between two moons balanced . . . all that
! i
I
I inside of them . . • waiting for a touch to. Liquid putrefaction like
jpale rubber flabbily filled" (TSF, p. 159). In September 1909, Mr.
Compson portrays Judith as a mere conduit between Henry and Charles
i
I .
[and says that after the initial act of intercourse Judith would be
I
i"despoiled" (p.96). These statements and others denigrating the physical
I union of male and female suggest that the act itself is distasteful to
t
him. Though Compson glorifies sexual intercourse when it occurs with a
I
lower-class colored woman, and though he believes that the possibility
i
of incest may give a man more incentive to engage in coitus, the act
|
itself remains disgusting to him.
I Shreve expresses similar distate for sexual conjunction. He
Iportrays the octoroon as part of the "maggot-cheesy solidarity which
joverlays the earth, in which men and women in couples are ranked and
racked like ninepins" (p. 312). He later suggests that intercourse is
disappointing that only the possibility of incest gives the act signi- >
ficance:
t
I
! /^B/ecause who . . . has been in love and not discovered the J
| vain evanescence of the fleshly encounter; who has not had to|
• realize that when the brief all is done you must retreat fromi
j both love and pleasure, gather up your own rubbish and refuser- -
! the hats and pants and shoes which you drag through the worldr™
i and retreat (pp. 323-324).
I
l
!(Quentin's anti-heterosexual feelings are fully discussed in the follow-
Iing chapter.) |
j Mr. Compson begins the pattern of veiled misogyny in a gently
;condescending statement about helpless women which is interjected into
• t
|the first half of Rosa's narrative. Compson encourages Quentin to
i
|listen to Rosa because
l
Jyfears ago we in the South made our women into ladies. Then
the War came and made the ladies into ghosts. So what else can
| we do, being gentlemen, but listen to them being ghosts? (p. 12)
In a later comment, he strengthens the view that Southern women,
especially spinsters, are figures who must live off others and be
:tolerated. He cannot understand why Rosa did not immediately go to
f
■ Sutpen's Hundred after her father's death, for such a move would have
j been
I
i
the natural thing for her or any Southern woman, gentlewoman ^
j .... Because that's what a Southern lady is . . . penniless
( and with no prospect of ever heing_otherwise and'.knowing that
all who know her know this . . . /_she moves into the best
j room in your house, abrogating to herself the complete
• supervision of your home; yet it’s not this/ that she is
depending on to keep body and soul together: it is as though
she were living on the actual blood itself, like a vampire
! __ _________. . . with that serene and idle splendor of flowers abrogating
74
! to herself . . . nourishment from the old blood (p. 86).
i
)
|
Here, female dependency carries sinister implications. j
Yet at another point, Compson glorifies helplessness in women, j
i !
I praising the~octoroon through the words of Charles Bon as 1
' I
i ,
! j
j the eternal female, the eternal Who-suffers .... _/who
i embodies/ a female principle which existed, queenly and ,
, complete, in the hot equatorial_groin of the world . . . a j
| principle apt docile . . . /she/ reigns wise supine and all j
i powerful, from the sunless and silken bed which is her throne:
! . . . they are the only truly chaste women, not to say virgins^
j in America, and they remain true and faithful not merely until
I /aman/ dies or frees them, but until they die (ppLI14 ,116-117) .
! i
; I
! I
jEvidently, Compson admires dependency when it combines utter submxssive-*
ness with loyalty to the male. He also seems more comfortable when the
|pliant female is not white. 1
Shreve believes that dependent women confine the male by their
!desire to join with him. Describing Charles Bon’s departure for law :
I - I
school, Shreve suggests that the young maii may not have said good-bye to
the octoroon, to avoid her tearful clinging."Because,” says Shreve,
"you cant beat them: you just flee (and thank God you . . . can escape
. . . thanks . . . for the masculine hipless taperihgg peg which fits
light and glib to move where the cartridge-chambered hips of women hold
them fast)" (p. 312).
These men are exasperated when a woman refuses to accept male
iobjectified logic and morality as the only standard for living.
jMr. Compson and Quentin discuss this problem at length iii The Sound and
I ........
1 the Fury, and Faulkner commented on it in the Compson Appendix and
jelsewhere. In Absalom, Absalom!, Mr. Compson, General Compson, and
75
;Shreve all depict female amorality. Compson, who attributes this, trait j
i
1 - . |
jto Rosa and to the octoroon, is slightly amused by it in the former and
I I
ladmires it in the latter. He suggests that when Rosa made a trousseau
ifor.Judith, she stole the needed materials from under her parsimonious !
father's nose, "with that amoral boldness, that affinity for brigandage!
I in women" (pp. 77-78). He sees the octoroon as sexually amoral, as one
1 f
jwho knows of "strange and ancient curious pleasures of the flesh" and j
1 I
will indulge a man in them after only a pseudo-ceremony which masks the ■
i |
true monetary exchange which takes, place (pp. 116-117) .
■ General Compson is said to chide Thomas Sutpen about his ignorance :
;of the fact that females are indifferent to male logic. As Thomas calmly
! !
iexplained that he set aside his first wife and son because they could
i
| i
:not be incorporated into his design, and that his conscience had assured
;him that he had rectified the injustice, General Compson broke in
hollering, maybe even: "Conscience^ Conscience? Good God,man, :
what else did you expect? . . . AD/idn't the dread and fear of
females which you must have drawn in with the primary mammalian
milk teach you better? What kind of abysmal and purblind inno
cence could that have been which someone told you to call
virginity? what conscience to trade with which would have
warranted you in the belief that you could have bought immu
nity from her for no other coin but justice?" (p. 265).
Though General Compson agreed that Sutpen had done justice to Eulalia,
he was aware, as Thomas was not, that women do not always accept monetary
!payment as compensation for the loss of emotional and other non-tangible
| ' :
involvement.
i
j
j Shreve enlarges on the implication that Eulalia Boh might have
I
I
{sought vindication, and creates a woman so obsessed by the desire for
revenge that she gains no pleasure from the vast wealth Thomas left herj
Her fixation makes her the easy prey of the Dickensian lawyer whom j
l
■Shreve creates to be the actual manipulator of Charles Bon. In deciding
| i
|that the lawyer watched Sutpen and his family, kept track,of Charles's j
j . . . . . j
!entanglements , and maneuvered him into position, Shreve reveals another j
'assumption about women: they are capable of strong feeling but they do '
'not or cannot act. He implies that while women may be evil or desire
| ■ I
'evil, men are the ones who act in evil ways.
I — — —
j A final tendency condemned in women is a willingness to escape
■reality through illusion. Thus, Mr. Compson portrays Ellen Sutpen as a :
|"swamp-hatched butterfly, unimpeded by weight of stomach and all the
l
f
heavy organs of suffering and experience, /arising/ into a perennial
jbright vacuum of arrested sun" (pp. 69-70), having "escaped at last intp
a world of pure illusion in which, safe from any harm, she moved" (p.69).
|He believes that Ellen created the engagement of Judith and Charles outJ
,of this same capacity for illusion (pp. 70, 74-75).
I
While Compson describes Ellen's illusions in neutral tones, he
censures Rosa's; Shreve echoes him. Those who discuss the novel also
I
' 4
I follow Compson's lead. His comment depicting Southern ladies as
I
[voluble ghosts begins the portrayal of Rosa as one who escaped', life
i
i
’into illusion. He later reports that even while Rosa honored her
!
'father's wishes by withdrawing from the activities connected with the [
war, she wrote over a thousand poems glorifying the men who were fight-
ling. The first "was dated in the first year of her father's voluntary !
jincarceration . . . at two o'clock in the morning" (p. 83). Compson
I ^
!believes that Rosa loved Charles Bon vicariously through Judith, that
7 7 j
1 the trousseau Rosa sewed was as much her own as Judith’s (p. 77).Shrevej
I . 1
I continues this picture of Rosa by calling her the little "dream-woman" !
I
[who was blasted "out of the dovecote" by Thomas Sutpen's proposition !
i i
(that they breed and wait for the issue before marrying (p. 180). j
j
I Rosa’s narrative style--the demonics of Chapter I and the lyrical !
I i
jeffusion of Chapter V— contributes to this impression. One cannot view !
J
.her as escapist, however, since in 1909 she is motivated by her wish to.
!■ I
discern the reality of the situation at Sutpen's Hundred. This desire;
j j
1 i
causes Rosa to be what Elisabeth Muhlenfeld calls '
j |
| a character of major status, essential to /Absalom,Absalom!/,.
the catalyst who forces Sutpen's story to be considered: her
i narrative begins the novel and occurs again in the center, and
it is her last actions and her death which mark for Quentin
! the end of the Sutpen legend.^
i
: i
IRosa could not have survived to seek this reality without the aid of
' ■ fantasy.
| While excessive fantacizing can be destructive, all of Rosa’s
!fantasies are not detrimental. One must distinguish among the types of
fantasies that she has. The romantic ones, which produced the "summer .
;of wistaria" and the heroic poetry, serve positive ends, while those
.which demonized Sutpen and distorted Rosa’s view of Ellen, Judith, Henry,
I :
and Clytie are not so beneficial. Furthermore, under certain of the
'conditions in which Rosa lived, fantasies provide the motivation to
I
isurvive psychologically, spiritually, and sometimes even physically.
J Both Bruno Bettelheim and Victor Frankl have written that fantasy
6
is a survival technique used by those in concentration camps. While
l
[Olga Vickery and Elisabeth Muhlenfeld castigate Rosa for fanticizing,
both describe her life in terms which suggest the incarceration and
j ' ;
j deprivation experienced by those in such camps. Vickery points out that
! i
j Rosa's experience was narrow, that her desire to involve herself in life
.was nullified by her middle-aged guardians, that Rosa was "forever j
i . — 7 !
j watching other lives unfold while hers remain/ed/ unchanged." |
Muhlenfeld calls attention to the many images of imprisonment used in \
1 8 ■
’describing Rosa. Quentin first sees Rosa "sitting so bolt upright in ,
the straight hard chair that was so tall for her that her legs hung i
I
' straight and rigid as if she had iron shinbones and ankles" (p. 7).
j
The analogy suggests leg irons. Certainly the isolation enforced by
i . . . .
; her aunt and her father was a type of imprisonment; their negativism •
! ■ . ;
constantly stifled.her spirit.
(
; s Rosa attempted to identify romantically with Judith and Charles
i
J and their relationship during one of the few times she was away from ;
t
jboth of her repressive.guardians. In her fourteenth summer, Rosa '
gloried not only in vicarious involvement in the alleged romance, but
■ |
! also in the genuine sensuous pleasure of a summer spent close to
iburgeoning outdoor life. She mentions the heavy smell of the wistaria
|
land the look of the buds on the trees as they approached bursting
ripeness. This access to the outdoors was denied her in town, where .
the Coldfield house was kept closed, the blinds fastened, because
i
•"someone . . . believed that light and moving air carried heat and
i
' that dark was always cooler" (p. 7) .
| Rosa’s heroic poetry is not the escape from life that it has been
called, but exactly the opposite. As she was forced to accompany her
i
I father in his withdrawn rejection of life, she began to celebrate the
'activities going on outside the confines of her home. The war was being
! ' -- !
;fought; its soldierd were being honored for their courage. •
: Her demonizing seems less defensible. Yet when one views it in the
I ;
'context of her experiences, it is only somewhat excessive. Her reactions
1 I
1
[are understandable when one remembers her early conditioning, the events
i .. \
;she observed and heard of, and the lack of explanation she received from
i '
. the people directly involved.in those events. She saw or heard of
| . . , j
.destructive or violent things happening, the most notable being Henry1s I
| '
Imurder of Charles, and Wash Jones's murder of Thomas. She experienced
i
I
i
!her own "insult" from Thomas. Furthermore, Rosa’s view of life as a
!
!
jbattle between good and evil which requires her participation has kept
i i
.her alive. (Mr. Compson suggests as much in the letter announcing her
I
j death..) The "demonic vitality" which Vickery notes in Rosa's narrative
9 ;
springs from this engagement. It is not accidental that Rosa dies
i . . i
!soon after the Sutpen mystery has been solved and the Sutpen mansion
ihas been consumed by fire.
Rosa was forced to recognize that her perceptions did not always
fit reality, but she has not been devastated by this recognition. Her ■
I
first major confrontation with this discrepancy occurred when she rushed
,to aid Judith, who she thought would be the grieving "widow" of Charles
'Bon. Rosa could not comprehend the absence of grief in Judith’s face
■and demeanor. Such calm acceptance caused Rosa to question whether
I
Judith and Charles had ever loved each other,
j Rosa says she needed to
wake up— not from what was, what used to be, but from what had
| hot, could not have ever, been . . . from the hoping, who did
j Believe there Is a seemliness to bereavement even though grief
1 be absent; believed there would be need for /me/ to save not I
j love perhaps, not happiness nor peace, but what was left ; J
I behind by widowing— and found that there was nothing there toi
j save (p. 141). I
i j
I I
‘With the death of Charles Bon, Rosa lost more than the romantic '
1 !
!situation. In relinquishing the "might-have-been which is the single
rock we cling to above the maelstrom of unbearable reality," she was
giving up a belief in some larger virtues which had sustained her. She j
j i
;believed she needed this illusion because
i
\ while the stable world we had been taught to know dissolved
' . . . until peace and security were gone, and pride and hope,'
j there was left only maimed honor's veterans, and love. Yes, ;
i there should, there must, be love and faith . . . left with us
■ by fathers, husbands, sweethearts, brothers, who carried the
| pride and the hope of peace in honor* s vanguard . . . there ,
! must be these, else what do men fight for? what else worth
dying for? . . . . dying not for honor’s empty sake, nor
: pride nor even peace, but for that love and faith they left
behind (p. 150).
, Rosa’s bereavement here may result as much from the loss of the qualities.-
!
Charles symbolized for her as from the loss of him as an individual.
(Though Rosa never saw Charles, she says that his murder stopped her
!"dead as though by some palpable intervention," and left her "immobile,
i impotent, helpless; fixed"'.:until she could die (pp. 151-152).
I
; Southern women tenaciously kept plantations running, provided for
I !
i
ithose who were dependent upon them for daily care and sustenance, and >
I
inursed their male relatives who were fighting the war. Yet their
I activities were seen as supportive, not central, since they were denied;
|first-hand involvement in the fighting. Rosa may have desired such ;
front-line involvement. A woman of strong feeling, who wanted to be {
I
I
lactive in the war effort, she was restrained by Southern conventions !
t |
and by her father’s rejections of the war. She directed the psychic :
I
attached to these feelings into intense support of the men who j
i
|did participate. When it appeared that these men might not warrant her 1
i !
[loyalty, she was twice thwarted and her disappointment was great.
, \
| Rosa’s need to revere aeliving representative of the values she [
: l
* !
’ associated with the South may have contributed to the radical change in j
! |
her feelings toward Thomas Sutpen. With Charles Bon's death, Rosa i
isought someone else to serve in this representative role.
■ As Rosa describes the period between Charles's death and Thomas's
l
return from the war, one can see her changing toward Thomas. As she
experienced one of the few times of peace and serenity in her life, Rosa
began to know a female kinship with Judith and Clytie, as they worked
together to provide food, clothes, and shelter for themselves. This
kinship was not articulated, yet this sense of unity with two other
women who would continue to aid Thomas in his Struggle to build a
;dynasty probably made Rosa more receptive to him.
Another aspect of Rosa’s personality played a significant part in
1
I
f
her willingness to marry/Thomas. Several critics make the point that
I
Rosa was denied the opportunity to experience any relationship tradi-
i
itionally associated with female fulfillment, especially wife and mother
hood, yet none offers evidence that Rosa had the capacity or the desire '
1 10 i
[to do either. While I find no strong indication that Rosa desired
the sexual and companionate aspects of wifehood, there is much to indi-
I
[cate that she had strong maternal instincts,desired to exercise them,
and did so when she could. These instincts— as much as, or more than, j
i
j the romanticism which others;have criticized her for— prompted her to j
!accept Thomas's offer. .
I
j I
1d Rosa often performs functions associated with motherhood. She
i
I feeds others and cares for them, teaches or wants to teach others, helps
! i
I
or wants to help them. In charge of her father and his household by
ithe time she was ten years old, Rosa kept him alive during his attic :
i
:exile, finding and preparing all their food. She sewed on the
! I
|trousseau for Judith and offered to instruct her niece in the rudiments"
lof housekeeping and sewing. She felt bound by her promise to her sister
;to protect Judith after Ellen's death. In addition, Rosa’s.;description
■ of her fourteenth summer contains much birth and maternal imagery, as
:she fells of her desire to teach Judith about love and to serve both
;Judith and Charles. Elisabeth Muhlenfeld points out that Rosa was
! 11
raised to be passive and to serve all. This passivity and willingness
!
to serve, along with Rosa's interest in the nurturing and teaching
;aspects of maternity, begin to explain her receptivity when Thomas
;approached her. Though Rosa doescnot understand why she accepted
I
Thomas's proposal, she suggests some insight when she says, "he had
i
,needed me, used me; why should 1 rebel now, because he would use me
I
1
'more?" (p. 163).
I---- 4
| In fact, during the three months after Thomas's return, Rosa began
i :
;to see him as , one who would need assistance. Her descriptions of him
j
i '
I at this time contain fewer demonic terms, more sympathetic ones. She
saw him as preoccupied but courageous. She stresses the fact that he
Iwas completely absorbed in rebuilding Sutpen's Hundred:_____
83
himself diffused and iri solution held by that electric furious
immobile urgency and awareness of short time and the heed for I
j haSte as if he , , . realized that he was old . ■ . and was (
( concerned (hot afraid: concerned) not that old age might have ■
left him impotent to do what he intended to.do, but that he I
might not have time to do it in .... he would hot even j
: pause for breath before undertaking to restore /all/ . . . . i
! We did not kriow how he would go about it, nor I believe did !
; he. . . . But it did riot.stop him, intimidate him , (160). !
! ■
‘She had begun to put the best light on Sutpen's behavior. She adds
I"not afraid: concerned," to diminish any negative impression the j
'listener might form, and implies her admiration for Sutpen's deter- ,
!
imination. She tells of his long, hard-working days, of his ability to
| ' ;
1get work out of men like Wash Jones, of his courageous stand against
(the proto-Ku Klux Klan. Though she realizes how that he was pursuing
•a delusion, Rosa says that she did not recognize it completely at that
itime. For though Rosa was twenty years old, she was
j
}
i
■ still a child, still living in that womb-like corridor .
where with the quiet and unalarmed amazement of a. child /she/
j she watched the miragy antics of /her family and the Sutpens/
: called honor, principle, marriage, love, bereavement, death
; . . . /yet/ not a child but one of that triumvirate mother-
; woman /Judith, Clytie and Rosa/ . . . which fed and clothed
i and warmed the static shell and so gave vent and scope to the :
! fierce vain illusion and so said, "At last my life is worth
; something, even though it only shields and guards the antic
| fury of an insane-child" (162).
This passage suggests the reasons for bothu Rosa*'S,_acceptance of Thomas's
proposal and her outraged rejection of his proposition.. Although at the
!
|time she felt part of a mother-^triumvirate which cared for Thomas as an
!"insane child," Rosa was still too much a child herself to deal with
his subsequent suggestion.
84 I
!
I As Rosa revised her view of Sutpen, she revised her view of herself*
I '
I ;
|Earlier she had seen herself as practically worthless, without skill; i
!
;now she perceived that through service she could exert the power to
j
:elevate those aspects of Thomas which had declined while aiding those j
I
jwhich she still admired. She realized that he was partly insane, but
,she believed "there was that spark, that crumb in madness which is :
i divine,1 1 and she saw that "only his compelling dream . . . was insane
i !
,. . . riot his methods" (pp. 166-167). Rosa says that she had forgiven,
|and obliterated, her demonic view of Thomas. He had returned from the i
I war "villain true enough, but a mortal fallible one less to invoke fear
I . . . . .
than pity" (p. 167). And she believed that Thomas saw her as "sun and
! — |
/light" after years of living in 'darkness and morass" (pp. 166-167).
t
j Rosa’s dream that her service and teaching might be used ended
jwhen Thomas approached her with his earthy proposition. As Olga Vickery
i
;has said, this proposition destroyed both Rosa’s image of Sutpen and
12
Rosa's view of herself. Remembering that Thomas now embodied the
lvalues Rosa honored, one understands why she describes this experience
as "the death of hope and love, the death of pride and principle, and
|then the death of everything save the Old outraged and aghast unbe-
i
ilieving which has lasted for forty-three years" (p. 168). Rosa's great'
;disillusionment is exactly analogous to that which Wash Jones felt when
l
.Sutpen rejected Milly and her child: genuine shock that someone who
I
jrepresents the essential virtues of the society proves not to possess
Sone of those virtues. It is also, ironically, somewhat like the sense
.of disorientation felt by the young Thomas Sutpen after his first
Lre;pudiation: belief in one system is shattered by exposure to_.ano.ther.
