Those Changes that the American South Underwent through William Faulkner’s Literature
Tracing back to time when I was attending high school back in China, I could remember the most influential American writer of fiction was Mark Twain. However now, a concentrated study on the American Southern culture pushed me to the front of William Faulkner. Different from Mark Twain, Faulkner’s literature is much more of geographical color that reflected issues of that time socially and racially. Among these topics, this paper will contribute primarily to how southern social structures were reformed and what details about localism Faulkner revealed in his work, here represented by A Rose for Emily. I see this novel as influential as Gone with the Wind. They both revealed what occurred to the south, but A Rose did it in different perspectives.
Background Information
William Faulkner represents modernism in the history of American literature, also the rareness that devoted all his life to depict the South, which was typically represented by his fictional series set in Yoknapatawpha Country that displayed various conflicts during that special historical period when America South was transitioning. From Emily, in A Rose for Emily, who could not get over the fact of her father’s death and refused the government’s policy, I can see Faulkner’s paradoxical attitude about all the change happening to the south: abhorrence to this huge social shift. Moreover, Faulkner was clear in mind that the southern glory of the old days has gone, so gone that it could not reverse the historical mainstream led by the northern industrialization. Under such a circumstance of helplessness, sympathy and even more complicated emotions: silent anger, subordination, and even rebelliousness for a small number of people. Those figures under his description appeared to be more weirdly and extremely impressive.
Literature Review and the Significance of this Perspective
Before I came to America, the most famous movie about Southern American turmoil in its early years was Gone with the Wind. The limited comprehension I extracted from the movie was only about the war itself and how it shook people’s lives, then how the white-black relationship was changed. After that, I got from Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms how war also changed people both physically and mentally, and how it shaped the society. But neither Gone with the Wind nor Ernest Hemingway did the same way in literature to depict people as William Faulkner did. Earnest Hemingway and his work talked about his desperation about western civilization in European wars, but I sensed Faulkner’s, but in another form, not in violent wars. What I sensed through reading William Faulkner is abundant from racial issues to religion then to people’s reaction under such social situations. As the analysis from Sartre stated, more than just the plain language and punchy syntax of Earnest Hemingway, William Faulkner showed to us with descriptive language and stream of conscious narration how characters were thinking under so many factors mentioned above (Satre: 85).
Tragic Emily versus The Downfall of the South
Emily’s childhood under her father’s protection, the noble background, her father’s interruption of Emily’s pursuit of love—all these brought her to the top of the wave when she fell in love with a northern young man despite north-south difference and social hierarchy. To Faulkner, Emily stood for the southern land. She stuck to her own idea, not willing to compromise to any change just like her love to Homer Barron against local’s opposition. Through this novel, Faulkner opened the late southern world to readers how tragic for southern noblewoman’s life during the quake of southern society. Faulkner’s attitude toward the old south is swinging: critical and supportive. For him, it was hard to give up the old system but possible to feel helpless to save it.
Racial Discrimination and Puritanism in A Rose for Emily
In the story A Rose for Emily, the black florist and servant is the focus in terms of discrimination, despite that this figure only shows up in the whole passage for countable times. From the servant constantly showing up to him disappearing silently at the end, I could get the reason why Faulkner ended up the servants’ story in the novel in such a quiet way: black people in context of slavery of southern America would never draw attention from the white, like the description “And that was the last we saw of Homer Barron. And of Miss Emily for some time. The Negro man went in and out with the market basket, but the front door remained closed”… ,and…” Daily, monthly, yearly we watched the Negro grow grayer and more stooped, going in and out with the market basket” (H.R. Stoneback: 258-60).
Additionally, puritanism that advocated the inequality between the two races amplified the discrimination, and it advocated this theologically. Under the rule of puritanism to the south, Emily’s death was just collateral damage and a symbol of the decay of the south. Not only did William Faulkner pay attention to the racial discrimination in A Rose for Emily, but also in other novels for example, in “Was”, Faulkner mentioned how the master exchanged house with the black servants. “These twin brothers had believed that there was something outrageous and wrong in slavery…”, “… they have given up their father’s fine mansion to let slaves in…”, and “…they had built a two-room log that they live in…” (Frederick L Gwyin and Joseph Blotner: 39).