85
, If one also remembers that Rosa was losing her new sense of
i
jameliorative power, one understands why she reacted so intensely. As \
i ... '
!Muhlenfeld'notes, Faulkner does, not condemn this response completely. j
'Rosa's hatred of Sutpen is, seen as extreme, but her refusal here is ;
13 1
[presented as inevitable and morally right. 1
! I
; Rosa's behavior from this point on is marked by so much active j
I determination that one doubts she ever was as ineffective as she feels.■
* i
After rejecting Thomas's proposition, Rosa courageously left Sutpen's i
; I
i . . |
[Hundred and returned to Jefferson to eke out her survival. Though
I ;
! Judith— and Jefferson neighbors— helped her, she does not seem to have ]
i
i
jexpected such assistance. Rosa never loses the fierce energy which she
shows in compelling Quentin to listen to her story and to aid her.
i
i
|(Granted, his passivity makes such persuasion fairly easy.)
1 In fact, Rosa is the only present-time character to initiate
iaction, and her intensity in both of the 1909 visits to Sutpen's ;
Hundred attests to her continued strength. These last two visits, made
'in the continuing spirit of her desire to know the truth and to aid
others, confirm her intuition that Henry is still alive and hiding at
Sutpen's Hundred and represent her attempt to bring him medical aid.
Sally R. Page points out that descriptions of Rosa as an old woman,
constantly juxtapose images of age and tomblike imprisonment with
'images of childlikenessThe room where Rosa sits is "dim hot air-
iless," and filled with "coffin-smelling gloom." She is dressed "in
'the eternal black which she had worn for forty-three years," and
:Quentin smells "the rank smell of female old flesh long embattled in
■ virginity." Rosa is too small for the chair, so her legs hang "clear
jof the floor with that air of impotent and static rage like children's j
i . , , , . f
Ifeet"; she looks like "a crucified child1* (pp. 7-8). When.Quentin j
i •
i
■imagines Rosa during heir last visit to Sutpen1s Hundred, he sees her
i
; i
jas "the small furious grim implacable woman not much larger than a j
[child," clawing, scratching, and biting the men who kept her from 1
I - I
[entering the burning Sutpen house, "fighting like a doll in a nightmare"
j(p. 375). ‘ !
! - |
j Tragically, circumstances deprived Rosa from experiencing the 1
jnormal stages of development at the appropriate times. Her father and
aunt never treated her as a child; the rest of Jefferson and Yoknapa-
\
jtawpha County, with the exception of Clytie, always treated her as one."
[Her birth into a home dominated by older people with rigid religious,
i !
i . ;
[moral and social ideas deprived her of play and freedom of responsi- j
t
ibility. Though a child in years, Rosa was forced to develop an adult ;
I ,
[sense of responsibility toward others. Yet her birth into Southern
whitec society, coupled with her diminuitive physical stature, caused
others to ignore her potential as a mature adult. The fantacizing which
she was forced to do in childhood as a survival mechanism also made it ;
difficult for her to adjust to adult life.
: Yet the tomb imagery associated with Rosa should not lead to
unquestioning agreement with Mr. Compson’s assertion that she is a
|
ighost. One should not.rely.on'images of imprisonment, albeit in a
i
jtomb-like setting, to conclude that the person imprisoned is dead and
[ephemeral when one has much evidence to the contrary. Certainly, Rosa’s
potential has been stifled, and she often feels victimized. Yet her
1 .
[environment could kill neither her physical nor her psychological
energy. Though she is often unaware of her own power, she has used
f
. . . . I
jseveral strategies to stay alive and energetic. Only Shreve, in the ;
j i
jpresent, approaches her in intensity, so it is inaccurate to dismiss her
las a Southern lady ghost. Unlike Quentin, who will use the past to j
i • \
1 I
!justify his death, Rosa has used the past to keep herself alive. She ;
|dies when the business of the past is concluded.
[ Further, while Rosa's iconology is far-fetched, she is mostly right
! i
: on the main points about Thomas Sutpen's destructive effect. Although '
I j
Rosa's own life parallels Thomas's as a series of denials, her denials ■
! '
joften resulted from her obedience to her aunt and father. Given the
;opportunity to serve or to teach, to participate in life in ways she
i
considered moral, Rosa said yes. She refused Thomas's proposition not
,so much because of an abhorrence of sexual congress as because she
would not be used as a thing. Such dehumanization was counter to the
f
’ ■ code which she honored.
Rosa tells Quentin the Sutpen story so that he might write if for
others to read, just as Judith gave Charles Bon's letter to Grandmother
Compson. Yet perhaps there is an even closer analogy with Thomas
;Sutpen's desire for perpetuity through the creation of his design: each
; time the Sutpen legend is repeated, Rosa will have gained a certain
immortality . Like Judith, Rosa values an exchange between the living; Jake
i f
Thomas, she also wants the continuance gained when something is left ,
t
; for future generations to see or hear.
j An even stronger motivation may be her desire to teach those
I
.generations. Quentin.senses that she wants him to repeat the legend
; "so that people whom she will never see and whose names she will never
hear and who have never heard her name nor seen her face will read it
I
jand know at last why God let us lose the War"(p. 11). j
| Both the portrayal of Rosa and the portrayal of Judith illustrate |
I
I the disparity that can exist between opinions about a woman and the z j
j !
|evidence provided by her actual behavior. The portrayal of Judith is j
i ^
!further complicated by the' fact that Judith shows character development;
i |
:in a novel in which most characters are static. These two factors have:
i
,led to discussions of Judith which come to invalid.conclusions about '
I
' 15
her place in the novel; usually they view her negatively. '
' I would argue that most of the negative comments about Judith, and'
similar portrayals of her, occur in unreliable narratives. Eyewitness
i '
;reports of her behavior suggests that although she may have vented her
energy in unbridled actions as a child, she channeled that energy into
‘courageous and compassionate endurance as an adult. In fact, as '
Cleanth Brooks has suggested, one must look to Judith "to find respon
sible action and a real counter to Sutpen's ruthlessness." Brooks
praises Judith as "one of Faulkner's finest characters of endurance—
not merely through numb, bleak stoicism but also through compassion and
love . . . concern for her fellow man."^
We learn of Judith's life, and gather opinions about her, from the'
I
:present-time narratives of Rosa and Mr. Compson. Mr. Compson also
I
.reports General Compson's.observations from the past. Shreve's picturej
; >
builds on the earlier narratives. Since Rosa spent time with Judith,
'she can report on things she saw, but she cannot be accepted as a
;completely reliable source of opinion because she projects many of her
own feelings and views into her interpretations of Judith's actions.
jMr. Compson’s descriptions of Judith are totally suspect. General
I Compson's reports about Judith's.behavior, along with his wife's story j
of her conversation with Judith, seem to contain the most credible j
. i
j information. This possibility is enhanced when the nameless narrator !
i i
| chooses to support the descriptions of the old Compsons.' j
! Rosa's romanticism and sense of victimization color her portrait j
of Judith. Since many of her experiences with Judith forced her to see,
the discrepancy between her illusions and reality, she expresses doubtsj
' about Judith's behavior and motivations which arise from her own
preconceptions, yet Rosa is committed to honest reporting and gives :
i ' !
1 details of behavior without omitting even.those things she does not 1
(
' agree with or does not understand.
| Rosa remembers that as a child,Judith, seeking excitement, urged I
*
the wild negro driver to race the family carriage to church, and hid in
\
. ; the barn loft to watch her father wrestle his negro slaves. When Ellen's
; phaeton replaced the carriage and her gentle mare replaced the faster
horse, Judith went into hysterics (p. 25). She .suffered no such
° reaction as she watched the bloody wrestling matches (p. 30).
!
i
Rosa's intense romanticism can convince the reader that her
rhetorical apostrophes on love in general and the love of Charles Bon
| in particular represent Judith's sentiments. In fact, Rosa says that
I
1 !
| she was puzzled by Judith1s lack of apparent romantic ardor. When ;
I ....... .
| Rosa describes her "summer of wistaria," she waxes lyrical about the
i love between Judith and Charles, yet she adds equivocating remarks which
must be heeded. Rosa says that her love for Bon was "not as women love,
.as, Judith;loved him, or as we thought she did" (pp. 146-147). .During
|this summer, Rosa dreamed of Charles as she "believed /Judith/ dreamed"
i(p. 148). Yet she is forced to admit, "I do hot even know of my own I
iknowledge . . . that Judith ever loved" (p. 147) 1
* !
i I
I call attention to these qualifying statements, both in this !
i - i
jversion and in subsequent ones, not necessarily to suggest that Judith ,
' ' I
■did not love Charles, since her loyalty to him and her care of his son
indicate that she did. Ti^hat I do wish to discount is the idea that
;Judith was a dreamy, sentimental maiden. This view is supported with •
|Rosa's lyrical effusions and with Mr. Compson's speculative descriptions'
I
I
‘of the young Judith.
i :
| Compson first creates the "musing maiden"' portrait of Judith when
i
!he describes her pre-pubescence as:
!
i that transition state between childhood and womanhood where
she was . . . inaccessible. . . where, though still visible, *
1 young girls appear as though seen through glass and where even
the voice cannot reach them; where they exist (this the hoyden
who could— and did— outrun and outclimb, and ride and fight
both with and beside her brother) in a pearly lambence without
shadows and themselves partaking of it; in nebulous suspension
held, strange and unpredictable, even their very shapes fluid
; and delicate and without substance; not in themselves floating
and seeking but merely waiting, parasitic and potent and
serene, drawing to themselves without effort the post-genitive
1 upon and about which to. shape, flow into back, breast; bosom, ;
| flank, thigh (p. 67)-^
^Compson, clearly enchanted with this state, sees it as a period when the
I
‘dreaded female exists in distanced suspension. Not. yet fully female, for
!she bests her brother in all male pursuits, she is also not yet sexual, i
■since the physical woman has not matured. Preserved for a time in the
!amber of becoming, she is "inaccessible"; therefore, the male need not
i
j . ...
!have contact with her. For Compson, this is a blessed relief. Yet he ,
91
jfears what she will become, seeing her as "parasitic and potent" even
| I
'in this state of limbo.
I
I
I
i Compson is probably closer to the facts when he suggests that Henry
l
; I
•made all the moves which seduced Charles Bon. Compson believes that j
jHenry and Ellen took up so much of Charles's time during his visits to j
[Sutpen's Hundred that there was no space left to court Judith. Yet
through a curiously illogical synapse, Compson leaps to the assertion j
that by the summer of 1860 Judith was a "mature woman in love" (p. 105),'
and that she exchanged letters with Bon after he left Sutpen's Hundred 1
I ;
with Henry. '
; i
The second version by Mr. Compson continues the assumptions that
jEllen and Henry were the active agents in the engagement between Judith :
|and Charles. This time, however, Compson suggests that Judith and ;
'Charles corresponded from the time of his first visit to Sutpen's
Hundred. Compson now says that when Thomas saw that Judith loved
iCharles, he felt compelled to tell Henry about Bon's relationship to
their family (p. 269).
Shreve's view of Judith during the courtship echoes Miss Rosa's
romantic version. He creates Judith as her first meeting with Charles
the sister, the virgin— . . . who to know what she saw that
afternoon when they rode up the drive, what prayer, what
maiden meditative dream ridden up out of whatever fabulous ‘
land . . .the silken and tragic.Lancelot nearing thirty i . .
wearied, sated with what experiences and pleasures, which
. Henry's letters must have created for her (p. 320).
•For Shreve, Judith is a passive pawn. She was moved by her mother into ,
v
I 92;
! " i
jproximity with Charles, who was too preoccupied by his concern about !
i I
|Thomas to court-her, and won by her brother1s eloquence to love this i
i ■
i :
iman who did little himself to seduce her. Shreve suggests that at i
I i
1 !
isome point, Judith interrupted her "just being, just existing and j
; .......... ... i
|breathing," to say,"All right. JC will do anything he might ask me to do'
i
:and that is why he will never ask me to do anything that I consider ;
I
'dishonorable" (p. 329). Shreve also decides, though, that Judith was
; i
!strong and determined, since she would have been disappointed when 1
i ;
Charles continued to be near her without asking her to marry him, yet
I
I
!she continued to care for him.
i
| In contrast to these creationsj reports of Judith’s behavior after
! t
iHenry and Charles left Sutpen’s Hundred on Christmas Eve 1860 do not
jpresent her as a musing*romantic maiden. Instead, they indicate that
j ;
ishe showed the courage and strength evident in her childhood behavior.
i ;
(Since most of the details of her life fit this pattern, then, those who
discuss her must point out that if she was ever sentimentally romantic
and musing— and the sources of that evidence must be carefully weighed— :
:she was so for only a short period. This behavior, if it occurred, is
‘an aberration.
Mr. Compson says that Rosa and the town saw no change in Judith's
,actions toward her father after he had quarreled with Henry (pp. 79-80).
jHe describes Judith then as "the Sutpen with the ruthless Sutpen code of
t
taking what it wanted provided it were strong enough . . . she would
. . . . ;
■have taken Bon anyway"(pp. 120-121). Yet Judith continued to treat her ■
father with respect, and she honored the probation which Henry demanded.
I Impressed by that endurance which allowed Judith to maintain the j
Srelationship with her father while she knew that something he had done j
I :
[had deprived her of both a brother and a suitor, Compson is forced to i
j I
i conclude that Judith acted j
; !
i 1
\ ■
j from some of the old virtues . . . giving implicit trust 1
where she had given love, giving implicit love where she had ,
j derived breath and pride: that true pride - . .which can say;
; to itself without abasement I love, I will accept no substi-
! tute; something has happened between him and my father; if my
I father was right, I will never see him again, if wrong he will
! come or send for me; if happy I can be I will, if suffer I j
j must 1 can (pp. 121-122).
i
[compson stresses Judith's obedience to Thomas and Henry in his second '
version of the legend, as well. He believes that she aquiesced even
jthough she retained her loyalty to Charles. J
j
i He elaborates on Rosa's description of Judith's calm and strength
during the war. He pictures Judith taking care of Ellen, who grew
childlike and helpless while she waited to die, working with Clytie to
grow and prepare the food they needed to survive, and going to town to
help the other women in the improvised hospital as they tended the wounded
and dying. During this period.Ellen died, Mr. Coldfield died, Henry
'shot Charles, and Rosa was added to Judith's care. Yet through it all
Judith moved "with the same impenetrable and serene face, only a little
older . . . a little thinner now " (p. 125). j
t
J Judith's reaction when Henry murdered Charles shows she was able to!
f ,
remain calm in the face of an intensely moving situation. Rosa remembers
that Judith's voice from the top of the stairs was "cold" and "still," ;
sounding like "the house itself speaking , . . though it was Judith's
| voice1' (p. 142) . Rosa recalls .-that Judith stood "before h closed door
t . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
which she would not allow me to enter— a woman more strange to me than j
j to any grief for : being so'less its partner"(p. 149). Judith cooked and|
iate a meal, remaining "calm, cold and tranquil" as Charles lay dead j
t !
|in the room above,and Wash Jones and a helper built the coffin under
1 l
'Judith's supervision. Judith even took time to go out to feed the
chickens (p. 151). She did not weep as they carried Charles out to :
;bury him; her only concern was to provide proper Catholic ceremony. As!
i
they returned to the house, she talked in a "serene quiet voice . . . !
:of plowing corn and cutting winter wood" (p. 152).
This quiet competence set the tone for the period when the three
women lived at Sutpen's Hundred with only Wash Jones to help them. Rosa
;says that she, Judith and Clytie "existed in an apathy which was almost;
i :
peace, like that of the blind unsentient earth itself which dreams
after no flower1s stalk nor.bud, envies not the airy musical solitude of
the springing leaves it nourishes" (p. 155). She remembers that during
this time racial, age and class differences were forgotten, The women
lived "amicably," engaged not in destruction, as the men were, but in
conservation, growth, and construction when possible. Their only source
!of fear was the degraded Southern veterans who wandered through the area
; attacking and destroying the very lands, homes and women they had • .
; started and fought the war to protect.
| The women talked little except about their daily business, of
Thomas and his return, or of Henry. They never spoke of Charles, but
; Rosa and Clytie knew that twice in the late fall Judith went to clear
his_grave of dead leaves and other refuse, "returning at supper time
! 95
i
1 serene and calm" (p. 158).
i ' ■
i Rosa is not the only narrator who knows something of Judith during!
I ' *
; this period. The Compson family holds a letter which Charles Bon wrote'
! .■ ;
to Judith, a letter which Judith brought to Grandmother Compson the ■
.. . . . ’ i
; week after Charles was buried. No one, including Judith, seems to have!
! i
; known why she chose Mrs. Compson.
Like Rosa, Grandmother Compson noticed Judith's serenity, her i
seeming lack of grief (p. 127). When Mrs. Compson asked Judith what ;
! to do with the letter, Judith replied with the statement which is known'
| as the "loom theory" of existence. Mrs. Compson had just asked if she
' should preserve the letter, and Judith replied:
Yes .... Or destroy it. As you like. Read it if you like
or dont read it if you like. Because you make so little im
pression, you see. You get born and you try this and you dont
know why only you keep on trying it and you are born at the
same time with a lot of other people, all mixed up with them,
like trying to, having to, move your arms and legs with ;
strings only the same strings are hitched to all the other
arms and legs and the others all trying and they dont know
i why either except that the strings are all in one another's
' way like five or six people all trying to make a rug on the
same loom only each one wants to weave his own pattern into
the rug; and it cant matter, you know that, or the Ones that
I set up the loom would have arranged things a little better,
and yet it must matter because you keep on trying or having to,
j keep on trying and then all of a sudden it's all over and all
; you have left is a block of stone with scratches on it pro
vided there was someone to remember to have the marble
1 scratched and set it up or had time to . • • and after a
j while they don't even remember thas name and what the scratches.
, were trying to tell, and it doesn't matter. And so maybe if
• you couid go to.someone, the stranger the better, and give
j them something— a scrap of paper— . . . anything, it not to
mean anything in itself and them not even to read it or keep
| it, not even bother to throw it away or destroy it, at least
it would be something just because it would have happened, be
remembered even if only from passing from one hand to another,
; one mind to another, and it would be at least a scratch,
[ something, something that might make a mark on something that
was once for the reason that it can die someday, while the !
i block of stone cant be.is because it never can become was j
j because it cant ever die or perish (p. 127). !
i ' [
; There are three explicit metaphysical statements in Absalom, |
'Absalom! . Appropriately, Mr. Compson reports two. Judith's appears i
i
'in his first version of the legend; the one General Compson developed'
to explain Thomas Sutpen's action appears in his second version.
■Quentin's theory appears as he reacts to his father's second version. .
;In order to compare the theories, I will present all three here,
i
Although a more detailed discussion of Quentin's formulation will
I
appear in the following chapter.
As Quentin reports his father's second version of the legend, he !
remembers hearing Mr. Compson tell the story, notices that Shreve
sounds like Mr. Compson, and thinks:
Maybe nothing ever happens once.and is finished. Maybe happen
is never once but like ripples maybe on water after the pebble
sinks, the ripples moving on, spreading, the pool attached by
a narrow umbilical water-cord to the next pool . . . let this
second pool contain a different temperature of water, a .
different molecularity of having seen, felt, remembered,
reflect in a different tone the infinite unchanging sky, it
i doesn't matter: that pebble's watery echo whose fall it did not
even see moves across its surface too at the original ripple
I space, to the old ineradicable rhythm (pp. 261-262).
' Immediately following this metaphysical statement, Quentin.reports
; the theory which his grandfather developed as he listened to Thomas
.'Sutpen's . legalistic statements about setting aside his first wife and
son. General Compson thought that Sutpen saw the world with
that innocence which believed that the ingredients of morality
■ were like the ingredients of piecor cake and once you had
I measured them and balanced them and put them into the oven it
, was all finished and nothing but pie or cake could come out i
; (p. 263).
, I
I ;
i
I '
Of the three statements, Judith’s is the most complete and contains
I
'the most affirmative view of life. This assertion seems questionable
when her theory is set against Thomas's "pie and cake" view, but it will
i
be substantiated as the discussion continues. The theories have been :
formulated by three successive generations: General Compson (about j
Thomas), Judith, and Quentin. But they are presented in a different
'order. Judith’s is given first, Quentin’s second, and Thomas's third.