B. The Rule of Patriarchy
To me, religious beliefs, racial discrimination and patriarchy are three principal themes under Faulkner’s description of the south. Emily to her father vividly displayed this them. The rule of Patriarchy means that the children of a family should follow absolute obedience of their father, bearing in mind the idea that “father has the voice”. According to Cash WJ in The Mind of the South, it was the Old Testament of the Bible that told the southern people to follow this rule (Cash WJ, 135). Emily’s father the figure was created to match this old rule. He held to the old south tradition to constrain Emily’s freedom of choosing her own love. His control deprived his daughter of happiness that she deserved at this young age. Here comes the description how Faulkner depicts “father”: “…Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father a straddle silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip, the two of them framed by the back-flung front door.” (H.R. Stoneback: 257) Raised up in such pressure, it was hard for Emily’s personality not to be distorted. Even after the “father’s” death, the influence still remained to affect Emily.
Conclusion
Though A Rose for Emily is written not as long as, not as famous as Sound and Fury and Absalom, Absolom!, still I could get obvious clues about the fall of the south from the “Rose”. William Faulkner used this kind of writing style not only in A Rose to Emily but also in other works like As I lay Dying, to delineate. Implied from his writing, the very essence of his attitude toward the south is dislike on the surface but sincere love at heart. He saw his hometown people simple and straightforward, and he then wrote them in a strange way to highlight it. Slavery, Puritanism, and the Civil War—each topic is too heavy to completely talk about in a short passage, but Faulkner merged them together in a single story. Just like what Professor LI Wenjun said, a Chinese scholar that takes William Faulkner’s literature as research objective, “the culture and value of the land where the author lives will permanently influence the content, theme and perspective of his writing” (LI Wenjun: 46). Let us return to the very beginning of the paper about Earnest Hemingway. Faulkner shares something similar with Hemingway, which is the absurdity of either the environment or the inside of human being. By absurdity of the environment, I mean what Hemingway wrote in his novel, like A Farewell to Arms, about the cruelty of the battlefield; and by that of the inside of humans, I refer to William Faulkner’s depiction of novel characters’ mental activity, the inner world and thinking. They tried to borrow this absurdity to illustrate how the hero or heroine stands out of common minds, how Santiago and Emily are isolated by the time they are in, and what both the authors wish about the real world.
Tracing back to time when I was attending high school back in China, I could remember the most influential American writer of fiction was Mark Twain. However now, a concentrated study on the American Southern culture pushed me to the front of William Faulkner. Different from Mark Twain, Faulkner’s literature is much more of geographical color that reflected issues of that time socially and racially. Among these topics, this paper will contribute primarily to how southern social structures were reformed and what details about localism Faulkner revealed in his work, here represented by A Rose for Emily. I see this novel as influential as Gone with the Wind. They both revealed what occurred to the south, but A Rose did it in different perspectives.
Background Information
William Faulkner represents modernism in the history of American literature, also the rareness that devoted all his life to depict the South, which was typically represented by his fictional series set in Yoknapatawpha Country that displayed various conflicts during that special historical period when America South was transitioning. From Emily, in A Rose for Emily, who could not get over the fact of her father’s death and refused the government’s policy, I can see Faulkner’s paradoxical attitude about all the change happening to the south: abhorrence to this huge social shift. Moreover, Faulkner was clear in mind that the southern glory of the old days has gone, so gone that it could not reverse the historical mainstream led by the northern industrialization. Under such a circumstance of helplessness, sympathy and even more complicated emotions: silent anger, subordination, and even rebelliousness for a small number of people. Those figures under his description appeared to be more weirdly and extremely impressive.
Literature Review and the Significance of this Perspective
Before I came to America, the most famous movie about Southern American turmoil in its early years was Gone with the Wind. The limited comprehension I extracted from the movie was only about the war itself and how it shook people’s lives, then how the white-black relationship was changed. After that, I got from Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms how war also changed people both physically and mentally, and how it shaped the society. But neither Gone with the Wind nor Ernest Hemingway did the same way in literature to depict people as William Faulkner did. Earnest Hemingway and his work talked about his desperation about western civilization in European wars, but I sensed Faulkner’s, but in another form, not in violent wars. What I sensed through reading William Faulkner is abundant from racial issues to religion then to people’s reaction under such social situations. As the analysis from Sartre stated, more than just the plain language and punchy syntax of Earnest Hemingway, William Faulkner showed to us with descriptive language and stream of conscious narration how characters were thinking under so many factors mentioned above (Satre: 85).