!
iThe significance of this order will be noted subsequently. j
I
Thomas and Judith approach life actively. He is said to measure
i
!and mix ingredients, to manipulate people, things and experiences; she :
Italks of moving one’s legs and;.arms, with strings attached to them, to :
I
form a patterned rug. The activity in his world forms something which ^
i
,will be consumed. There is dramatic irony in the fact that the quick
disappearance of a pie or cake prefigures the:ephemeral quality of the
dynasty Thomas founded. Judith’s theory, on the other hand, posits an
Activity directed toward producing something which will last. This
concern to leave something behind appears to have motivated'Judith to
l
ibring the letter to Mrs. Compson. Quentin's theory expresses passivity
'and contains no possibility for creation:.
i
' Faulkner’s syntax in the loom theory is masterful. One first learns^
I
.only that the moving arms and legs are tied to strings, an image that
suggests that the people are puppets. Then Faulkner adds the clari
fication that the strings are attached to a loom and that the arms and
! 98
t
!
ilegs are moving the strings, not being moved by them. Faulkner later
seems to return to the original premise by adding the reference to the
I i
!
iOnes who set up the loom, yet he also includes the sense of individual j
i i
1 impulse in the stress on each person1s having to weave his own pattern. [
I
i ‘ :
jFrom a theological perspective, Thomas's metaphysics emphasizes free |
5 . . I
i i
■will, since he does all the acting upon .others. Quentin emphasizes
! ' i
secular determinism since all things happening now are caused by and
!related . to. . all things that happened before. Only Judith's theory J
i - I
offers elements of both free will and determinism, since the individual
attached to the loom must act, out of his own need to create, but his
! t
|actions intersect with the actions of others, while the Ones who set up
I
I
'the loom look on.
I
I Judith's theory incorporates part of Thomas's philosophy not
;included in General Compson's formulation but evident throughout
I i
;Thomas's story; neither Thomas nor Judith will admit defeat. Even
though the attempt to make the rug is frustrated by the intersections
■and interactions of all the other arms and legs and strings, even
though "it cant matter," Judith decides, "it must matter because you
keep on trying or having to keep on trying." This willingness to con
tinue purposeful individual activity even though one doesn't understand
the larger purpose, if there is one, is central to Judith's theory.
I
1 This perserverence informed Judith's response to Grandmother J
fcompson's unspoken, though clearly;implied, fear that this visit was part
of the preparation for suicide. Judith responded with three reasons for
staying alive. The first, purely altruistic, was that "somebody will
have to take care of Clytie and father." , The second supports the
I 99]
| )
I
icontention that Judith was probably never the sentimental romantic |
| !
I created by Rosa, Mr. Compson and Shreve. Judith refused to believe that
! I
!people killed themselves for love. The third reason suggests an almost:
i ■ ,
^humorous practicality. Judith said that Just after the war there wouldj
[be no point in suicide because there would be no room for the deadIto I
; ■ j
go; all would be fullXp. 128).
| i
! Judith showed her first difference from her father when she
|recognized that others existed as independent beings and that their |
I existence influenced her own. Aware that those others had as much I
|
right to weave their own patterns as she did, she would alter her life *
i ;
!somewhat out of her concern for them, while retaining the independence j
I i
1 to continue trying to weave her own pattern. She prefigured Quentin's
'awareness that others affect one's life, but unlike him, she did not 1
see herself as the totally passive responder to, or repeater of, those
1 others.
I
Judith's second difference from her father is that her theory, like
Quentin's, incorporates a sense that change is part of life. In
contrast to Thomas's recipe for discrete ingredients which can be
measured to form another discrete entity, Judith's theory pictures
moving arms and legs attached to strings, each person trying to weave
his own pattern. Various forms of the words "move" and "try" are
repeated throughout the theory; both carry the connotation of dynamism ;
iwhich counters the static nature of the "innocence" formulation.
I
|Though Quentin's theory shares this sense of movement, it does not share
the sense of purpose. Instead, Quentin sees himself passively caught
I • •
i
!in the grip of a flux external to himself.
100
One can now see why Judith's theory,is the most affirmative. [
I ■ !
| Although Thomas's theory, with its emphasis on activity and freeowill,
I • ■■ ;
! would seem the most positive, it is not. By believing that the com-
!ponents of life were static and could be manipulated without changing |
I internally or in the way they interacted from one time to the next, ;
, • • I
; Thomas was doomed to fail through ignorance and miscalculation. He had,
I
!adhered rigidly to his*design from his teens, allowing nothing and no ;
! ' 'I
lone to alter it or him; however, not all people are statically bound by!
[ !
■ such.legalistic views of the world. Any theory.which assumes such
I
1 j
!human constancy will surely fail in its application, since most people
change as the circumstances around them change. Quentin's theory, on '
the other hand, posits a world where all is process. His theory betters
.Thomas's in its awareness of others and of the flux that is integral to
'life, but its passivity dooms its possessor to the sense of helpless^
1 ness which leads to self-destruction. Only Judith's theory combines
the awareness of others, and of change, needed for a realistic view of
life,with the determined, active approach necessary to deal with that
life.
Faulkner presents Judith's theory before the other two. The
reader, given the most complete and effective approach to" life initially,
can have it in mind when he is presented with the other two theories.
,In this way, the "loom theory" serves as the implicit standard by which'
I " "
jthe next theories are to be judged. The fact that Judith articulates
jthis theory strongly:supports the claims made here that most of the
positive functions in the novel are performed by women and that Judith
;is the most admirable character in the.book.
i o i :
Judith continued to care for others, with Clytie's assistance,
until her death. While Thomas lived, she aided his attempts to reju-
I ■ . >
|Venate the plantation and the family line, even making a dress for Milly
|Jones while Thomas was breeding with her. After Thomas was killed,
1 !
■ Judith received his body "tearless and stone-faced." She wanted to ,
' I
1 i
|hold the funeral at the Methodist church where Thomas and Ellen had been
I »
,married, ijhen the mules pulling the wagon carrying the coffin bolted,
i !
.heaving Thomas’s corpse into a ditch, Judith pulled him out, took him !
[ |
back to the cedar grove, and read the service herself.
! The portrait of Judith’s aging is profoundly moving. Compson says!
'she aged
not as the weak grow old . . . but.. . . with a kind of
condensation, an anguished emergence of the primary indomi
table ossification which the soft color and texture, the light
electric aura of youth, had merely temporarily assuaged but
never concealed. The spinster in homemade and shapeless
clothing, with hands which cOuid either transfer eggs or hold■
a plow straight iri furrow .... And no tears, no bereavement
• • • she had no time to mourn since she ran the store herself
. . . carrying the keys in hei apron pocket, hailed from the
kitchen or the garden or even from the field since she and
Clytie now did all the plowing which was done . . . until she
sold the store at last and spent the money for a tombstone
i (pp. 185-186).
I
‘First Judith bought Charles Bon's tombstone, then she paid part of the
i
{cost of Charles Etienne Bon’s, depositing the money for part of the cost
,of his tombstone with General Compson while Clytie was in New Orleans
!finding the boy to bring him hack to Sutpen’s Hundred.
j Judith somehow managed to find the octoroon and invite her to come,
i >
( with her eleven-year-old son to mourn at Charles' grave. Grandfather i
Compson observed the scene when the-octoroon knelt at the grave while
102 |
I
(Judith stood "in the attitude of an indifferent guide in a museum, !
! - . . . . . . . . j
waiting, probably not even watching" (p. 194). Judith and Clytie then ;
f
|served the octoroon for a week. Later, after Clytie had brought the [
j b o y from New Orleans to live at Sutpen’s Hundred, she and Judith cared j
' _ I
(for him and assisted him with the troubles which dogged his young j
! I
'manhood.
I
Mr. Compson's projection of racist views' into the description of (
Judith has been discussed earlier, and that discussion demonstrated that
‘the reports of Judith’s behavior emphatically contradict any attempt to
j ' '
see her as racist (chapter II, pp. 58-61).
Compson also suggests that Judith was seductive, when he creates
! ’
!the scene between her and Charles Etienne as a young man, though
nothing in her observed behavior will support the possibility that she ’
‘ behaved seductively at any time. Compson claims that Judith tried to
convince Charles Etienne to abandon his wife and unborn child to go
north and that the young man resisted. Compson says that Judith treated
Charles Etienne
' iL®. if. he were some wild bird or beast which might take flight
i at the expansion and Contraction of her nostrils or the move-
1 Jnent of her breast . . . as if she stood on the outside of the
! thicket into which she had cajoled the animal which she knew
i was watching her though she could not see it . . . she not
daring to put out the hand with which she could have actually!
touched it but instead just speaking to it, her voice soft and
swooning, filled with the seduction, the Celestial promise ;
which is the female!s weapon (p. 208).
,Portraying Judith as one who would seek to "trap" a free, spirit simply
does not fit with the behavior'described by Rosa and General Compson.
iBoth agree that Judith did not even seduce Charles Bon; they further
103
jrecognize that Judith*s caring behavior toward others was never felt j
|
i
; as intrusive or c a p t i v a t i n g ,
j - i
| Since Judith exhibited no racial prejudice, there is no, basis for
|the suggestion that she helped Charles Etienne as a young man because
i 20
;she felt guity about her treatment of him as a boy. Nor is there any;
'indication from substantiated material that Judith nursed Charles
Etienne during his fatal case of yellow fever because she had learned of
1 his .blood' kinship to her; Mr. Compson's speculations have no solid
1 "21 . . .
base. Rosa and General Compson both say that neither Thomas nor
.Henry appears to have told Judith what caused the rift between them or
what caused the tensions between each of them and Charles Bon. Southern
; , . i
gentlemen commonly dealt with ladies in this reticent way. The only
5 opportunity that Judith might have had to learn that Charles was her
|half-brother would have been her confrontation with Henry on the day
\
I
-he murdered Charles. One doubts whether Henry would have told his
I
reasons, for to present Judith with such knowledge would have defiled
the very purity which Henry was trying to preserve.
Judith is buried as far from Ellen, Thomas, Charles Bon and Charles
iEtienne as the Sutpen gravesite will permit, a silent, symbolic indi-
I
1 cation of her unique status in the Sutpen generations. Only Clytie may
approach her in endurance and care.for others. Judith avoided the
egotism and egocentrism, the rigidity of code which . ignores individual.
I
|concerns, and the illusions which led ultimately to the psychic and
, physical destruction of all the other members of her family, except
Clytie. She learned to^channel her childhood fascination with energy
;into the adult preservation of others and of herself. She used her
j ~ ' "■ — ,
I
1
; strength, to combat the destructiveness of individuals like Thomas and j
I • !
, cultures like that of the South. Only her possible complicity in the i
I 1
I seduction of Milly Jones mars her history of .adult service.
I
! Faulkner chose to create characters who describe women as i
i i
i .• 1
, victimized, dependent, and amoral or venomous, while he also created |
I i
Rosa Coldfield and Judith Sutpen as the most energetic, helpful, and
compassionate characters in the novel. This juxtapositioning suggests ;
j strong ambivalence about the emotional, spiritual, and active life of
Jwomen. One can have no doubts, though, about Faulkner's feelings on
1 female sexuality. While the male characters find sexual receptivity
attractive, they also feel frightened and repelled by it>-
i
i
I i
j Earlier in the chapter, I called attention to the fact that Mr.
t :
!Compson, in the novel, and Faulkner, in life, exhibit strong attraction:
; i
!to the pre-pubescent female. Certainly, Faulkner created many such
I woman, both in his early poetry and in the novels of this period.
Cecily Saunders (Soldier's Pay), Pat Robyn (Mosquitoes), Temple Drake
1(Sanctuary), and Drusilla Hawke (The Unvanquished) are all examples of
■ the "epicene" female who enticed Faulkner and his male characters. Yet
,this fascination with the pre-pubescent is tinged with fear, since such
|females are on their way to sexuality. Mr. Compson is charmed by
Judith's pre-pubescence, that lambent state which cut her off from the
;world, When such a woman involves herself with the male, though, the '
:results are invariably disastrous. Cecily Saunders jilts the wounded
;Donald Mahon and marries George Farr, who lives miserably ever after. ;
'Pat Robyn prefers her brother, but settles for a brief escape from the
|boat with the steward, David. Their brush with heat prostration, the
swamp, and mosquitoes is farcical. Temple Brakeis febrile sexuality |
t
draws'.Popeye’s unnatural sexual interest; the result moves Temple from,
... ,
nymphomania to vacant Daddy's girl. The energy from Drusilla's early
I
tomboyish exploits turns into sexual deviousness when she tries to use f
her sensuality to win her stepson to her philosophy of vengeance. !
I
In contrast to these women, who are seen as sources of unhappiness
and as carriers of evil, other women are presented as the exemplars of ;
good. Usually, these good women surpass all the other characters of a;
I novel in their sense of principle and in their willingness to act with!
' compassion to attain justice. What one must recognize, though, is that
: in all but one case these women are non-sexual. It has been remarked |
1 that in his fiction Faulkner appears to have been more comfortable with,
! 22
; and more respectful of, the non-sexual woman. This tendency is clear
in his use of so many post-menopausal women as moral agents. What has,
; been overlooked is that most of the other women who serve as moral i
! \
guides j , are equally non-sexual. In seven of the eleven novels from
: Soldier's Pay to The Wild Paling,women embody the values that Faulkner
1 meant the reader to honor. Three are post-menopausal: Aunt Jenny du
; Pre (Sartorls), Rosa Millard (The Unvanquished), and Dilsey (The Sound
; and the Fury). Two have been literally or figuratively widowed and
i have chosen to shun subsequent sexual involvement: Margaret Powers
[ (Soldier's Pay) and Judith Sutpen (Absalom, Absalom!). (Rosa Coldfield--
; i
i
1 both post-menopausal, and non-sexual by choice— is a morally active
character, but Faulkner did not seem so clearly intent on presenting. ,
her as an example to others.) Two are pregnant and seem sexually
; disinterested as a result: Lena Grove (Light in August) and the unnamed
; woman (Old Man). Only Caddy Compson'(Th.eIS.ound and the Fury) combines
| . _ . .
jmoral sensitivity and action with sexual receptivity. Each of these
i . ..
women carries moral responsibility, either actively or passively, in !
! i
;the story. |
Faulkner evidently believed that sexual desire could not co-exist j
with a concern for moral, compassionate behavior. When women are
i
relieved of the former, they can exemplify the latter. This conviction .
:is also reflected in the fact that Faulkner’s morally active males are !
t
also pre- or non-sexual at the times of their altruism; thus V. K.
iRatliff, Chick Mallison and Gavin Stevens serve as moral commentators 1
iand actors in later Faulkner novels. (When Gavin is romantically and •
\
sexually drawn to Eula Varner Snopes and then to her daughter Linda
Snopes Kohl, his intellectual and moral powers are said to be clouded; ,
;V. K. Ratliff takes over these functions alone during this period.)
i
Caddy Compson is the only major Faulkner character to combine strong
sexuality with compassionate concern for others.
! Notes to Chapter III
1. In the following discussion, I consider a statement misogynous:
| both when it is clearly hostile and when it purports to be neutral, i
1 simply descriptive, or complimentary, but in fact subtly denigrates by ,
its condescension. Many of Mr. Compson's statements carry veiled
; misogyny. ,
' 2. Sally R. Page, Faulkner's Women: Characterization and Meaning ,
j (Deland, Florida: Everett/Edward, 1972), p. 108; Thomas Lorch, "Thomas j
| Sutpen and the Female Principle," Mississippi Quarterly 20 (Winter I
| 1966-67): 38-42. Lorch's assertion that the women have constantly ‘
i fought Thomas and eventually gain the upper hand cannot be substantiated
• ; by the text. Only one woman, Rosa, refuses Thomas, and only Eulalia
’ may have desired to thwart the design. ;
| 3. For other Faulkner males repulsed by the act of sexual ;
: intercourse and by female secretions, see Joe Christmas in Light in
i August and Horace Benbow in Sanctuary.-
4. See, for example, Page, who says that Rosa's childish fantasy
of romanticizing and demonizing has destroyed her life (p. 105);
I Vickery, who says that Rosa is ultimately destroyed by her inability to*
; adjust when reality does not correspond to her fantasy (pp. 87-88).
Elisabeth Muhlenfeld recognizes that Rosa's heroic poetry serves as an
outlet, a response to her father's withdrawal; yet she still accuses
> Rosa of ultimately using fantasy to escape from life ("Shadows with
Substance and Ghosts Exhumed: The Womeii in Absalom, Absalom!,"
Mississippi Quarterly 25 /Fall 1971-72/:293-295).
■ 5. Muhlenfeld, p. 290.
6. Victor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning (New York: Washingf-
ton Square Press, 1959, 1963), pp. 58-59, 109-110, 116-117; and Bruno
I Bettelheim, The Informed Heart (New York: The Free Press, 1960), pp.
127-128, 166-168, 200-203.
’ 7. Vickery, pp. 87-88.
8. Muhlenfeld, pp. 291.
9. Vickery, pv 89.
; . 10. David M. Miller, "Faulkner's Women," Modern Fiction Studies
i 13 (Spring 1967):3-5; Muhlenfeld, pp. 291-295; Page, pp. 105-108.
' 108|
! ■ - ■ ■ j
J 11. Muhlenfeld, p. 295. She also says that Rosa was expected to }
|serve even though she had never been taught anything useful (p. 292). |
The evidence here is questionable. Rosa and Mr. Compson both say that (
jRosa was not accomplished (Absalom. Absalom!, pp. 83, 145-146); yet she
i evidently learned the things that Southern ladies considered useful,
isuch as hemming and counting the silver (p. 146). ■
i !
I 12. Vickery, p. 88. !
I ,.4. .. |
j 13. Muhlenfeld, p. 295. j
14. Page, pp. 104-105. Some of the following examples come from '
heir discussion.
I ;
15. The most blatant misreading is Leslie Fiedler's. Fiedler |
calls Judith Faulkner's first attempt to portray a "Good Girl" who is
iactually bad, and declares the attempt a failure, saying that Judith is i
never quite alive after her first scene. Since Fiedler supports his
tsuggestion by attributing Henry's hysterical reaction at the wrestling ;
‘contest to Judith, and by then interpreting this reaction as "screaming'
'with the blood lust," his whole argument^ can be dismissed (LOve and
Death in the American Novel, rev. ed. /New York: Dell Publishing Co.,
|1960, 1969/, pp. 333-334). But-the tendency toward bias in critical
‘interpretations of Judith is not limited to her detractors. Cleanth
Brooks, arguing that Judith is the most admirable character in the i
novel, overlooks her enjoyment of violence as a child and her possible ;
complicity in the seduction of Milly Jones as an adult.
16. Brooks, Yoknapatawpha Country, pp. 303, 319. One must !
:disagree, however, with his additional comment that Faulkner's women are
seldom portrayed as concerned for their fellow men. The menopausal
women-— like Rosa Millard, Aunt Jenny du~;Pre, Miss Habersham and Dilsey-—
show it; so do such non-sexual women as Margaret Powers and the pregnant
woman in Old Man, and such sexually receptive women as Emmy and Caddy.
See also the discussion of this point at the end of the chapter.
17. Use D. Lind, Maxwell Geismar and Karl Zink draw their data
only from Rosa's romanticized and Mr. Compson's Hellenized narratives.
As a result, Lind sees Judith as a Greek figure complete with impene
trable mask ("Design," p. 888); Geismar and Zink see Judith as a
."musing maiden" (Maxwell Geismar, "William Faulkner: The Negro and the
;Female," Writers in Crisis /Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1942/, p. 175;
;Karl Zink, "Faulkner/s Garden:_Woman and the Immemorial Earth," Modern ,
jFlctibn Studies 2 /Autumn 1959/:144). Zink defines this type as the
jyoung girl who "for a magical time between puberty and full maturity,'
lexists in an oblivious state," and he uses passages from Mr. Compson's •
■first version (Absalom, Absalom!, pp. 67, 70) to support his thesis. :
!Interestingly; none of these writers recognizes the longer sections in
■Rosa's narrative which describe her state in similar terms; pp. 143- i
■ 149 contain the most lyrical evocations. ;
109!
I 18. Faulkner had a tenderness for the pre-pubescent woman both in
! his life and in his fiction. He was always attracted to petite, child
like women, like Estelle Oldham and Helen Baird. After his. marriage to;
|Estelle, he became disenchanted with her and had at least two affairs. ;
jDuring his 1934-1935 stay in Hollywood, he was involved with Meta |
iCarpenter Wilde, a 29-year-old divorcee who worked for Howard Hawkes. |
I Wilde was slightly disturbed by the fact that although Faulkner was_ _J
iclearly interested in her sexually, "there were times when he saw /her/ \
,as.. _. .w a girl-child. With one flourish of his mental blue pencil, I
he would edit out all the facts of /fier/ life" since her girlhood in j
;Memphis, and would behave toward her as if she were just out of high :
'school, even giving her ribbons for her hair. Faulkner's other known ;
.affair, this time more platonic because the woman resisted his sexual ;
,advances except for one or two evenings spent together, occurred when '
he was in his fifties .Herwas : ;attracted ■ : to Joan Williams; a student at j
jBard College who admired him as a great author. Faulkner appears to
have fancied himself the Pygmalion to Williams * s Galatea.( See Joseph !
Blotner, William Faulkner: A Biography, pp. 438, 512, 1291, 1299, 1302-
i1303, passim; and Meta Carpenter Wilde and Orin Borsten, A Loving ,
:Gentleman /New York: Simon and Schuster, 1976/, pp. 77-78, 97, 127,189,;
279, 317.)
19. It is curious that of the critics who discuss the women in ;
.general or Judith in particular only R. P. Adams notes her elucidation
of this theory and recognizes its significance for her character and
for Faulkner; see Myth and Motion, p. 205. 1
20. Vickery makes this assumption, saying that Judith's advice to;
[Charles Etienne to go north was motivated by her horrified sense that ;
she had wronged him by forcing him to acknowledge his negro blood. j
Vickery continues: "Judith's subsequent behavior, nursing the stricken
Etienne and scrimping to pay for his tombstone, is her way of expressing
.penitence"; see Vickery, p. 99.
21. Cleanth Brooks makes this assumption, saying that Judith
nurses Charles Etienne as an "acknowledgement of blood kinship,"
although he himself notes later that Judith did not know why Henry had
killed Charles Bon and says that there is no evidence to indicate that
Judith knew of the probable blood relationship between herself and Bon.
See Yoknapatawpha Country, pp. 304, 310, 315. Vickery also implies that
Judith knew Charles Etienne was her nephew. She also makes the abso
lutely untenable assertion that Henry Sutpen returned to Sutpen's Hundred
!in penitence for his sins against Charles Bon and Charles Etienne;
;see p. 99.
i
i ■ .
22. This point has been made by Fiedler, p. 309; and by Naomi
!Jackson, "Faulkner's Women: Demon-Nun and Angel-Witch," Ball State
;University Forum 8, no. 1 (1967): 12-13. Neither notes, however, that
1 'pregnant and young "widowed" women also fit in Faulkner's non-sexual !
category.
. _ II0_
I
t
1 I
i :
i
i CHAPTER IV !
1
!
* t
i I
! i
i THE ATTRACTION OF INCEST: !
| QUENTIN ‘
j !
| Effective physical activity contrasted with ineffectual rational- j
t
Sizing, creative narration contrasted with simple transmission— these >
i
are the antitheses which shape Faulkner’s portrayal of Quentin Compson.;
What Faulkner chose to say in both The Sound and the Fury ..and Absalom, ;
’ Absalom! leads the reader to recognize that Quentin often thinks of
i himself as frustrated, unable to act. What no one has noticed is that
| Faulkner also communicated Quentin's ineffectuality in what he chose to'
:do about Quentin's portrayal. In Absalom, Absalom!, Faulkner rendered >
!
Quentin's impotence formally by creating him as a transmitting reporter]
rather than a speculative narrator. Quentin's internal expansion and
, interpretation of the story of Henry and Judith Sutpen and Charles Bon
cause him intense pain, since he Is confronted with the disparity
| between Henry's heroic action and Charles's determination, on the one
side, and his own inability to act in protecting his sister, on the
'other. Yet Quentin • can articulate neither the legend as he conceives :
, it nor his resulting agony.
Instead, Quentin can only report the tales and opinions of others.
Shreve tries to help him by talking of some of the things which Quentin
> cannot bring himself to utter . Parts of Shreve's narrative seem moti^- ,
jvated by this desire to speak for Quentin more than by his own:compuTsioh
! i
(to discuss a topic. This is especially true of his presentation of
I - I
j . . . . . . . . . ;
.incest. Though he recognizes it as an important consideration^ Shreve :
! . . i
'seems to share neither Mr. Compson*s homoerotic intensity nor Quentin's!
■obsession about joining with a sister. !
Quentin's inactivity in life and in the narrative scheme are at
t 1
least partially traceable to his father. Mr. Compson's disengaged ■
i • ^
rationalizing has served as an example for his son; however, Mr. Compson;
has been neither mentally inactive nor verbally inarticulate. His ,
[implicit narrative presence exerts its power over Quentin throughout
,the novel. In the beginning, Quentin listens to Rosa Coldfield but
realizes that he has heard all that she is telling him before, from his
father. ,
Feeling that his body is "an empty hall echoing with sonorous and
[defeated names," Quentin sees himself not as "a being, an entity," but ■
!as "a commonwealth . . . a barracks filled with stubborn back-looking
ghosts still recovering . . . from the fever which had cured the disease*
:. . . weak from the fever yet free of the disease and not even aware that:
ithe freedom was that of impotence" (p. 12). The analogy between Quentin
!and the empty space echoing the sounds made by others aptly describes
!
'his.role in the novel's narrative pattern. His thoughts often return to
ihis feeling that he is incapable of dealing actively with the events of!
his life, and he cannot articulate either those thoughts or any specu- ■ <
I
;lations about the Sutpen legend. [If one recognizes the parallels
.between.artistic creation • and the processes involved in the creation, ;
■incubation and birth of a child, one sees even greater significance in
j " ' .1121
i
! Quentin's inability to tell his own version of the legend. Though he
j adds to the story in his thoughts, he makes no speculative contributioni
I to the on-going, conjectural talking which constitutes the "action" of I
; I
Absalom, Absalom!. His only spoken addition is his report that Henry ,
; Sutpen killed Charles Bon because Charles was planning an incestuous j
i
! and miscegenous union with Judith Sutpen, information gained in
Quentin's confrontation with Henry the September evening in 1909.^
Quentin's passivity in September is partly explained by the j
[ frustrations he has just experienced in his relationship with his sister
; Caddy— though one must quickly add that his inability to act in situa-
tions with her contributed to the frustration. Faulkner presented
' these situations in The Sound and the Fury, published seven years before
Absalom, Absalom!, as part of Quentin's memories on June 2, 1910, the [
day he commits suicide. On that day, Quentin obsessively recalls his
feverish but futile attempts both to ravish Caddy and to preserve her
purity. In Absalom, Absalom!, Faulkner decided to show Quentin at two
points (September 1909 and January .1910) after his failures with Caddy
but before his suicide. Caddy has lost her virginity to Dalton Ames,
and others, in late summer 1909, but she has not yet been forced to
2
; marry Herbert Head.
Quentin is painfully aware that he is ineffectual. By the time
Absalom, Absalom! is completed, Quentin has been told four versions of
. the Sutpen legend. He hears three in September: Rosa's version and
both of Mr. Compson's versions^-which incorporate General Compson's
■experiences with Thomas, Judith and Clytie Sutpen, and with Charles
; Etienne de Saint Velery Bon. v: Quentin reports the three September
! " 113 I
I
!
Iversions to Shreve in January, then listens as Shreve.constructs his own
j • '
Aversion of part of the legend; Quentin's internal expansion and ;
i
|anguished reaction occur, then, as he goes through various parts of the
'Sutpen legend seven times, feeling a cumulative sense of his own
worthlessness. As he experiences the processes of listening to Rosa and
I
to Mr. Compson, reporting to Shreve, then listening to Shreve, Quentin's
t
psychic paralysis increases, for he has understood and accepted his
ifatheris implicit glorafication of heroic action. Faced with the irre- j
f
f !
futable fact that Henry Sutpen was capable of such action, Quentin
I
'compares himself unfavorably with the earlier man, recognizing his own
incapacity for any action, heroic or otherwise, in his dealings with
,Caddy.
’ It is not only Mr. Compson's implicit belief in heroic action which
!causes Quentin's anguish. Like his father, Quentin is drawn to the
story of Henry, Judith and Charles. Unlike his father, Quentin is
.deeply moved not only by the possibility of the homoerotic tie between
the two young men but also by the possibility of incest between Judith
.and Charles, though Quentin seems aware only of his concern with
' . 3
incest and not of his homoerotic tendencies. While he allows Shreve to
continue Mr. Compson's homoerotic and misogynistic emphases, as well as
the fatalism and racism, he reacts to the possible incest as if it were
a female-male problem rather than a male-male issue.
Quentin's other major difference from all the other present-time
icharacters is his fixation on the scene between Henry and Judith in
Judith's bedroom, a scene which Rosa says took place on the day that
Henry killed Charles. The subsequent discussion will elaborate on the
' significance of this scene as Quentin expands it.
j • ■ ■ '
' Joseph;W. Reed, Jr., states a generally held opinion when he says ;
i (
that in Chapters VI, VII and VIII Quentin is the Teller and Shreve the
i . . . . . !
;Hearer. Reed also asserts that the legend created by the two comes
. I . / ' ■ , '
closest to truth because Quentin and Shreve are the most objective of
4
the narrators and are merely trying to figure out what happened.
This study has gone far to demonstrate that in Chapters VI and VII
l
;Quentin may tell, but he does not create; he merely reports his father’s
isecond version of the legend with its interpolated accounts from General
Compson. When Shreve as active listener becomes so involved in the
legend that he decides to try his hand at creating parts of it, Quentin
provides only passive assent or occasional dogged disagreement, as his
:internal reactions occupy more of his attention, and he increasingly >
feels his own powerlessness. In these passages, Shreve is the creative
narrator and Quentin the listener. In the latter part of Chapter VIII ‘
(particularly pp. 334-336, 345-^350, and 351-358),the nameless narrator
takes control fromy.Shreve, and maintains control throughout most of
Chapter IX.
Nor can one agree that either Quentin or Shreve is objective. Reed
himself recognizes Quentin's obsession with incest. The preceding
'chapters of this discussion have illustrated the extent to which Shreve,
with Quentin's apparent assent, retains many of the.elements of Mr.
Compson’s.versions, even though most’of these elements would never be
iacceptable in a so-called "objective" presentation. Nor can Shreve
claim that many of these elements have been substantiated in the
^eyewitness reports.
| " 115
I _ j
' Shreve1s major interest in .the.story of the younger Sutpens and [
i . . . . . j
[Charles Bon is to describe the anguish he believes Charles felt at being!
.. . . . i
;initially rejected and subsequently unacknowledged by Thomas Sutpen, his
! ' i
father. Forty of the 54 pages that Shreve narrates carry some reference
j . . j
ito this son-father relationship; all other relationships are subordinated
to it. While retaining Mr. Compson’s suggestion that Henry actively
! ' ' ' I .
:drew both himself and Judith to Charles Bon, Shreve decides that Charley
[responded in order to enter Thomas Sutpen's home where he hoped that j
!Thomas would recognize him and acknowledge him as son.^
i
Shreve cannot ignore the possibility of incest, since he knows that
!
.Henry killed Charles to prevent the physical consummation of the rela-
1
tionship between Charles and Judith. Shreve also appears to understand
that this aspect of the legend touches Quentin most deeply. The name
less narrator stresses the closeness which Shreve and Quentin experience
'as Shreve creates the story; and Shreve suggests that he knows of
[Quentin's obsession when he says that he would know Quentin was lying if
he claimed no interest in it (pp. 324-325).
Shreve first mentions incest as one of the commodities of revenge
which the Dickensian lawyer jotted down in the mythical ledger recording
the debit/credit account against Thomas Sutpen. Shreve then seems to
want to elaborate on the topic when he focuses on the relationship
»
.between Charles and Judith. But his basic discomfort with heterosexual [
encounters makes it difficult for him to visualize passion, romance or
jeven tenderness in.such.a relationship. Although he indicates that a
shift to a discussion of heterosexual love is imminent when he says,
"And now . • • we're going to talk about love" (p. 316), Shreve follows
. ii61
that introduction with the description of Henry’s devoted aping of j
i |
Charles and of Charles’s reaction to such adoration (pp. 316-319). i
I I
1 Faulkner may have experienced the same problem, as author of the
'novel, that he presented in Shreve as author of a version of the Sutpen
! ■ . j
jlegend. Perhaps he consciously intended to shift the focus of the story
to the heterosexual at this point, since he followed the "And now . . . '
love" line with the words "neither of them had been thinking about
^anything else; all that had gone before just so much that had to be j
i
,overpassed . . . as someone always has to rake the leaves up before you!
ican have the bonfire" (p. 316). Unconsciously, however, Faulkner !
'retained the predominantly homoerotic emphasis in the succeeding
i
passage.
When Shreve does speak of the heterosexual relationship, he presents
l • >
:it as a fatalistic "doom" which Charles could not avoid and therefore
Idid not need to be greatly interested in. Judith was merely.the'"lemon :
^sherbet" available for Charles to take up when he had satisfied his
"champagne" interests (pp. 322-323, 325).
At Shreve's first attempts to create the relationship between
Charles and Judith, Quentin validly objects that such lack of intensity'
is "not love." Shreve then tries to inject more romantic and erotic
■notes into his creation. He uses a sensual metaphor in his description ,
;of spring in North Mississippij where the trees hold "hard tight sticky ;
buds like young girls' nipples" (p. 323). And he develops the slyly
,erotic double entendre when insisting that Quentin is bound to fall in
love some day, for if he does not, it "would be like if God had got
; Jesus born and saw that he had the carpenter tools and then never gave
him anything to build with them" (p’ . 324) . .
j
At the same time, Shreve *s antipathy toward.women and sexual (
\
1
intercourse inhibits his attempts to portray heterosexual love. He
views the sexual act as so empty that only the possibility of incest '
might give it meaning. Perhaps his desire to aid Quentin by artieu- j
lating some of his deeply felt concerns compells him to continue his '
attempts at portraying his relationships. ,
Shreve does have some success at delineating Henry's seduction of !
Charles, Judith's romantic feelings as she succumbed to Henry's persua-;
sion, and Henry's inner struggle after he learned of the incest which
the union between Charles and Judith would accomplish. Shreve posits a
time early in the relationship between the two men when each sensed
that the other was his brother (pp. 314, 316), yet Henry continued to j
offer both himself and Judith to the older man, wordlessly repeating,
"From now on mine And my sister's house will be your house and mine and;
my sister's lives your life" (p. 318). Shreve follows Mr. Compson in
saying that Charles was Judith's first, and last, sweetheart. He evcfoesj
their first kiss and implies its incestuous nature, saying that Judith
was surprised because "your sweetheart apparently kissed you the first
time like your brother would— provided of course that your brother ever
thought of, could be brought to, kissing you on the mouth" (p. 303).
Shreve's word choice resonates: Charles is Judith's half-brother, and :
she and Charles have been brought together by Henry, brother to both.
An incestuous, triangular relationship has been formed.
Shreve retains Mr. Compson's suggestion, now supported by Quentin's
information from Henry, that Henry was repelled by the fact that Judith
. 118 |
i j
I might marry Charles , even though he must have been the person who !
[ ' ' _ - ' - I
ipersuaded her to love Charles initially. Shreve says Henry had at least
j . . - . !
two compelling reasons for allowing the union to occur. First, he loved
1
‘Charles deeply and took this opportunity to connect himself with the
.older man, if only through Judith. This reason is carried over impli- ,
i
citly from Mr. Compson's first version. Second, Shreve adds that Henry ! •
must have loved Judith and welcomed the opportunity to choose the man !
i i ;
'who would deflower her. In suggesting the second reason, Shreve may be
dealing indirectly with one of Quentin's sources of unhappiness, but he ,
believes that Henry had equally strong reasons to abhor the union.
,Consistent with his devaluation of women, Shreve chooses to think that
i
(this abhorrence arose not mainly from a concern for Judith but as a
revulsion against behavior which would violate religious and social
rules, thus disrupting established order. Faced with a situation in
'which individual desires would encourage disobedience to traditional
proscriptions, Henry is said to have sought justification by calling on
another tradition: the precedent set by noblemen in an earlier time.
In presenting Henry's struggle to substitute one set of rules for .
another, Shreve is probably aware of the conflict Quentin has recently
experienced, a struggle described in The Sound and the Fury. Quentin
has also wanted to believe in. the unchangeable nature of rules, like the
1 heroes in Graham Greene's novels violating a religious rule in the hope
i
that the ensuing punishment will demonstrate both , the ..Validity of the
rule and the power of the rulemaker,.God.
Quentin listens to Shreve's speculations, as he has to all the
others, with fascination and dread. There are enough possible parallels
i 119 i
i j
|between the triangle formed by Henry and Judith Sutpen and Charles Bon,j
;and the one formed by Quentin and Caddy Compson and Dalton Ames, to j
| allow Quentin to project his own motivations into the earlier story— t
j . . . . |
!for his main projections concern motivation,feeling and thought, all |
• i
I " . . . ^
:intangible and unobservable in themselves. No one can know, directly,
why another acts or avoids action; so one can speculate more freely
about reasons for behavior than one can about the observed behavior
itself.
!
; Before further discussing Quentin's reactions to the Sutpen legend,
I stress again that when one observes thoughts, feelings or opinions
which are clearly Quentin's, one is usually dealing with material
1 I
available only to the nameless narrator and the reader, not to the other
characters in the novel. These internalized reactions are Important to
! the reader's final perception of the Sutpen legend. By placing Quentin's
j
'expansions and reactions at crucial points in the novel, usually at the’
end of a chapter, and again: at the end of the novel, Faulkner seems to
have intended that Quentin's point of view should affect the reader's.
Since Faulkner created Quentin as the major explicit mediator of the
novel, one wants to understand the effects produced by Quentin's vision.
Yet, as the preceding discussion has insisted, one must be constantly
aware that Mr. Compson remains the major implicit influence on both
: Quentin and the novel.
As Rosa Coldfield, Mr. Compson and Shreve have been the "authors" ■
, of their spoken versions of the Sutpen legend, Quentin is the "author" ■
of his internally-expanded version, projecting his obsessions into the
• characters. He builds on the earlier versions, choosing parts of each
! ' 120 !
| ■ ' |
■as significant for him. The event which paralyzes him has been presented
; !
;only in Rosa's version; the view of Henry as both seducer and preserver
I I
J „ 1
,of his sister's purity, and the implicit.allegiance to heroism are
’ ’ !
retained from Mr. Compson's version. The.incest motif which Shreve sought
to articulate for him is central. As a result of these retentions and 1
i
;of Quentin's projections upon, them, Henry Sutpen appears as Quentin's
\
double, Judith parallels Caddy Compson, and Charles Bon can be seen as 1
both parallel to Dalton Ames and as a second, latent, double for !
Quentin, representing that side of Quentin’s nature which would violate'
a sister’s purity.
While the doubling is latent for Quentin as author within the
novel, it is manifest for Faulkner as the creator of Quentin, Caddy,and
'Dalton Ames, and Henry Sutpen, Judith Sutpen and Charles Bon. Apparently,
Faulkner deliberately presented doubles in character and situation
'between participants in the Sutpen legend and those in the Compson story..
This intentional paralleling shows in the number of character traits,
actions, and events in Quentin’s internal version of the legend which
repeat the Quentin-Caddy-Dalton- Ames situation. Faulkner even carried
this conscious repetition of events into the sections dominated by the
nameless narrator. In contrast, Quentin seems unaware that he is
i
creating the close correspondence which exists between his own situation
and the one in the past. Thus, while Faulkner’s conscious pairing of
the Compson/Ames and Sutpen/Bon triangles represents manifest doubling,
!
iQuentin’s creation of latent dissociation in his internal reactions, |
unaware that he re-experiences his own pain by choosing to expand only
those elements of the Sutpen legend which seem to correspond to his own
r i2i I
i 6 |
^situation, represents latent doubling, ]
I |
, Faulkner may or may not have known of the.additional significant
i j
'fact that Quentin*s projection of doubles five months before his suicide
l
!illustrates the mythic belief that a person sees his own double as he ;
, i
1 . . 7 I
.approaches death. A: E. Crawley.noted that the principle of dupli- !
! 8 i
;cation "serves as a theory of the soul and of future existence." In
I t
;this case, the doubling appears to be both an indication of Quentin's
|impending decision to take his own life, and a partial cause of that '
;decision.
i
Quentin's affinity for the story of the second generation of
!
Sutpens is suggested early in the novel. As Rosa begins her narrative,
Quentin listens both to her and to himself, feeling his consciousness
!split into two separate Quentins, who talk to each other "in the long
;silence of notpeople, in notlanguage," saying that Sutpen appeared out
( i ;
‘ of nowhere and built a plantation, married Ellen Coldfield, and
begot a son and a daughter . . h (Without gentleness begot,
Miss Rosa Coldfield says) . . . Which should have beeti the
jewels of his pride and the shield of his old age, only—
(Only they destroyed him or something or he destroyed them or
something. And died.)— and died. Without regret, Miss Rosa
Coldfield says— (Save by her) Yes, save by her. (And by
Quentin Compson) Yes. And by Quentin Compson. (p. 9)
!