Tragic Emily versus The Downfall of the South
Emily’s childhood under her father’s protection, the noble background, her father’s interruption of Emily’s pursuit of love—all these brought her to the top of the wave when she fell in love with a northern young man despite north-south difference and social hierarchy. To Faulkner, Emily stood for the southern land. She stuck to her own idea, not willing to compromise to any change just like her love to Homer Barron against local’s opposition. Through this novel, Faulkner opened the late southern world to readers how tragic for southern noblewoman’s life during the quake of southern society. Faulkner’s attitude toward the old south is swinging: critical and supportive. For him, it was hard to give up the old system but possible to feel helpless to save it.
Racial Discrimination and Puritanism in A Rose for Emily
In the story A Rose for Emily, the black florist and servant is the focus in terms of discrimination, despite that this figure only shows up in the whole passage for countable times. From the servant constantly showing up to him disappearing silently at the end, I could get the reason why Faulkner ended up the servants’ story in the novel in such a quiet way: black people in context of slavery of southern America would never draw attention from the white, like the description “And that was the last we saw of Homer Barron. And of Miss Emily for some time. The Negro man went in and out with the market basket, but the front door remained closed”… ,and…” Daily, monthly, yearly we watched the Negro grow grayer and more stooped, going in and out with the market basket” (H.R. Stoneback: 258-60).
Additionally, puritanism that advocated the inequality between the two races amplified the discrimination, and it advocated this theologically. Under the rule of puritanism to the south, Emily’s death was just collateral damage and a symbol of the decay of the south. Not only did William Faulkner pay attention to the racial discrimination in A Rose for Emily, but also in other novels for example, in “Was”, Faulkner mentioned how the master exchanged house with the black servants. “These twin brothers had believed that there was something outrageous and wrong in slavery…”, “… they have given up their father’s fine mansion to let slaves in…”, and “…they had built a two-room log that they live in…” (Frederick L Gwyin and Joseph Blotner: 39).
B. The Rule of Patriarchy
To me, religious beliefs, racial discrimination and patriarchy are three principal themes under Faulkner’s description of the south. Emily to her father vividly displayed this them. The rule of Patriarchy means that the children of a family should follow absolute obedience of their father, bearing in mind the idea that “father has the voice”. According to Cash WJ in The Mind of the South, it was the Old Testament of the Bible that told the southern people to follow this rule (Cash WJ, 135). Emily’s father the figure was created to match this old rule. He held to the old south tradition to constrain Emily’s freedom of choosing her own love. His control deprived his daughter of happiness that she deserved at this young age. Here comes the description how Faulkner depicts “father”: “…Miss Emily a slender figure in white in the background, her father a straddle silhouette in the foreground, his back to her and clutching a horsewhip, the two of them framed by the back-flung front door.” (H.R. Stoneback: 257) Raised up in such pressure, it was hard for Emily’s personality not to be distorted. Even after the “father’s” death, the influence still remained to affect Emily.
Conclusion
Though A Rose for Emily is written not as long as, not as famous as Sound and Fury and Absalom, Absolom!, still I could get obvious clues about the fall of the south from the “Rose”. William Faulkner used this kind of writing style not only in A Rose to Emily but also in other works like As I lay Dying, to delineate. Implied from his writing, the very essence of his attitude toward the south is dislike on the surface but sincere love at heart. He saw his hometown people simple and straightforward, and he then wrote them in a strange way to highlight it. Slavery, Puritanism, and the Civil War—each topic is too heavy to completely talk about in a short passage, but Faulkner merged them together in a single story. Just like what Professor LI Wenjun said, a Chinese scholar that takes William Faulkner’s literature as research objective, “the culture and value of the land where the author lives will permanently influence the content, theme and perspective of his writing” (LI Wenjun: 46). Let us return to the very beginning of the paper about Earnest Hemingway. Faulkner shares something similar with Hemingway, which is the absurdity of either the environment or the inside of human being. By absurdity of the environment, I mean what Hemingway wrote in his novel, like A Farewell to Arms, about the cruelty of the battlefield; and by that of the inside of humans, I refer to William Faulkner’s depiction of novel characters’ mental activity, the inner world and thinking. They tried to borrow this absurdity to illustrate how the hero or heroine stands out of common minds, how Santiago and Emily are isolated by the time they are in, and what both the authors wish about the real world.