:ihe ambiguous syntax here allows for two possible sources of Quentin's
regret. The obvious reading leads.to the conclusion that like Rosa, ,
Quentin regrets the death of Thomas Sutpen. But the material within
iparentheses also suggests that Quentin may regret the deaths of Judith ;
I
and Henry Sutpen. Such regret foreshadows the importance that the
■story of Judith, Henry and Charles Bon have for Quentin. One Quentin :
says that the two children should have been assets to Thomas; the other {
j ' I
responds that instead "they destroyed him . . or he destroyed them . .
‘ And died." The last sentence could refer to Thomas, to Judith and Henry,
i
or to all the Sutpens.
i !
| Throughout the.seven versions of the legend that he hears and
i
reports, Quentin increasingly directs his attention'to the.story of the
second generation of Sutpensi. In the latter chapters, their story
possesses him both psychologically and physically, as he jerks uncontrol1 -
, I
Tahly in anguish. This intensity occurs seldom in the early chapters I
(I-III), since these accounts center on Thomas Sutpen1s arrival and rise'
to prominence in Jefferson. There are suggestions of what is to come,
however, when the nameless narrator says Quentin has heard Henry Sutpen
described as "the son who widowed the daughter who had- not yet been a :
bride " (p. 11), and when Rosa says that she saw Henry "repudiate his
home and birthright and then return and practically fling the bloody
corpse of his sister1s sweetheart at the hem of her wedding gown" (p. 18). ’
Each of the first three chapters ends with a scene which abruptly
catches the reader1s attention. Chapter I climaxes as Ellen Sutpen,
drawn to the barn by her son's hysterial screams, finds him reacting to
his father's bloody wrestling match with a negro slave, but does not
find her daughter and Clytie watching Thomas's gory battle, Henry's
.violent revulsion, and Ellen1s outrage, in calm silence from the loft
I
above. Chapter It closes with Ellen's tears as she was pelted with
.refuse on her wedding night. Chapter III ends by reporting part of
Wash Jones's words to Rosa Coldfield when he came to take her out to
Sutpen1s Hundred on the day of the murder, presumably at Judith's
| " " 123 |
request. While each of these scenes is striking, and while they clearly.
1
i . . . . . :
have been placed at the ends of the chapters to arrest the reader’s ;
i ■ ~ . !
attention at the same time as they draw him on by their partial disclo- ,
!
• - • - I
sure of details, none of them is said to evoke any special response in ;
/Quentin. !
I
‘ Quentin's interest quickens when Mr. Compson begins the next chapter
'(IV) by turning to the story of the younger Sutpens and Charles Bon. Fran
this point on, Quentin's'.projective involvement will increase. One can '
observe;, his heightening empathy as, at the end of Chapter IV, he thinks
that he can "actually see" Henry and Charles facing each other at the
i
gate to Sutpen's Hundred, where Judith waits in the house "in a wedding 1
dress made from stolen/scraps” (p. 132). Quentin even creates, in his
mind, Henry's challenge, "Pont you pass the shadow of this post, this ;
... ,
branch, Charles," and the defiant reply, "I am going to pass it, Henry"'
(p. 133). The chapter then ends with an expansion of the Wash Jones
summons which closed the preceding chapter.
Two scenes carry.much psychic intensity for Quentin, evoking strong
identification within him. Both the scene at the gate between Henry and
Charles, and the scene in Judith's bedroom between Henry and Judith,
testify to Henry's success in protecting his sister's purity from the
i
violation which incest would represent. Other possible thoughts and
feelings which might have impelled the three young people to.act as they'
did also engage Quentin1s emotions; however, it is these two confron
tations which present successful actions in situations where Quentin
feels he has failed which truly "stop" the flow of his thoughts. Of the
two, the bedroom scene,proves the.more devastating.
r * ' 1 2 4 !
I
! In asserting the primacy of this scene for Quentin, rather than the
1 . ■ 9 I
,scene at the gate, I differ from others who have discussed the novel.
I
j 1
^here are several understandable reasons for the prevailing view that I
. . . . j
the crucial scene for Quentin is the ultimate confrontation between !
I
Henry and Charles. The most obvious cause is that the murder is !
mentioned twenty times in the course of the story. The murder is one of
the few occurrences that everyone can verify. Wash Jones, General
Compson, Rosa Coldfield, and the town all heard of the event or saw
evidence that it had taken place. Quentin gains further proof when he ,
talks with Henry in September 1909 and learns the motive for the
killing. Another reason for so much attention is that a murder is
always an exciting event, carrying the psychic charge to make it memo-
j
rable. An unexplained murder presents possibilities for discussion which-
t
keep it even more alive in memory.
A more subtle cause lies in the implicit power which Mr. Compson
exerts over the narration. Of the two events which cause Quentin the
greatest pain, Mr. Compson, Shreve and General Compson puzzle only about
the murder. None of them even mentions the other scene. Mr. Compson's
homoerotic interest probably intensifies his concern about the murder.
If one decides, as he has, that Henry and Charles loved each other more
profoundly than any heterosexual pair could ever love, then the fact
that Henry felt impelled to murder his greatest love in defense of his
sister's honor causes special regret. Both Shreve and the nameless
narrator repeat the belief that Henry loved Charles with great passion,
so the murder becomes the tragic resolution of the.homoerotic tension in
the novel. Mr. Compson's.feelings about the murder have colored all
isuhsequent male narratives, and male narratives dominate the book. |
, • ... - I
The bedroom scene is mentioned only eight times; six in Rosa’s
'narrative and twice in Quentin’s :internal reactions. Yet, this discussion
will demonstrate that it is the bedroom scene, riot the murder scene, >
I
I
which disturbs Quentin most,.for this.scene presents the successful
culmination of a brother/sister situation which he believes parallels
his own. .
I
Again, Mr. Compson's narratives are the first to articulate
similarities between the relationship of Henry and Judith Sutpen and
[that of Quentin and Caddy Compson. Compson says that the people of
f
: Jefferson "knew that between Henry and Judith there Jy&sJ a relationship
I
closer than the traditional loyalty of brother and sister even; a curious
[relationship" (p. 79), and he often mentions their special affinity.
Perhaps his clearest evocation of this shared identity occurs when he
tries to explain how Henry convinced both himself and Judith to love
Charles Bon. Mr. Compson believes that the two Sutpen children
possessed
that telepathy with which . . . they seemed at times to anti
cipate one another s’ actions as two birds leave a limb at the
same instant; that rapport not like the conventional delusion
of that between twins but rather such as might exist between
two people who, regardless of sex or age or heritage of race
or tongue, had been marooned at birth on a desert island
(p. 99).10
Mr. Compson may believe in this closeness in.the earlier pair .
because he sees such affinity between his own children. In The Sound
■ arid the Fury, the other members of the Compson family definitely
perceive Quentin and Caddy as a special pair, sometimes almost as one
I ' 1 2 6 j
, unit. Caroline, their mother, remarks that Quentin IV (Caddy's daughtei;
.conceived out of wedlock and named for herruhcle) is "the judgment of |
!Caddy and Quentin upon me" (SF, p. 325).^ She says that her husband j
' i
;always saw them as two people who "already knew what cleanliness and i
, I
< \
ihonesty were" (SF, p. 325). Caroline has resented the exclusiveness of|
I
their relationship. Speaking to her favorite son, Jason IV, she says ■
I
iof Quentin and Caddy:
; They deliberately shut me out of their lives’'.:.'-. . They were
! always conspiring against me. Against you too . . . . They :
! always looked on you and me as outsiders. . . I always told
| your father they were allowed too much freedom, to be together
i too much. When Quentin started to school we had to let her go,
: the next year, so she could be with him. . . . And then when
i her troubles began I knew that Quentin would feel that he had;
to do something just as bad (SF, p. 326).
!Herbert Head, the man Caddy marries in April 1910, also remarks that her
has heard so much about Quentin from Caddy that he is jealous (SF, p. 133).
i
Contrary to Mrs. Compson's belief, Quentin's reason for wanting to
do something "just as bad," or worse, seems to originate from his feeling
that his connection with Caddy has not been strong enough for him to
attract her to himself or to prevent her from being attracted to others.
Unlike the Henry Sutpert created by Mr. Compson, Shreve and the nameless
narrator, Quentin has been unable to hold Caddy in some sexual limbo.
Caddy did not acquiesced to his wishes and refrains from sexual
pleasure. When she succumbed, Quentin was not strong enough to frighten!
away her successful seducet.
If one recognizes that in Absalom, Absalom! Quentin is moving
toward his suicide in The Sound arid theFury, and if one discerns also
that- one-of Quentin's principal reasons -for suicide is . self-hatred for -
| 127
i
j his inability to act in defense of his sister1s virginity, then one can
\
|understand why the bedroom scene is the most important to him. ;
j Indeed, Quentin has failed. Although he was close enough to Caddy ■ '
'to inspire jealousy in their mother, their brother, and Caddy's future j
I
1 . . |
'husband, he did not have the power over her to "isolate her out of the ;
,loud world" (SF, p. 220). Nothing he has tried has been successful. :
i ■
When he wanted to arouse Caddy's jealousy by petting with Natalie, j
Caddy responded with,."I dont give a damn what you were doing" (SF, ;
:pp. 166-170). Quentin then smeared Caddy with mud, to catch her atten- I
;tion and to express his displeasure by making her feel dirty, but she
still refused to give him the response he wanted (SF, pp. 170-171).
Quentin did not choose the man who deflowered Caddy; so to compensate,
:he tried to convince her that Dalton Ames, and the others since, were ;
'all himself. Caddy, who knew him well, replied, "Poor Quentin youve
never done that have you" (SF, p. 185). The confrontation with Dalton
i
Ames reinforced his sense of impotence.
In both The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom!, Quentin's
love for his sister is essentially non-sexual. In fact, in the former
1 book Quentin shows the same distaste for female sexuality as his father
and Shreve do in the latter. At one point in his musings on June 10,
; 1910, Quentin consciously echoes his father by thinking of the menstrual
!cycle and other secretions of women as "periodical filth between two
i ;
I moons balanced .... all that inside of them . . . waiting for a <
itouch to. Liquid putrefaction like pale rubber flabbily filled" (SF,
1 p. 159). In both books, Quentin follows his father’s example by
thinking of the physical act of sexual union as a dirty, potentially
:suffocating procedure. He wishes that he had never possessed genitals j
i " " !
,(SF, p. 143). He does not press Caddy to have intercourse with him J
i
i j
precisely because he is afraid she would do it, and he actually fears
! - • - • '
I . '
losing his own--virginity as much as he hates the fact that she has lost■
i
'hers (SF, pp. 220, 183). When he learns that Caddy has been sexually
iactive, he wants to slap her, smear her with excrement, or kill her-—
|along with himself. He proposes a sexual union only because this seems
the only way to reach her; she plainly enjoys her sexuality, saying that
;she would "die," in the sexual sense, time after time for Dalton Ames
•and the others (SF, p. 185).
• In both books, Quentin's sexual drive is minimal. The sexual inten
sity that he does show is masturbatory or directed toward other men,
'except for the Natalie sequence and the pseudo-sexual interest in Caddy.
There is at least one clear reference to masturbation in Quentin's
memories during his last day (SF, pp. 215-216), and even the Natalie
12
sequence is essentially masturbatory. The homoerotic motif is also
evident on Quentin's last day; he repeatedly thinks of Spoade, Gerald
Bland, Shreve, and— most intensely— Dalton Ames. Though Quentin tries
to play the traditional male roles, the comments of others, and his own
thoughts and reactions to events, indicate that he more often responds
to men and to situations in traditionally feminine ways. Spoade has
called Shreve Quentin's "husband," and Mrs. Bland has been concerned ,
1 enough about the situation to try to have Shreve moved away from
.Quentin (SF, pp. 96, 131-132). Certainly,Quentin's suicide note to
Shreve seems to have a talismanic effect; Quentin carries it in his
pocket and touches it several times during his last day. Its importance
'prefigures the significance which Faulkner had Quentin attach to his j
[father's letter in Absalom, Absalom!. Quentin's reactions to Dalton Ames
i . . . ;
are feminine. Wanting Dalton dead, Quentin identifies with Dalton's
mother and wishes that he could have refused intercourse with Dalton's
I father on the night that Dalton was conceived, thus watching Dalton "die
13 !
before he lived" (SF, p. 98). When Quentin confronts Dalton on the
bridge and tries to force him to give Caddy up, he cannot fire the
pistol-— clearly a phallic symbol here-— that Dalton gives him. Instead, ;
Quentin swoons at Dalton's touch, and after Dalton has gone, Quentin j
experiences an almost post-coital euphoria (SF, pp. 197-201). In Absalomj
' Absalom!, the descriptions of Quentin's growing agitation as he re-expe-
riences the Sutpen legends emphasize .his ever more apparent fragility,
adolescence, and virginity (AA, pp. 299, 324).
Incest attracts Quentin for two reasons, then, neither of them
sexual. The first— -related to the earlier point that he wishes to isolate
Caddy from the world which has defiled her-— develops from his belief
that committing incest would be such a great violation of some "presby-
terian concept" (Compson Appendix, SF,;p. 411) that its perpetrators
would be left alone even in hell, "amid the ..pointing and the horror
walled by the clean flame" (SF, p. 144). The second attraction to
incest originates in Quentin’s feelings of impotence and incompleteness.
It has been remarked that all people seem to have a sense that they are
fragments of some perfect whole that existed at a time which they cannot
now recall. Myths of Golden Ages or better times in the past, as well
as the Freudian concept that at some deep level all individuals wish to
return to the womb, can certainly be traced to this subconscious desire
! 1301
i to believe that such an idyllic time of wholeness once existed. Accom-
;
panying Quentin's comments about incest-as-isolator are his comments !
rabout incest as the ultimate joining with the other. He does not want
Caddy to be alone; he wants her to be set apart with him. His clearest ,
; t
' statement of this desire occurs near the end of the "Quentin" section, j
when he wishes that "people could only change one another forever ....
i
.merge like a flame swirling up for an instant then blown cleanly out j
along the cool eternal dark" (SF, p. 219). Perhaps he also hopes that j
this union will create strength by joining two parts of one self. I
' For Quentin, the devoutly desired other is the sister. When one
studies his actions and thoughts on his last day, one notes the number
I
of times that he refers to having, or not having, a sister. One further
realizes that he seems drawn not just to Caddy but to the concept of
"sister," calling the little Italian girl "sister" eleven times, thinking
that St. Francis of Assisi called death his sister. One begins to suspect
that the idea of having a female "other" who carries within herself
those qualities which will merge with his to form a complete and potent
whole is as attractive to Quentin and as compelling as his particularized
desire for Caddy.
With this understanding, one senses the poignance in Quentin's
reaction as Shreve begins to create another version of the Sutpen
.legend. Quentin tries to retard Shreve's momentum, repeating, "Wait . .
'. . Wait, I tell you!" thinking i
Am I going to have to:heat it all again . . . I am going to 1
have to hear it all over again I am already hearing it all
over again I am listening to it all over again I shall have to
never listen to anything else but this again forever so
apparently riot only a man never .outlives his father but not I
even his friends and acquaintances do (p. 277). j
i
The obvious "it” is the Sutpen legend, which is inevitably associated .
. . 1
with his father and with., the history of the South, but an additional ’ j
i
"it” is the story of another incestuous relationship. Quentin is aware i
that he will be confronted again with the contrast between the two
I
situations. For as he perceives the Sutpen legend, Henry Sutpen has
acted from the same motivations as he has, but Henry has been successful!
as both seducer and preserver of his sister, while Charles Bon has been1
successful in seduction by allowing Henry to plead for him. Against the
testimony of Henry's heroic and effective action and Charles1s quiet
determination, Quentin measures his own passive failures.
The cumulative created legend of Henry, Judith and Charles which
i
causes Quentin's anguish contains several important projected parallels,
14
to Quentin's situation with Caddy and Dalton Ames.
Shreve has retained the homoerotic motif in his description of the
relationship between Henry and Charles, retaining also Mr. Compson's
idea that Henry was the seducer both in his relationship with Charles
and in the relationship which developed between Judith and Charles.
In attributing homoeroticism to Henry and Charles, Shreve may be doing
more than following Mr. Compson's lead; he may also be indicating that :
he knows of Quentin's.strong attraction to Dalton Ames. Of course if j
i
Spoade and Mrs. Bland are correct, and if the suggestions of the name
less narrator have validity, Shreve knows of Quentin's homoerotic
nature because of the love that they share.
132
The nameless narrator's description of Henry’s :last talk with
. . . |
Charles at the battlefront, after Henry had learned of Charles's negro |
blood, lends additional credibility:to the idea that Henry acted out of.
some compulsions similar to Quentin's.and responded to situations in |
similar ways (pp. 355-358). Like Quentin in his confrontation with
Dalton Ames, Henry is said to struggle with antithetical emotions.
Though he may have been able.to force himself to accept incest, he ,
cannot tolerate miscegenation.But he still loves Charles profoundly.
Henry’s extreme agitation here parallels Quentin's in his confrontation,
as Charles's calm, almost humorous responses parallel Dalton's. Charles
is said to urge Henry to carry out his threats, handing Henry his own
pistol and taunting him with, ”l'm the nigger that's going to sleep with
yOur sister. Unless you stop me." These actions have analogues in Dalton
Ames’s behavior toward Quentin, even to the detail of Dalton’s handing
his own pistol to Quentin, suggesting that Quentin may need it if he
expects to accomplish his purpose (SF, p. 200). Neither Henry nor
Quentin can carry through with his threats, but there are crucial
differences in the climaxes to the scenes. Henry, still trying at this
point to stop Charles through the force of his own love and will, throws
the pistol away and grips his brother's shoulders, repeating "You shall
not!" This active behavior contrasts radically with Quentin's helpless
fainting. The scene between Henry and Charles ends with both still
adamantly locked in emotional tension. The confrontation in 1909 ends
with disengagement, as Dalton rides.away and Quentin experiences an
emptied peace after his swoon.
Quentin's first "stopped" moment occurs at the climax of Rosa's ;
i
i
lyrical narrative in Chapter V. This section of Rosa's version of the
i
legend focuses on romantic love, especially the vicarious love which
Rosa felt for Charles Bon then transferred to Thomas Sutpen. 1 have ‘
already noted that Rosa seems to have honored Charles and Thomas as ;
symbols of Southern values, and that she first crystallized her devotion
by identifying with Judith in the love of Charles. •
i
For Judith, and Rosa as her vicarious counterpart, the first *
knowledge that Charles would no longer survive to love and be loved i
came not at the gate to Sutpen's Hundred but in the bedroom confron
tation with Henry. Rosa mentions this scene five times in this section
of her narrative. The first reference occurs almost immediately. She
describes her trip to Sutpen's Hundred with Wash Jones and her reception
by Clytie and Judith as a series of unenlightening encounters which
left her bewildered. She says that later she was able to learn only that
the scene in the bedroom had occurred. She describes it as Judith and
Clytie must have experienced it:
shot heard faint and far away and even direction and source
indeterminate, by . . . two young women alone in a rotting
house . . . a shot, then ah interval of aghast surmise above
the cloth and needles which engaged them, then feet, in the
hall and then on the stairs, running, hurrying, the feet of
man: and Judith with just time to snatch up the unfinished
dress and hold it before her as the door burst Open upon her
brother, the wild murderer . . . and then the two of them, the
two accursed children-. . . looking at one another across the
up-raised and unfinished wedding dress (p. 135).
Rosa then continues her evocation of that period at Sutpen's Hundred
and includes her remembrance of her fourteenth summer, when Judith and
: ■ 13 4 {
i
i
Charles were considered engaged. j
f
The chapter is filled with Rosa’s highly charged descriptions of
these times; the reader cannot ignore the intensity of her passion. But;
at the chapter’s end, we learn that Quentin has been oblivious to all !
i
I
that has been said since Rosa mentioned the scene between Judith and ;
- - t
Henry. The nameless narrator says:
Quentin has not been listening because there is something he j
cannot ’’ pass": that door, the running feet on the stairs
beyond it almost a continuation of the faint shot . . . the
white girl in her underthings . . . pausing, looking at the I
door, the yellowed creamy mass of old intricate satin and
lace spread carefully on the bed and then caught swiftly up ;
. . .and held before her as the door crashed in and the
brother stood there . . .: the two of them, brother and sister,
curiously alike as if the difference in sex had merely
sharpened the common blood to a terrific, an almost unbearable',
similarity, speaking to one another in short brief staccato
sentences like slaps, as if they stood breast to breast
striking one another in turn neither making any attempt to
guard against the blows.
Now you cant marry him.
Why cant I marry him? •
Because he’s dead.
Dead?
Yes. 1 killed Kim (p • 172)...
Quentin is fixed on his internal elaboration of Henry’s announcement
that he has successfully protected his sister. Yet Quentin creates that
scene using metaphors of ravishment. Henry breaks down the door that
protects Judith’s virginal sanctuary. The sister partially shields
herself, but she cannot protect herself against her brother's news.
He assaults her psychologically as he tells her that he has protected
her physical purity.
In the first paragraph of Chapter VI, the nameless narrator
indicates that Quentin remained "stopped" throughout both of
' 135 j
I
16 1
Mr. Compson's-versions of the legend. As the chapter opens, Quentin \
is reading, or re-reading, the letter from his father which announces
I
Rosa's death. This letter reminds him both of his father and of the i
September night and morning when Mr. Compson told the Sutpen legends !
: "i
again. The sense of the passage is 'that during these narratives, Quentin;
was "stopped" by Rosa's mention of the bedroom scene, not listening to
his father’s story of'Thomas Sutpen's rise and of the homoerotic j
attraction that Compson attributes to Henry Sutpen and Charles Bon. ,
Instead, Quentin is still visualizing Henry's confrontation with :
Judith. Quentin sees Henry's
gaunt tragic dramatic self-hypnotized youthful face like the
tragedian in a college play, an academic Hamlet waked from
some trancement . . . the sister facing him across the
wedding dress which she was not to use, not even to finish,
the two of them slashing at one another with twelve or
fourteen words and most of these the same words repeated two
or three times so that when you boiled it down they did it by.
eight or ten (p. 174).
Several elements of Quentin’s created scenes serve to confirm him
in self-hatred, since they signal Henry's success in areas where Quentin
has failed. Early in the expansion which ends Chapter V, Quentin
mentions the sound of the faint shot, the indication that Henry has
finally killed Charles. A little later in the expansion, Quentin sees
Henry carrying the pistol in his hand. In contrast, Quentin has been
unable to eliminate Dalton Ames from Caddy's life. In 1865, Judith
Sutpen stands in clean, underwear, shielding herself with the wedding
dress she will never use, both.details attesting to Henry's success at ■
preserving his sister's purity. In 1909 and earlier, Quentin not only
has been unable to maintain:Caddy1s symbolic purity but also has !
i
literally dirtied her underwear himself. (Although the chronology of
Quentin's life makes it impossible for him to know it yet, the reader ‘
familiar with The Souiid and the fury knows that Quentin will soon learn;
that Caddy, pregnant by Dalton,.is being forced to marry Herbert Head, :
!
whom.? she does not love, simply to gain a nominal father for her child.)
Quentin's scene emphasizes the "almost unbearable," and perversely j
combative, closeness of Henry and Judith, who stand "breast to breast" ■
(heart to heart) while verbally striking each other. Their strength is 1
indicated by the fact that neither tries to avoid the blows of the
other. Quentin, to the contrary, realizes that he has not been so close,
to Caddy as he wanted, nor has he been able to match her strength with
his own. The ultimate message he draws from the scene is that Henry
possessed such power over Judith that he could influence her to do as
he wanted by expecting her to conform to his wishes— as in the proba-r. ? •
tion-— or he could force her to do as he desired by destroying the person
who tempted her from virtue. Quentin's partial recapitulation of the
scene at the beginning of Chapter VI stresses the fact that Henry, like
Hamlet, ultimately dealt firmly with the problem of incest.
In the Compson Appendix, written eighteen years after the publi
cation of The Sound and the Fury and eleven years after Absalom,
Absalom!, Faulkner began the "Quentin III" section by highlighting the
fact that Quentin's obsessive involvement with Caddy, his anguish at
the loss of her virginity, and his. desire for incest originate in his
passionate yearning after abstractions. Faulkner says that Quentin
137!
loved not his sister’s body but some concept of Compson honor
precariously and (he knew well) only temporarily supported byj
the minute fragile membrane of her maidenhead as a miniature I
replica of all the whole vast globy earth may be poised on
the nose of a trained seal. Who loved not the idea of the
incest which he would not commit, but some presbyterian i
concept of its eternal punishment: he, not God, could by thati
means cast himself and his sister both into hell, where he |
could guard her forever and keep her forevermore intact amid [
the eternal fires (SF, p. 411).
The desire to isolate Caddy and preserve (or in this case restore) that,
f
family honor represented by heriintact maidenhead is clear. One can also
recognize that Quentin wants to preserve his own virginity as well
through this isolation. One can speculate that part of his desire to
join with Caddy may originate from his need to merge his retained
\
virginity with her tainted one, thus preserving the one and restoring
the other. What Faulkner did not emphasize here, but what must be j
remembered, is that Quentin also sees the merging with the sister as a ■
completion; in this case, he may hope to join his passivity and impotence
to Caddy's active strength.
Quentin's feelings of inadequacy, especially in relation to his
father, show plainly in his metaphysical theory. As Quentin has
reported Mr. Compson's second version of the legend and listened to
Shreve's interpolations, he has thought that both he and Shreve sound
like his father. This sense of interrelatedness, which for Quentin
denies the possibility of individual action, grips him, as he thinks:
Maybe we are both Father. Mayb e ho thing ever happens once and,
is finished. Maybe happen is never once but like ripples ;
maybe on water after■the.pebble Pinks, the ripples moving on,
spreading, the poolattached by a_ narrow umbilical water-cord!
to the next pool which the first pool feeds . . . let this
second pool contain a different temperature of water, _a
138
different molecularity of having seen, felt, remembered,
reflect in a different tone the infinite unchanging sky, it I
doesn' t matter: that pebble’s .watery echo whost fall it did i
not eveii see liioves across - its surface too at the original :
ripple-space, to the old ineradicable rhythm , . . Yes, we '
are both Father . Or maybe Father and I are both Shreve, maybe j
it took Father and me both to iftake Shreve or Shreve and me
both to make Father or maybe Thomas Sutpen to make all of us
(pp. 261-262).
i
Though Quentin’s metaphysical statement recognizes the interde
pendence of people and indicates an awareness that flux is part of life^
it is still a theory which may lead to negative results, for the world ;
i
it posits is deterministic, offering no possibility for creativity.
Quentin first presents his father as the originator, the one who dropped
!
the pebble into the pool. But Quentin later suggests another generative
possibility which obscures the question of origin by suggesting that
younger people can create older ones. He then concludes that Thomas
Sutpen initiated the ripples whose rhythm dominates Quentin's life and
thoughts. It is telling that while Quentin can decide that Thomas
Sutpen or Mr. Compson can generate alone, he can think of himself
creating only with the help of someone else. His theory implicitly
denies that present-time creativity can occur. Only the dropping of the
first pebble is an act of initiation, the spreading ripples maintain the
original rhythm in spite of variations in the water from pool to pool.
The fact that water is the medium for the metaphor lends further
denial to the chance for creativity, since one cannot use water to
produce discrete, preservable entities which will last in some unique
form.
Quentin's choice of language illustrates what his thoughts convey.[
I
To exnress his sense that he lacks.volition, is caught in a process
which he did not begin and cannot influence, Quentin chooses a control-,
ling metaphor derived from the narrators of the Sutpen legend. He j
first heard water imagery in Rosa Coldfield's version; his father used j
water imagery extensively in his versions of the story; Shreve used
such imagery when he created the story of Henry Sutpen, Judith Sutpen
and Charles Bon. The nameless narrator has just used umbilical cord
and water imagery to describe the unity which Shreve and Quentin feel
as they re-experience the Sutpen legend.
Quentin's use of water imagery has further reverberations for the
reader who knows that Quentin will drown himself in five months.
Freudian theorists suggest that the desire to annihilate oneself in
water is analogous to the desire to return to the waters of the womb.
In January, Quentin thinks of life as a series of pools, bound to each
other by narrow water-cords, all repeating the ripples of the first
pool. In June, he will be drawn to water and will perform perhaps his
only successful act, dropping his body into the obliterating pool of
the Charles River. (Quentin's inability to survive long in the stream of
time contrasts with Henry Sutpen's survival into old age.)
I n The Sound and :the :Fury, Mr. Compson claims that Quentin will
only commit suicide when he comes to recognize that no person or event
is worth despair— all is;temporary. Yet after one has read Absalom,
Absalom!, one must decide that Quentin kills himself for the opposite
reason. He dies because his feelings of anguish and failure are
continually exacerbated by.the,reminders presented to him by his father
140 |
l
and by the legends of the South: that men of the past were heroic actors
who accomplished their goals. Throughout.the.seven times Quentin listens
,to the' Sutpen legend, and especially.through those stories which center :
on Henry and Judith. Sutpen and Charles Bon, his anguish intensifies, as:
he contrasts the active successes of the earlier time with his own !
passive failures.
On the day of his death, Quentin spends much energy trying to
evade his shadow. Certainly one other shadow cannot be avoided, the
■one cast by his father. Accepting many of Mr. Compson's implicit
values, especially drawn to homoeroticism and a belief in the glory of
I
heroic action, Quentin compares Henry Sutpen's successful seduction and
preservation of his sister to his own failures at both attempts and is
moved to suicide.
141
Notes to Chapter IV
1. As the discussion in Appendix A indicates, I accept the premise;
that Faulkner ultimately decided to present miscegenation as the substan-r
tiated reason for Henry Sutpen’s murder of Charles Bon. Based on this
assumption, I believe that Faulkner meant for Quentin to learn this
information from Henry when they met in 1909. For an opposing view, see
Estella Schoenberg, Old Tales arid Talking, pp. 5,51,81,136. j
2. Schoenberg works out a complete Quentin chronology which
suggests this placement; see p. 8.
3. Perhaps Faulkner was unaware he was creating them.
4. Joseph W. Reed, Jr.', Faulkner's Narrative, pp. 168-169.
5. Shreve is the only character to focus explicitly on the father-
son relationship as a source of; psychic struggle. The dynamics between
Mr. Compson and Quentin are, of course, implicit throughout the book,
but Faulkner apparently chose not to highlight that issue here to the
extent that he did iti The Sound and the Fury. Even in that novel, the
issue is subordinated to other concerns.
6. Schoenberg argues the opposite view: that Quentin realizes he
is distorting the legend; see pp. 5, 89.
7. Robert Rogers, The Double in literature, p. 9.
8. A. E. Crawley, "Doubles," Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics,
ed. James Hastings, vol. IV (London, 1909-1926), pp. 853-860.
9. See, for example, M. E. Bradford, "Brother, Son, and Heir: The
Structural Focus of Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!," Sewanee Review 78
(Winter 1970): 76-89, especially pp. 79, 89; Joseph W. Reed, Jr., p. 149;
and Estella Schoenberg.
10. Faulkner stressed this unspoken affinity of blood in several
relationships in Absalom, Absalom!. Mr. Compson believes that Henry and1
Charles had it, and that this similarity caused Charles to love Judith
through loving Henry. Compson also believes that Thomas and Judith
Sutpen shared it. The nameless narrator attributes this wordless affinity
to Thomas Sutpen, Henry Sutpen and Charles Bon (and perhaps Judith
Sutpen) in the past, and to Quentin and Shreve in the present.
11. Page references are to the Vintage Books edition of The Sound j
arid the Fury (New York: Random House, 1949, c 1929, 1956). The '
"Publisher's Note" states that: "The text of this edition . is |
reproduced photographically from a copy of the first printing. , . . ]
The Appendix was first included in the.Modern Library edition of 1946." j
12. Quentin apparently feels guilt about his masturbation, another,
possible reason for his desire not to have the male sex organ. In his !
musings on June 10, Quentin recalls going to the bathroom in the night •
as a child. He thinks of his hands touching the walls as he groped to
the bathroom, then he remembers handling his phallus:"hands can see . . . .
invisible swan throat where less than Moses Rod the . . . touch tentative
not to . . .drumming . . .drumming " (pp. 214-215). Of course the
passage also suggests that he believes his sex organ is not large or
potent enough.
13. Such a refusal also reflects Quentin's abhorrence of sexual
intercourse. See this abhorrence expressed also in The Sound arid the
Fury in passages like that on p. 215.
14. It also isvsimilar to the Herbert Head situation. Although
Quentin does not know in January 1910 that Caddy will be forced to marry
Herbert, and thus cannot project elements from that situation into the
earlier triangle, Faulkner, having already created Quentin's and Caddy's
futures, included parallels from it in the created Sutpen legend.
15. Quentin thinks a great deal about negroes on June 10, and not
all his thoughts are positive. He may also be similar to Henry in his
concern about blacks.
16. The discussion in Chapter I has demonstrated that Quentin has •
actually heard all of Rosa's version (Chapters I and V) before Mr. Comp
son begins re-telling his two versions (Chapter II-IV; VI-VII); so
Quentin has already heard all of Rosa's references to this scene, and
his thoughts are fixed upon it before his father begins.
17. John T. Irwin's discussion is the latest extensive Freudian
interpretation of The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom!. His
discussion on pp. 86-91 is relevant here.
CHAPTER V
IMPLICIT PATTERNS.IN FAULKNER'S NOVELS:
FROM WOMAN TO LAND
As the strongest presence in Absalom, Absalom!! , Mr. Compson arti
culates sexual concerns which also appear in every other major Faulkner!
work to 1940. In these novels, women serve as the embodiments of the
.best and the worst that men can conceive. The woman as pre-pubescent
virgin promises romantic joy, but also threatens sexual entanglement.
The sexually receptive woman attracts with her sensuality and fecundity,
but also suffocates the male in the procreative act. Both the pre-
pubescent and the sexually receptive woman must be protected from their
intrinsic amorality;theirpreservation is the symbolic preservation of
all important values. In several novels, the male's obsessive need to
preserve the virginity of the female is presented as a desire for an
isolating union with the sister. Though this yearning is expressed in
sexual terms, the fact that every major Faulkner male finds sexual
intercourse physically repulsive indicates that this attraction is not
sexual. Instead, the male is drawn to an emotional union which he hopes
will prohibit the sister—r-who . is more a concept to him than a unique
individual— from sexual activity. Only the asexual woman no longer
needs:such protection, and the Faulkner male is truly comfortable only
in her presence. Indeed, the asexual.woman often serves as the protector
144:j
of the male. To indicate how pervasive these themes are, this chapter I
|
will present examples from other pre-1940 works. !
After 1940, the symbolic center.changes from woman to land. One (
can see the beginning of this shift as early as 1929, in "Red Leaves," j
but it first appears strongly in Go Down, Moses . (1942) in "The Bear"
and "Delta Autumn.*' From this point on;, the land becomes the mistress
whose violation signals the downfall of the social order. Faulkner's
presentation of Eula Varner, his ultimate earth mother, implies a
parallel between the response to the fertile woman and the response to •
the earth. Eula appears first in The Hamlet (1940), though the material
was written during an earlier period.^ Since this study focuses on pre-
1940 works, I shall include only a few examples to illustrate this
shift.
I include the discussion of this change in symbol because I want to
illustrate that the central themes in Faulkner's fictional world
reflected the prime concerns in his life. Up to the late 1930's, he
seems to have been more interested in understanding, attracting and
coping with women. From the late 1930's on, however, Faulkner began to
act on a desire to own land and thus "restore" his family's domain. (In
fact, the Faulkner family had never been extensive landowners.)
Discovering the elements which Mr. Compson and Shreve choose to
create or retain, and Quentin chooses to expand and react to, helps to
t
know them as characters. In the same way, noting the themes and motifs
that Faulkner chose to present repeatedly illuminates the work and
reveals the man. This study has found that in two of his major works,
Faulkner devoted much attention to homoeroticism, heroism, approach/
145
I
avoidance attitudes toward women, and incest, incest and heroism seem ■
to have been consciously chosen subjects, yet the implicit presentation
of homoeroticism and ambivalent attitudes toward women must also be !
seen as important themes, simply because of the quantity of writing j
given over to them and the intensity of that writing.
The presence of the incest motif in The Sound and the Fury and
Absalom, Absalom! has received some.'discussion,;but the fact that the (
desire for incest plays a large part in other works has not been noted.!
It is a secondary concern in several published works; it appears j
centrally in the unpublished novel which Faulkner worked on during his :
2
Paris stay in 1925. In Soldier1s Pay, Donald Mahon and Emmy have been"
like brother and sister before he makes love to her. Iii Mosquitoes,
Pat Robyn clearly desires her brother Ted (whom*- she calls Josh), plans ;
to go with him to Yale, pursues him around the boat, and follows him to
his bed in order to be able to touch him as he falls asleep. Flags in i
the Dust, an early version of Sartoris, posthumously published, expli
citly describes an incestuous attachment between Horace and Narcissa
Benbow. Faulkner was persuaded to cut this material when he revised
the work for publication. In Sanctuary, he reasserted the Incestuous
nature of their relationship, even using some of the material deleted
from the earlier manuscript, but again he lessened the importance of
their attachment when he revised the galleys, moving Temple Drake's
story into a more central position. (Horace's strong attraction to his
stepdaughter, Little Belle, seems effectively incestuous.) Between
Sartoris and Sanctuary, Faulkner published the two Compson novels and
implied an emotionally incestuous closeness between Dewey Dell and Darli
146
Bundren in As I Lay Dying. In Pylon, Lavern Schumann has been the victim
....... ■ ■ - i
of incest, at least in the Renaissance sense, for she has been sexually
initiated by her brother-in-law. In "Adolescence," a short story
i
written in 1922, Faulkner described a close, somewhat erotic relationship
l ... . . . . ►
.between girl and boy playmates. The unfinished novel written while I
I
I
Faulkner was in Paris in 1925 survives as the two "Elmer papers":
"Elmer" and "Portrait of Elmer." In both versions, Elmer's incestuous
preoccupation with his sister is explicit. He sleeps with her because :
.he has been traumatized by being in a fire, but she has to teach him '
that "You don’t have to put your hands on folks to like 'em" (TS of
"Elmer," p. 9). When Faulkner reworked the material into the "Portrait
of Elmer," he retained the incest motif.
Homoeroticism is not so central in other published and unpublished
works as it is in Absalom, Absalom!, but both the possibility of sexual
attraction between women and the existence of emotionally intense
devotion between men seemed to fascinate Faulkner. The published
version of Mosquitoes contains a slightly suggestive scene in which Pat
Robyn, an epicene young girl, caresses Jenny, her voluptuous counterpart
on the boat trip, as they lie In a bunk. Jenny is also the object of
another woman's affection, for in a later scene Mrs. Wiseman comforts
the girl with suggestive comments and gestures. In passages deleted
'from the original manuscript, the lesbian interplay between Pat and
3
Jenny, and Mrs. Wiseman's attraction to Jenny, are more plainly stated.
In Light in Avigust, there are homoerotic overtones in the relationship
between Gale Hightower and Byron Bunch, at least for Hightower.
Hightower also uses the suggestion of a meeting between himself and
Joe Christmas as a last-minute attempt to save the younger man’s life. I
i
i
,"The Elmer papers" contain Elmer’s explicitly homoerotic schoolboy
attachment for a handsome fourth-grade classmate, but Elmer’s love is
cruelly spurned, and he becomes the butt of crude jokes. ' ,
Ambivalence about women is strong in every work of this period. I
i
. !
Women serve as central symbols in each. Asexual women act as touchstones
in many of the books, while women who are interested in or engaged in
sexual activity are treated with hostility or condescension. The only
exception is Eula Varner, who is presented sometimes humorously and [
sometimes sympathetically. Pregnant women receive the same treatment
as asexual women. In Soldier’s Pay, Margaret Powers’s rejection of
sensual involvement allows her to devote herself to caring for Donald
Mahon, in contrast to Cecily Saunders's epicene, sexual frivolity and
Emmy's bewildered sensuality. In Sartoris, Aunt Jenny du Pre, one of
Faulkner's first post-menopausal characters, provides moral commentary
on the events. Addie Bundren's presence dominates As I Lay Dying in
several ways. The disposal of her corpse is the central activity in
the novel, as several of her children react to her treatment of them in
life and to the fact of her death. Caddy Compson provides a similar
implicit center for The Sound aiid the Fury. Although Mr. Compson and
Quentin doubt woman's intrinsic morality,and voice their repugnance for
the physical signs of womanhood and the apparent physical suffocation of
sexual intercourse, the reader perceives that Caddy Compson's sensuality
co-exists with strong, active maternal behavior. Her mother, one of i
Faulkner’s most unpleasant female characters, validates her husband's
misogyny with her selfish whining. Yet Faulkner also ended the novel
with a section devoted. to Dils.ey; post-menopausal and negro, who j
delivers the final assessment of the Compsons and whose section of the '
Compson Appendix says simply , "They endured" (SF, p. .427) . In Sanctuary,"
Temple Drake moves from epicene flirtations through febrile sensuality '
to a final passive indifference to moral and sexual concerns. Belle
Mitchell and her daughter Little Belle repel Horace Benbow with their
sensuality, even as they also attract him. Ruby Goodman exhibits
dignified loyalty to her man; her offer to sleep with Horace comes not j
from amoral passion but from the desire to offer the one thing she has ;
to give in return for Horace’s ineffectual help to save her husband. In
Light in August,Joanna Burden’s neurotic sexual craving, combined with
her Calvinistic fanaticism, lead to her destruction. Her abstracted
sensuality and false pregnancy are contrasted with Lena Grove's quiet ,
(
acceptance of her genuine pregnancy, the sign of her procreative power. '
Lena's pregnancy renders her non-sexual, for Faulkner, and allows him
to create her as the implicit moral center of the novel. At the book's
end, she maintains her sexual ^ disinterest as she gently pushes Byron
Bunch from the wagon when he approaches: her. Judith Sutpen and Rosa
Coldfield have both renounced sexuality. Judith's behavior serves as
the measure of the Sutpen generations, while Rosa's determination
contrasts with the impotent passivity of the males in the narrating
and reporting generations. In The Unvanquished, Rosa Millard, post- i
menopausal, makes the moral choices which.dominate the book. Finally,
in The Wild Palms, Faulkner juxtaposed Charlotte Rittenmeyer's.feverish!
sensuality and irresponsibility, which sap Harry Wilbourne's already
weak personality, with the unnamed woman's acceptance of her elemental ’
149
role as bearer of life and her quiet assistance to the convict who j
comes to save her. !
Throughout, sexual involvement in general and sexual intercourse in;
particular are viewed as bothersome at best and repulsive at worst. Only
in Pylon does one find the possibility that a man and woman can enjoy a I
satisfying sexual life, though even here there is the suggestion that
the results of that relationship— Lavern's second pregnancy— may have
led Schumann to take the risk which cost his death. Almost universally,,
men express condescension toward and revulsion from.sexual intercourse. 1
The comments by Mr. Compson, Shreve and Quentin have already been
discussed. In addition, one notes Horace Benbow's nausea, Doc Hines’s
fulminations, Joe Christmas's violence, and Gale Hightowerls withdrawal-—
all rejections of female sexuality and fertility. The unnamed convict
in "Old Man" desires so much to flee his passenger1s pregnancy that he
considers killing her. His last words in the story— -the last words in
The Wild Palms, the last novel of this period— are, "Women, shit!" He
is explaining to his cellmates why he has voluntarily returned to prison,
giving up a pardon, to avoid the world in which females must be dealt
with. The statement culminates the strongly misogynistic side of the
approach/avoidance conflict which I have been tracing.
Although after 1940 the symbolic center changes from woman to the '
feminized land, and the land is treated with the same reverence and fear
as the women were in earlier works, the active moral guides continue to
be non-sexual: young boys* post-menopausal women and men, and Gavin
Stevens— who is curiously de-sexualized both before his strong desire
to save Eula Varner Snopes and then her daughter,and after his marriage
to Melissandre Backus. The implicit belief in the primacy of male
relationships continues. Whether experiencing the camaraderie of the
hunters, the intellectual and spiritual affinity of V. K. Ratliff and
Gavin Stevens, or the tutor-tyro relationships of Sam Fathers and Ike
i
McCaslin, Gavin Stevens— or V. K. Ratliff— and Chick Mallison, and >
Boon Hogganbeck and Lucius Priest— males are still said to possess a
greater capacity for friendship and loyalty. The only heterosexual
unions portrayed as satisfying are the one that exists between Molly
and Lucas Beauchamp in "The Fire and the Hearth," and the one which
existed between Rider and his dead wife in "Pantaloon in Black." Both
of these couples are negroes, and both stories occur in Go DOwri, Moses
.(1940). (Gavin's marriage to Melissandre settles him, but the relation
ship is never scrutinized.) Other attractions between males and females
are sources of humor, consternation, anguish, or some combination of
these. Labove vainly pursues Eula; Hoke McCarron impregnates her; Flem
Snopes weds her. Both Gavin Stevens and Manfred DeSpain court her
after her marriage, but only Manfred is successful— and neither can
prevent her from committing suicide. Gavin's love for Eula's daughter
is also unrewarding. Even Houston's deeply felt devotion to his--dead .wife
serves as the source of a pain so great that he acts so as to anger
Mink Snopes, triggering Mink's homicidal rage.
The responses to the land often.repeat earlier responses to women.
In "The Bear," and "Delta Autumn," Ike McCaslin appears first as a boy
being initiated by nature's priest, Sam Fathers, then as a young man
renouncing his ownership of the land, and finally as an old man comment-,
ing on the violation of the land. The young Ike sees the natural world ,
as his true mother, who has "shaped him if any had toward the man he |
I
almost was." His entries into the wilderness are like returns to the ;
womb (GD,M, pp. 195-196) . Though Ike knows that he will marry some
day, he insists that the woods will continue to be "his mistress and ;
i
I
his wife"; entering them, he experiences feelings like those of a youth1
who "recognizes the existence,of love and passion . . . /when.he enters/
by chance the presence or perhaps even the bedroom of a woman who has ' ,
loved and been loved by many men" (GD,M, p. 204). Ike believes that the
violation of the land coincides with the desecration of all societal
values, so he repudiates his family's possession of the land in order to
portest the loss of communal, pastoral, non-acquisitive brotherhood.
Ike's argument for relinquishing his rights to the land echoes comments
which earlier male characters have made about women. He says that the ,
land cannot be owned (women cannot be controlled), and the illusion of
ownership (control) is the greatest illusion of all. Man should simply
protect and preserve the land. (Quentin: "Father and I protect women.")
One must note that when Ike gives up his landed heritage, he angers his
wife, who denies him sexual intercourse, procreative access. Ike's
attempt at amelioration is futile. In "Delta Autumn," he acknowledges
that man has continued to abuse the land and says, "The woods and fields
^nan/ ravages and the game he devastates will be the consequences and
signaturesof his crime and guilt, and his punishment" (GD,M, p. 349).
Throughout the story, Faulkner created.parallels among the feminized
land, the doe, and the woman whom Roth Edmonds has been meeting each
autumn. All have been mistreated by males. Annette Kolodny, commenting
on various ways in which American men.have treated the land as female,
152
says* "As soon as the land is experienced.as feminine, no masculine j
i
l
activity in relation to it can be both satisfying and nonabusive, and,
i
insofar as we do not wholly control or even understand our responses to
that which constitutes the opposite gender, no activity toward it can
be wholly 'responsible.
The land's power is demonstrated in the ending of The Mansion
(1955), as Mink Snopes slowly surrenders to the power of the earth.
Mink has murdered his cousin Flem and now is prepared to leave Yoknapa-
tawpha County, but he feels the inexorable pull of the ground, which
never lets a man “forget it wis there/'waiting . . . saying, Come on> .
lay down" (M, p. 434). Mink believes that this pull is constant and
that a man must spend "not just all his life but all the time of Man
too guarding against it" (M, p. 435). The land triumphs at last, as
Mink feels himself
beginning to creep, seep, flow easy as sleeping . . .
following all the little grass blades and tiny roots, and the
little holes the worms made, down and down into the ground
already full of the folks that had the trouble but were free
now, so that it was just the ground and the dirt that had to
bother and worry and anguish with the passions and hopes . . .
the justice and the injustice and the griefs, leaving the
folks themselves easy now, all mixed and jumbled up . . . so
wouldn't nobody even know or even care who was which any more,
himself among them, equal to any, good as any, brave as any,
being inextricable from, anonymous with all of them: the
beautiful, the splendid, the proud and the brave, right on up
to the very top itself among the shining phantoms and dreams
which are the milestones of the long human recording— Helen
and the bishops, the kings and the unhomed angels, the scorn
ful and graceless seraphim(M, p. 436).
Faulkner’s novelistic.shift from woman to the land as central
bearer of value corresponds with a shift of concern in his own life.
153
By 1939, he had succumbed completely to his desire to acquire his own !
i
land in order to recreate the heritage that he felt his father and ;
grandfather had lost. In 1930, Faulkner had purchased Rowan Oak, the ;
plantation whose upkeep was to force him to spend long, unhappy periods ,
I
in Hollywood, writing movie scripts to earn money. In 1939, he Increased
■ 7 1
his land holdings by acquiring the property he named Greenfield Farm.
i
Yet before Faulkner focused his attention on becoming a gentleman
!
farmer, he appears to have struggled long, though perhaps unconsciously,1
with his disappointments in relationships with women, particularly in
his relationship with Estelle Oldham, the woman who eventually became
his wife.^
The evidence suggests that William Faulkner and Estelle Oldham grew
up in the proximity usually enjoyed by a brother and sister, although
Estelle marked Faulkner as her future husband when she was seven or
eight years old and he was six. Early in childhood, they discovered
that they had many things in common. They were both fastidious, loved
clothes, enjoyed imaginative creation. They spent much time together in
childhood and adolescence, developing a special affinity. Yet their
closeness did not prevent Estelle from seeing many other young men. In
1915, she accepted a marriage proposal from Cornell Franklin; in 1918,
she accepted Faulkner’s ring while continuing to date others, including
his brother Jack; she also accepted.another marriage proposal from
another student at the:University of Mississippi.
Faulkner must have watched such disloyalty with alarm. Estelle was
evidently susceptible to whoever was in closest proximity. Yet
Faulkner could have taken advantage of this pliancy himself and chose
not to. In 1918, when it became clear that Estelle's parents were goingj
• ■ - i
to insist that she marry Franklin, she offered to elope with Faulkner. .
He said that they must obtain her parents' consent. When that was denied,
' i
he refused to elope. Unable to resist her parents' pressure, Estelle [
I
married Franklin on April 18, 1918, though she did not love him and told1
him so. Faulkner reacted by bitterly withdrawing from her for a time.
In the next five years, Estelle bore Franklin two children, unde
niable reminders that she was no longer the virgin maiden. Faulkner .
continued to desire her, however, and she reaffirmed her love for him :
whenever she visited Oxford. Finally, in 1927, Estelle divorced
Franklin. After a two-year waiting period, Faulkner and Estelle were
married in June 1929. The marriage apparently had problems, or Faulkner
9
thought it did, for he spoke negatively about Estelle to others.
While Faulkner waited for Estelle, he produced "Adolescence,"
"Elmer," "Portrait of Elmer," Flags in the Dust, and The Sound and the i
Fury-all but one of the works which deal most explicitly with the
closeness that can develop between a young boy and a young girl, and
which suggest-that incestuous desire can intensify that closeness.
While "Adolescence," and the "Elmer" papers. emphasize a desire for
physical closeness, Flags in the Dust begins to stress emotional uniting,
usually for the preservation of the sister against the sexual approaches
of others. In The Sound arid the Fury, the desire to isolate the sister,
to curb her tendency to couple with others, has become paramount. One
can see Quentin moving toward the fixation which will crystallize when ;
he is arrested by the scene between Henry and Judith in Absalom,
Absalom!.
155
In this same period, Faulkner expressed a dislike for physical sex
and for women in two non-fiction pieces: the essay "Verse Old and I
.i
Nascent: A Pilgrimage," and a letter to his mother from Paris. In the
former, he used the word "sex" as a negative term, distinguishing the |
I
"tortured sex" in D. H. Lawrence from the eroticism related to the
normal play of the senses which he found in Swinburne and similar poets.
In the letter to his mother, Faulkner remarked,
After having observed Americans in Europe I believe more than
ever that sex with us has become a national d_isease. . . ./_We
get it into places where it does not belong^/ But the Latin
people keep it where it belongs, in a secondary.place. Their
painting and music and literature has nothing to do with sex. .
Far more healthy than our way.
One notes the selective blindness to certain artistic works which
enabled Faulkner to make such a statement.
Faulkner exercised this same selective blindness, or amnesia, in
his relationshipswiith women. Perhaps his repulsion from sexuality, which'
may have originated in his fastidious nature or may have been a reaction
to Estelle’s union with Franklin, led to his continuing attraction to
childlike women and to his.insistence on ignoring the sexual histories
of those women whom he later knew intimately.
Close study of Faulkner’s literary creations and of his non-fiction
pronouncements during this period suggests that his male protagonists
speak for his unconscious preoccupations when they center their lives |
around some amoral female whose virginity needs protection, even from
her own: natural sensual desires.. It: is this protective function toward
the abstraction which the female becomes for them that motivates many of
Faulkner's male characters.
s
Like their creator in his relationship with Estelle, these men are t
doomed to fail as protectors. They cannot stop life in a frieze in which
I
the virginal young maiden will forever by fruitlessly pursued by a 1
young man. The bride cannot remain unravished.. Unable to control or
even influence women, these men are constantly reminded of their
impotence. Some of them, like Mr. Compson and Shreve, choose to channel
the resulting frustration into condescension toward women, or hatred of j
them. Quentin is one of the few male characters to direct most of his
frustration into self-hatred.
•- Analyzing the psyches of these characters and their creator leads
to more than explanations for fictional or actual behavior. When one
recognizes that certain implicit themes are given great quantitative and
qualitative attention, one may be forced to reconsider a novel's form.
In Absalom, Absalom!, such a reassessment leads to a new view of narra-<
tive structure,and suggests that the major controlling character is not
the one Faulkner intended but the one who most voiced Faulkner's
unconscious concerns.
Notes to Chapter V
1. Joseph Blotner, William Faulkner: A Biography, p. 1023.
2. The following discussion uses material from Blotner, and from
Thomas -L. McHaney, "The Elmer Papers: Faulkner’s Comic Portrait of the
Artist," Mississippi Quarterly 26, no. 3 (Summer 1973):281-311; repr.
iii A Faulkner Miscellany, ed. J, B. Meriwether (Jackson: University
Press of Mississippi, 1974), pp. 37-69.
3. Blotner, p. 540.
4. Quotations are taken from the Modern Library edition (New York
Random House, 1941).
5. Annette Kolodny, The Lay of the Land: Metaphor as Experience
and History iii American Life arid Letters (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1975), p. 142.
6. Quotations are taken from the Modern Library edition (New York
Random House, 1959).
7. Blotner, pp. 650-654, 803, 879.
8. Blotner, pp. 85, 109-110, 152-153, 159, 174-176, 184-188, 192-
195, 204, 238-239, 306-313, 333, 376-377, 539, 564, 618-619. Only
Jackson J. Benson has noticed that the relationship with Estelle may
have led to Faulkner’s concern about incest, and that Estelle may have
provided a model for Caddy. Benson also suggests, however, that Sallie
Murray Wilkin's, Faulkner's cousin, could be another model for Caddy,
and he does riot seem aware that Faulkner was preoccupied with incest in
other novels. See "Quentin Compson: Self-Portrait of a Young Artist's
Emotion," Twentieth Century Literature 17 (July 1971): 143-159.
9. Meta Carpenter Wilde and Orin Borsten, A Loving Gentleman,
passim. Stephen Longstreet, personal conversation, University of
Southern California, November 30, 1977.
10. Blotner, pp. 422, 465.
APPENDIX A
FAULKNER'S VACILLATION ABOUT WHEN HR. COMPSON WOULD KNOW OF
CHARLES BON'S RACIAL MAKE-UP AND CONNECTION WITH
THOMAS SUTPEN
1
|
The critical argument over how much General Compson, Mr. Compson i
and Quentin each know about Charles Bon's mixed blood and his relation
ship to Thomas Sutpen continues. Concomitant with this controversy is
the one over whether Faulkner intended these details about Charles to
be facts discovered by the various narrators or speculations inserted
into the Sutpen legend.
The debate covers several decades.'*' In 1955, Use Dusoir Lind
argued that Grandfather Compson knew and told Quentin, but not Mr.
Compson. In 1963, Cleanth Brooks dismissed this possibility and argued
instead that Quentin learns these details when he sees Henry Sutpen in
September 1909. In 1976, Albert Guerard did not believe that Henry
would have divulged such a long-kept secret to a stranger, yet he also
admitted that this meeting is the only logical source of the information.
Calling attention to Absalom, 'Absalom! . 1 s emphasis on wordless communi
cation between certain characters, Guerard suggested that Quentin
receives Henry's information intuitively. In 1977, Estelle Schoenberg
argued that Quentin invents . these details out of his own concerns
about incest and miscegenation.
159!
Gerald Langford says that his study of the manuscript and published
2 j
text indicates that Faulkner changed.his mind at least four times. ,
Since Faulkner was not careful;, about revising each time he changed his 1
plan, the resulting text contains ambiguities. One can support either
the argument that Grandfather Compson told Quentin or that Quentin j
learns from Henry. One cannot find support, though, for the suggestion
that Quentin merely invented the details.
Langford believes that Faulkner began composing with the idea that
the details about Bon would be known from the beginning. Then, at
Chapter IV, he seems to have changed his plan, causing Mr. Compson to
be ignorant of the information. By Chapter VII, Faulkner evidently
began to doubt this strategy, so he restored Compson’s knowledge that
Charles Bon was Sutpen's son. In the published text, however,
Faulkner seems to have changed his mind again, deciding that Compson
would be ignorant of Charles’s background in the early stages of his
narrative, but Faulkner failed to alter several passages indicating
that Compson knows the truth about Charles all along.
The resulting published text retains the suggestion that Compson
knows from the beginning. In Chapter III, he says that Thomas "named
Clytie as he named them all, the one before Clytie and Henry and
Judith even" (p. 62). He repeats this statement in Chapter VII (p.266).
There are more examples,.however, to support the view that
Mr. Compson does not have, or does not remember, this information on
the evening in September, and that he learns it from Quentin later the
I
same evening or early the next morning— after Quentin has seen Henry
Sutpen. Compson's first attempt to determine why Henry murdered Charles
presupposes this ignorance. Quentin’s comments to Shreve,and Shreve’s
replies, state that Quentin gave his father this information after he
had been to Sutpen's Hundred (Chapter VII, pp. 266,274).
Implicit in all the critical discussions to date is the assumption
that Mr. Compson narrates only Chapters II-IV, that when Quentin quotes
him in Chapter VII, he is recalling the narrative of the afternoon and
evening, before he left for . Sutpen's Hundred. My suggestion that there
are two Mr. Compson narrative:sections greatly reduces the problem. In
the first narrative (Chapters II-IV), Mr. Compson does not know,or has
forgotten the details,about Charles Bon's parentage. He creates the
homoerotic, and racial purity explanation instead. In the second
narrative (Chapters VI-VII), Mr. Compson has been told of Charles's
parentage and revises his story accordingly. This explanation can be
accepted whether one chooses to believe that Mr. Compson is truly
ignorant of the details during his first narrative or that Mr. Compson’s
enthusiasm for his projections causes him to forget what he knows about
Charles Bon's relationship to Thomas Sutpen.
This explanation assumes that Quentin learns these things from
Henry when they meet in 1909. While such an assumption stretches
credulity, Henry is portrayed as in extremis, so his repression could
break down. Faulkner clearly did hot intend the reader to think that
these details were Quentin's inventions- Besides the passages cited,
in which Quentin implies that he learned these details the night he saw
Henry, Faulkner included Thomas.Sutpen's conversation with General
Compson about the unacceptability of his first wife and son,and about
his dilemma in the i8601s as a result of his earlier rejection of them
. 161 i
i
l
(pp. 262-268, 272-274). This inclusion weights the evidence in favor |
i
of Charles Bon's actually being Thomas Sutpen's part-negro son.
Notes to Appendix A
1. The following discussion refers to Use D. Lind, "The Design
and Meaning of Absalom, Absalom!," PMLA 70:887-912; Cleanth Brooks,
Yoknapatawpha Country, pp. 436-438, 441; Albert Guerard, Triumph of the
Novel, pp. 319-321; and Estella Schoenberg, Old Tales and Talking,p. 83.
2. Faulkner’s Revisions of ABSALOM, ABSALOM!, pp. 5-11.
APPENDIX B
THE POWER MR. COMPSON GAINED
WHEN FAULKNER EXPANDED "EVANGELINE," INTEGRATED "WASH,"
AND REVISED THE MANUSCRIPT TO THE PUBLISHED TEXT
Throughout the composition and revision of Absalom, Absalom!,
Faulkner showed an unconscious affinity for Mr. Compson. As Faulkner
expanded the unpublished short story "Evangeline," and integrated the
published short story "Wash" ^ into the novel, he had Mr. Compson present
many details of the Sutpen legend. He also used Compson to express two
concerns which are central to the " Evangeline" story, concerns evidently
important to Faulkner himself. To increase Quentin's role, Faulkner
revised the manuscript; however, Mr. Compson's implicit hold was greater;
than any conscious allegiance to Quentin. While the published text shows
some increase for Quentin, it shows a much greater one for Mr. Compson.
"Evangeline" is one of four related stories which Faulkner .wrote in
the period from 1925-1931. The exact date of "Evangeline's" composition
is not known, but it appears on Faulkner's sending schedule for 17 July
2
1931. The four stories are dual narratives, told as dialogues between
"Don and I,” and they are thought to originate in experiences Faulkner .
had while traveling in Europe with. William Spratling in 1925.
1641
In "Evangeline," the young narrators try to patch the Sutpen story!
i
" . . . .1
together from fragments of information which Don has received from j
Sukey Sutpen, the daughter of the oldest half-breed Sutpen still living
at Sutpen's Hundred. Eventually, the "I" narrator goes to Sutpen's ,
Hundred, confronts Raby (the oldest half-breed Sutpen), learns more of.
the story from her, and sees the dying Henry Sutpen. When Raby asks
him to leave, he does not, staying to see the Sutpen house burn with
all inside. ;
"Evangeline" was Faulkner's first attempt to deal with the Sutpen ;
material. Like Mr. Compson in Absalom, AbsalomI, Faulkner was most
interested in the Henry Sutpen-Judith Sutpen-Charles Bon story. Thomas
Sutpen appears briefly as a minor character, the stock,uncomprehending
father. The narrators puzzlei.over the fact that Henry first intro
duced Charles into the Sutpen family, then later opposed Charles’s
marriage to Judith so adamantly that he first challenged Charles to a
duel, then allowed the marriage ceremony but insisted that Charles
leave with him directly afterward to join the armies of the Confed
eracy, thus prohibiting the physical consummation of the union. Like
Mr. Compson in his first version of the legend, the narrators believe
that Henry and Charles hoped the war would solve the problem by killing
Charles. Faulkner did not explain how Charles died, but the narrators
know that at the close of the war Henry brought Charles's body to
Judith, who received it dressed in white. Henry then disappeared.
After going over these fragments with Don, the "I" narrator visits(
Sutpen*s Hundred. His epistemological concern is as great as Mr.
Compson* s :in Absalom, Absalom!, so he confronts Raby with his questions.
165
After he passes the test she sets for him, the "I" narrator is told
the rest of the tale as Raby knows it, and is brought into Henry's
presence, though Henry is too near death to speak* Raby says that
. - .1
Henry prohibited the consummation of the marriage because Charles Bon !
was already married to an octoroon and had lied about the marriage to ■
■ ■ _ - ■ I
Henry. This prior marriage, without the added stigma of the lie, is
the reason given by Mr. Compson in his first verdion of the Sutpen
legend.
Faulkner evidently experienced the same vacillation about the
miscegenous elements in "Evangeline" that he had in Absalom, AbsalomI.
At one point he suggested that Charles, like Thomas Sutpen in Absalom,
AbsalomI, learned of his wife's negro blood only at the birth of their
son. Yet Faulkner also had Bon carry a portrait of the octoroon which
shows* her clearly negroid features. Judith discovers this portrait on
Charles's body, realizes why Henry prohibited her marriage, and summons
him for a reconciliation. Faulkner left Bon's parentage and physical
appearance vague or undescribed. Perhaps he considered attributing
negro blood to Charles, though he also indicated that Charles's
appearance ddes not trouble the Sutpens.
When Raby has told the story, she dismisses the "I" narrator, but
he returns secretly to the house, sits on the porch, andffalls into
reverie. In this reverie, he confronts the young Charles Bon, the
young Henry, and the old Raby, asking each about Bon's death. The
exchange is brief and inconclusive, although Henry admits that he
fired "a last shot" in the Civil:War. The narrator is brought back toi
consciousness by the howling of the.dog who guards the. house. He
realizes that the house is: burning and.that he can save no one inside. [
I
He sees Raby's face in the window just before the house collapses.
t
The next day, in the ruins, he finds the octoroon's picture, which ;
indicates her negro:J ' heritage and which contains a loving inscription.
i
As the preceding synopsis suggests, much of the essence of 1
"Evangeline" appears in Mr. .Compson's first narrative. Quentin's
characterization and reporting were much less affected by the
"Evangeline" story. His attention is fixed on the confrontation when
Henry presented Judith with her dead lover's body, but this detail of
the Sutpen legend is introduced into Absalom, AbsalomI ,'by Rosa Coldfield. 1
.Like the "I" narrator in "Evangeline," Quentin does confront the last
two living Sutpens. (Raby has become Clytie; Henry can talk to his
visitor.) The "I" narrator's presence at the burning of the Sutpen
mansion is echoed in Quentin's internal speculations about the scene.
The evidence further indicates that the presentation of the split
Quentins in Chapter I, and of Shreve and Quentin as narrator-listener
in Chapters VI-IX, can be traced to the portrayal of the "Don and I"
narrators in."Evangeline.After beginning Absalom, Absalom! as a "Don
and I" narrative, Faulkner changed the narrators' names to "Chisholm
and Burke." In a third version, he presented the dual narrators as
contrasting sides of Quentin's mind, a devicei.retained in Chapter I
(p. 9). Finally, the dual narrators became'.Shreve and Quentin, though
Quentin lost the narrative force and became a transmitting reporter.
The "Don and I" narrators begin their task In a sense of friendly
rivalry which diminishes as the "I" narrator becomes more involved in
the legend. Shreve's playfulness in the beginning of his narrative
1671
section is never answered by Quentin, but Quentin does.exhibit the j
growing withdrawal which accompanies increasing involvement in the
I
legend.
A synopsis of "Wash" is unnecessary: the story as it appears in its
most detailed version in Absalom, Absalom!;is close to the original. ‘
It is presented three times in the novel, each version incrementally
expanding the previous one. Shreve presents a short, first version in
Chapter VI (pp. 177-173). The other two versions are delivered by
Mr. Compson as part of his second version of the legend. In Chapter VI,
Quentin remembers the story in his first reverie, where it is intro
duced by his thought that Shreve sounds "just like father" (p. 181),
thus evoking Compson's presence and reminding the reader that Compson
is the source of the story. The last version occurs in Chapter VII
(pp. 280-292). This time, Mr. Compson's presence in Quentin's mind is
evoked by the repetition of "Father said."
In Faulkner's Revisions of ABSALOM, ABSALOMI, Gerald Langford says
that one of Faulkner's reasons for revising the manuscript was to
develop "Quentin Compson into the pivotal figure of the story instead
of leaving him, as he was in the first version, merely one of the four
narrators who pieced together the Sutpen chronicle."'* Faulkner may
have intended to enhance Quentin's.role, .but a study of the changes
made suggests that while Quentin did gain explicit stature in ChapterrVI
and part of Chapter VII, he lost ground in Chapter II and another part
of Chapter VII. Furthermore, nearly every one of Quentin's explicit
gains was accompanied by an implicit gain for Mr. Compson. In addition,",
while Quentin was repressed.at.some points in the novel, Mr. Compson
was repressed only once. (Of the three other narratives, Rosa's \
sections stayed essentially the same in length; those of the nameless ;
narrator were expanded; Shreve's was shortened.) i
I
Faulkner evidently meant to increase Quentin's role by having him •
report more of the Sutpen legend and making him the character who learns
why Henry killed Charles Bon. In Chapters VI and VII, Faulkner made
some shifts in narrative attribution and added more material for Quentin
to deliver. In the manuscript, Shreve narrates all of Chapter VI. In
the published text he begins narrating the chapter, but soon gives over,
to Quentin's reporting (p. 181, line 16).^ The nameless narrator
intrudes for a short span (p. 181, lines 17-22), then Quentin returns to
transmit the remainder of the chapter. Quentin's reporting consists of;
his memories of hearing Mr. Compson's second version of the legend, of
visiting the Sutpen graves with his father, and of seeing Clytie Sutpen
and Jim Bond while playing at Sutpen's Hundred. Quentin reports
Chapter VII in both manuscript and book. Faulkner enhanced.his role
here by adding the "ripple theory" of existence (p. 261, lines 21-33,
p. 262, lines 1-4).
All but one of these explicit additions to Quentin's reporting
increased Mr. Compson's implicit role. In Chapter VI, Quentin's first
reverie is introduced by his thought that Shreve "sounds just like
father . . . smelling (Quentin) the cigar and the wistaria, seeing the
fireflies blowing and winking in the September dusk. Just exactly like
father"(p. 181, lines 15, 20-22). When Quentin comes out of this
reverie, he moves to the memory of the visit to the Sutpen graves and
recalls Mr. Compson's story about Thomas's acquisition, transportation
and. delivery of the tombstones. Compson is quoted directly here (p.188,
line 28 through:p. 212, line 30), with only occasional interruptions by'
:Quentin or the nameless narrator. Compson's implicit presence in
!
Chapter VI v/as further heightened by additions such as the reference to:
|
his letter lying on Quentin’s desk in the Harvard room and to Quentin's,
i
resulting thought "Yes, Shreve sounds almost exactly like father: that
letter"(p. 207, lines 19-20).(The reference to the letter here is !
deliberately ambiguous: it could be Charles Bon's letter to Judith or
the letter which is now lying on Quentin's desk.)
In Chapter VII the increase In Compson's implicit power continues.
The addition of the'tipple theory" begins with Shreve's "Dont say it's
just me that sounds like your old man." The ripple theory itself moves
from Quentin's initial "Maybe we are both Father" to his affirmation
"Yes, we are both Father" to his final statement that origin is not
linear or chronological but circular and timeless (p. 216, line 22;
p. 261, line 33; p.‘262, line 1). Faulkner added references to Mr.
Compson as source of information or ideas at several other points in the
chapter (p. 267, line 2; p. 277, lines 14, 18, 23; p. 278, line 2). In
addition, a section of the chapter appears to have been changed from
Compson's indirect discourse reported by Quentin to Compson's direct
discourse reported by the~.nameless narrator (p. 278, line 6 through
p. 280, line 4).
When Faulkner decided that Quentin would learn why Henry Sutpen
killed Charles Bon, he.added one passage to Chapter VI and two passages
to Chapter VII which continue the parallel increases in the Quentin and
Mr. Compson roles. The introduction to Quentin’s first reverie'in ]
Chapter VI follows the statement that Shreve sounds "Just exactly like ,
father" with the qualifying remark "if father had known as much about •
it the night before I went out there as he did the day after I came '
back (p. 181, lines 22-23). In Chapter VII, Faulkner added Shreve's J
two comments calling attention to the disparity between Mr. Compson’s
first and second versions of the legend, and to Compson himself (p. 266,
lines 14-20; p. 274, lines 22-28).
Mr. Compson's role is increased explicitly as well. In the manurr .i j
script, Chapter II is told by the nameless narrator up to Sutpen's [
courtship of Ellen Coldfield (p. 48, line 24). Faulkner moved the ■
quotation marks indicating the beginning of Mr. Compson's narrative
five pages forward (to p. 43, line 31), thus giving Compson five more
pages of narrative. In Chapter III, Faulkner removed the punctuation •
marks enclosing the three italicized speech tags (p. 59, lines 2, 3;
p. 61, line 20), thus simplifying the flow of Mr. Compson's almost
unbroken monologue. It has already been noted that part of the
reporting given to Quentin in Chapters VI and VII involves his
recalling direct discourse by Mr. Compson.
While Faulkner repressed Mr. Compson only once, he made several
revisions that repressed Quentin. Mention of Quentin was deleted
three times in Chapter II, strengthening Mr. Compson's domination of
that chapter. In Chapter VII, part of Quentin's narrative was given to
the nameless narrator, who refers to Mr. Compson as a source of infor
mation and also quotes him directly (p. 277, lines 14-33; p. 278, line
1 through p. 280, line 4).
The nameless narrator lost five pages.to Mr. Compson in Chapter II.
. ... |
but he gained material from Quentin in Chapter VII. In Chapter VIII,
the manuscript has Shreve telling of the Confederate retreat; in the
published text, the nameless narrator describes this retreat (p. 346, ;
. . . . . j
line 28 through p. 350, line 9). ;
Throughout the revision process, one can see that Faulkner1s
conscious plan to increase Quentin's role was paralleled by, and at
some points subordinated to, his unconscious urge toward Mr. Compson. j
Notes to Appendix B
1. Published in Harper's 168 (February 1934) and in Collected
Stories (New York: Random House, 1934, 1950), pp. 535-550.
2. James B. Meriwether, ed., The Literary Career of William
Faulkner, p. 172.
3. The following synopsis is based on Estella Schoenberg, Old
Tales arid Talking, pp. 30-46.
4. This discussion is based on Schoenberg, 20-21.
5. Faulkner * s Revisions of ABSALOM, ABSALOM!, p-; 3.
6. In the following discussion, page and line numbers in paren
theses refer to the published text.
APPENDIX C
. THE CRITICAL TREATMENT OF
HOMOEROTICISM IN FAULKNER
Most critics have ignored the strong homoerotic:element in Absalom,
i
Absalom! and other works by Faulknef. None writing before 1959 even
mentioned its existence. Recognition of homoeroticism's importance in
Absalom, Absalom! would have prompted recognition of Mr. Compson’s
centrality, and vice versa, since they seem to be parallel. The
inability or refusal to recognize one has led to a similar blindness
to the other.'
Olga Vickery is the first to mention the homoerotic element in
Absalom, Absalom!, but she diminishes its importance by saying that
there is only a "faint suggestion of homosexuality" in what she
accepts as the actual story of Henry Sutpen and Charles Bon.^ Although
she notes that the narrative she attributes to Shreve and Quentin
emphasizes love, and that Henry lovesiCharles/better than he does
Judith or Thomas, she persists in believing that the major romance is
the possibly incestuous and miscegenous one between Judith and
Charles.^
One would think that those critics who focus on Quentin would be
forced.to discuss homoeroticism. Perhaps it is understandable that
Lawrance Thompson, writing during a period when such topics were still
avoided, would not mention-it. Yet, in 1970, when.the climate of J
discussion was much more liberal, M. E. Bradford still does not mention
homoeroticism. Estella Schoenberg, in 1977, devotes an entire book to
discussing Quentin's role in Absalom, Absalom! and related works
without noting his homoerotic tendencies.
R. P. Adams and John T. Irwin have acknowledged the homoeroticism
in the.story of Henry and Charles. Both mention it briefly, and both
note that the attachment could either be an actual part of the rela
tionship or merely a projection by Quentinr.and Shreve. Adams says
that Faulkner "implies" this attraction, though even the implication
3
may come from Quentin and Shreve. Irwin thinks so little of the homo
erotic element that in a book devoted almost exclusively to a Freudian
discussion of the male protagonists and narrators of Absalom, Absalom!
he mentions homoeroticism in only one paragraph,and qualifies even that
reference by saying that the element is "latent" in both the Henry and
Charles,and Quentin and Shreve, relationships. Irwin adds that this
,"latent" homoeroticism may be present only in Quentin and thus projected
4
into the earlier story by him. Irwin believes that the relationship
between the two young men is secondary, a means to several ends. He
accepts Quentin}',SvTidea.-- that Henry loved Judith, and Shreve's assertion
that Charles was most concerned about gaining recognition from Thomas.
Neither critic connects the projection of homoeroticism to Mr. Compson.
Since homoeroticism appears so frequently in Faulkner's works, and
since it is especially important ■ : in The Sound and the Fury ■ and Absalom,
Absalom!, its presence should now be recognized and evaluated. The
Sound arid the Fury and Absalom, Absalom! are related as two discussions
175!
i
i
of epistemology, metaphysics and ethics, as two glimpses at the life of'
Quentin:Compson, and as two stories: which describe the disintegration
of the Compson family and of the South. They are also related in the
importance they give to homoeroticism and incest. In The Sound and the
Fury, incest is the dominant element and homoeroticism provides an >
t
....... - - I
undercurrent. In Absalom, Absalom!; homoeroticism becomes central.
Incest is a secondary concern for all the male characters except Quentin,
who maintains his obsession with incest as an abstraction. Critics
have discussed the incest theme in these works, since it cannot easily
be ignored, but they have avoided the homoeroticism.
In Absalom, Absalom! the relationship which Mr. Compson, Shreve and
Quentin (by unquestioning assent) posit for Henry Sutpen and Charles
Bon is homoerotic, and potentially incestuous and miscegenous. It is ,
the emotional and intellectual union of half-brothers, one of them '
part-negro. Faulkner included the possibility that such a psychic union
between Charles and Henry may have occurred. In the chronology of
Absalom, Absalom!, Faulkner sets the first meeting of Charles and
Henry in 1859. In the geneology which follows, Faulkner says that
Charles Etienne (Henry, in French) de Saint Velery Bon was also born in
1859. At least in his name, the boy represents the union that
Mr. Compson says the two men desired. Whether Faulkner created this
possibility consciously or unconsciously, it adds evidence to his
often-repeated assertion that those with certain similarities— of blood
or environment— can communicate.intuitively.
0
Notes to Appendix C
1. Vickery, The Novell of William Faulkner, rev, ed. (1964)
2. Vickery, pp. 90-92.
3. Adams, pp. 299, 316.
4. Irwin, pp. 77-78.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works by Faulkner
Absalom, Absalom!. New York: Random House, 1936, 1964.
"Elmer" papers. Charlottesville, Virginia: Alderman Library, University
of Virginia. William Faulkner Collections.
"Evangeline." Charlottesville, Virginia: Alderman Library, University
o of Virginia. Jiff Faulkner Summers Archive.
Go.Down, Moses. New York: Random House, 1940, 1941, 1942.
The Mansion. New York: Random House, 1955, 1959.
The Sound and the Fury. New York: Random House, 1929, 1956.
Other Works
Adams, Richard P. Faulkner: Myth and Motion. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1968.
Benson, Jackson J. "Quentin Compson: Self-Portrait of a Young Artist's
Emotion." Twentieth Century Literature 17:143-159.
Blotner, Joseph. William Faulkner: A Biography. 2 vols. New York:
Random House, 1974.
Brooks, Cleanth. William Faulkner: The Yoknapatawpha Country. New Haven
Yale University Press, 1963.
Fiedler, .Leslie. .Love, Arid Death in the American Novel, rev. .ed.
New York: Dell, 1969.
Fletcher, Angus. Allegory: The Theory of a Symbolic Mode. Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1964.
•178’
Guerard, Albert;J. The Triumph of the Novel: Dickens, Dostoevsky, j
Faulkner. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976. j
Gwynn, Frederick L. and Joseph L. Blotner, eds. Faulkner in the '
University: Class Conferences at the University of Virginia, 1957- ’
1958. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1959.
Irwin, John T. Doubling and Incest/ Repetition and Revenge: A !
Speculative Reading of Faulkner. Baltimore- and London: The Johns
Hopkins Press, 1975.
Kolodny, Annette. The Lay of the Land: Metaphor as Experience and
History in American Life arid Letters. Chaptel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1975.
Langford, Gerald. Faulkner * s Revisions of ABSALOM, ABSALOM!: A
Collation of the Manuscript and the Published Book. Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1971.
Lind, Ilse Dusoir. "The Design and Meaning of Absalom, Absalom!."
PMLA 70:887-912.
McHaney, Thomas. "The Elmer Papers: Faulkner’s Comic Portrait of the
Artist." Mississippi Quarterly 26:281-311.
Meriwether, James B., ed. A Faulkner Miscellany. Jackson: printed by
the University Press of Mississippi for Mississippi Quarterly, 1974’
______, ed. The Literary Career of William Faulkner: A Bibliographical
Study. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1971.
______. "The Short Fiction of William Faulkner: A Bibliography." in
PROOF: The Yearbook of American Bibliographical and Textual Studies.
Vol.1. ed. Joseph Katz. Columbia: University of South Carolina
Press, 1971.
Muhlenfeld, Elisabeth. "Shadows with Substance and Ghosts Exhumed: The
Women in Absalom, Absalom!." Mississippi Quarterly 25:289-304.
Page, Sally R. Faulkner’s Women: Characterization and Meaning. Deland,
Florida: Everett/Edward, 1972.
Polk, Noel. "The Manuscript of Absalom, Absalom!." Mississippi Quarterly
25:359-367.
Reed, Joseph W., Jr. Faulkner’s Narrative. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1973.
Rogers, Robert. A Psychoanalytic.Study of the Double in Literature.
Detroit: Wayne State.University Press, 1970.
179
Schoenberg, Estella. Old Tales and Talking: Quentin Compson in
ABSALOM, ABSALOM! arid Related Works. Jackson: University Press of
Mississippi, 1977.
Vickery, Olga. The Novels of William Faulkner: A Critical Interpre
tation. rev. ed. Baton Rouge: Lousiana State University Press,
1964.
Wilde, Meta Carpenter and Orin Borsten. A Loving Gentleman. New York:
Random House, 1974.

Asset Metadata

Core Title 00001.tif

Tag OAI-PMH Harvest

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC11257567

Unique identifier UC11257567

Legacy Identifier DP23061

Linked assets

University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses