33

CHAPTER II

THE FALL OF SOUTHERN ARISTOCRACY

William Faulkner’s indisputable loyalty to his native town and obsession

to his tradition made him portray the fall of the Southern aristocracy in his

writings. To the Southern aristocratic families, the manners and social status

were most significant. As Faulkner was born into one such aristocratic family,

he was greatly influenced by the somewhat proud and mannered attitudes of

his family. Unintentionally, in most of his novels, his unconditional love to the

morals of the Southern aristocracy is noticeable. This could be a direct result of

his aristocratic origin and due to the fact that his ancestors were renowned

personalities in the history of his hometown, Mississippi. Especially, his great

grandfather was his greatest role model and Faulkner constantly grew up with

his stories. The reason for his admiration for Col. Falkner is evident from what

Faulkner writes in a letter to Malcolm Cowley:

My great-grandfather, whose name I bear, was a considerable

figure in his time and provincial milieu. He was a prototype of John

Sartoris: commanded the 2nd Mississippi infantry....He built the

first railroad in our country, wrote a few books, made grand

European tour of his time, died in a duel and the country raised a

marble effigy which still stands in Tippah County. (SL 211-12)

 34

The basic principles of the Southern tradition such as pride, honour,

valour, courage, honesty, elegance and sanctification of women were of utmost

importance to the South and as well as to Faulkner, which are meticulously

brought out in his novels. These principles, to a great extent, got devastated

after the Civil War and during the period of Reconstruction. Robert Coughlan

defines the deep impact and the decline of the Southern aristocracy as:

The glorious events of the old days, especially the days during and

before the[civil] war, loomed in the misty distance pure, brave, and

out of human scale; the present, in contrast, was mundane, and

its inadequacies-physical and emotional-were laid to the tragedy of

the old defeat…the South lapsed into the nurturing of the legend.

(87)

The distressing and displeasing reality of the postbellum South was very

difficult for Faulkner to confront. He knew the fact that the Southern tradition

was founded on the basis of slave abuse, bigotry and conservatism. Though he

was aware of the hard truths about his history, he could not deny his devotion

to the Southern tradition and he kept it intact. To convey his keen notion of the

deteriorating once grand Southern tradition, he created a fictional world

Yoknapatawpha, which is modelled upon his hometown, Lafayette County,

Oxford, Mississippi. In 1956, in Paris Review Interview Faulkner speaks about

his creation of the legendry Yoknapatawpha saga as:

 35

I discovered that my own little postage stamp of native soil was

worth writing about and that I would never live long enough to

exhaust it, and that by sublimating the actual into the apocryphal

I would have complete liberty to use whatever talent I might have

to its absolute top. It opened up a gold mine of other people, so I

created a cosmos of my own. I can move these people around like

God, not only in space but in time too. The fact that I have moved

my characters around in time successfully, at least in my own

estimation, proves to me my theory that time is a fluid condition

which has no existence except in the momentary avatars of

individual people….(Stein)

The ‘cosmos’ he creates is usually identified as a stage for Faulkner to

deliberately mourn the lost glory of the Old South. Accordingly, the decline of

morality, wealth and status forms the theme of his novels. Frederick J.

Hoffman finds that Faulkner had no necessity to invent characters for his

novels as he had “living models, as well as experience in hearing about his

family and the families of others in Oxford”. This might be one of the reasons

for his creating believable characters. Further he notes that “almost all of the

persons on whom Faulkner depends for major positions in the later novels

come from pioneer families who become ‘aristocratic’ leaders of the community”

(William 119-120).
 36

Faulkner writes about the dissolution of the aristocratic families during

the early twentieth century, which was a period of radical change. The histories

of such families are recorded in the Yoknapatawpha saga to show the impact of

the American Civil War upon the Southern society. The Civil War devastated

many great families financially, socially and psychologically. The Sutpens,

Compsons, Benbows, McCallums, Snopeses and McCaslin-Edmonds are some

eminent aristocratic families of Yoknapatawpha. The most typical example of

such families is The Sartorises. In this, Col. Sartoris “seem to come closest to

resembling the family and the descendants of Colonel William Cuthbert [sic]

Faulkner, [even though] Faulkner does not permit anyone autobiographical

license” (F. Hoffman, William 120). Blight notes that in Sartoris, Faulkner paid

homage to the men who supported the Lost Cause ideal, while suggesting that

the ideal itself was misguided and out of date. (292).

Millgate suggests that Faulkner had no intention of just retelling the

stories since he was “less concerned with history as a factual record than with

the past, especially the past as viewed from the standpoint of the present”

(Abadie 38). Richard Gray indicates the present condition of the Southerners

as:

Southerners of Faulkner’s generation felt themselves to be haunted

by ghosts and, in effect, rendered impotent by them. In their case,

those ghosts came from the general, social and cultural past than

from the personal, but the consequences were essentially the

 37

same. They felt denied the capacity for meaningful action; they

sought escape form the cunning passages and contrived corridors

of history but found, for the most part, no way out. (The Life 24)

The Southerners created the myth of the Old South by constantly dwelling

upon the antebellum south as the past was most significant to them.

In The Sound and the Fury, the Compsons represent the present state of

the Old South. They are completely haunted by the past. The present life of the

Compsons’ is a replica of the monologue from Shakespeare’s Macbeth:

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life’s but a walking shadow; a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing. (Act V, scene v, 19-28)

The Compsons’ ignorance to cope with the reality of the world around them

and their lack of ability in reconciling with it, drag them into indifference, self-
 38

absorption, and emotional depravity. As a result, their life is filled with worries,

sound and fury, and an endless ordeal, ‘signifying nothing’.

Generally, in all the Southern aristocratic households, the head of the

family is very much concerned about the aristocratic principles such as pride,

courage, and honour whereas Mr. Jason Compson III appears as a totally

ineffectual figure in maintaining them. His family line begins to perish with

him, and ends when Miss. Quentin elopes with a man from a travelling show,

attempting to flee the decaying line of the Compsons. Mr.Compson, all his life,

lives as a philosophically cynical man and influences his children by giving

negative opinions. He is not capable of being a father and so he consistently

uses his wife’s illness as a reason for the children’s behaviour. At times, when

he does not cite his wife’s illness, his pessimistic nature infects the minds of

his children. Minter gives a brief description of Mr.Compson as an impotent,

nihilistic, alcoholic who amuses himself with the feelings and demands of his

children. He is unsuccessful at displaying the tenderness and benevolence he

feels for them (His Life 97).

The Compsons family begins to collapse due to Mr. Compson’s skeptical

view of life and his addiction to alcoholism. In the beginning of the novel,

either the financial struggle of the family or the alcoholic addiction of

Mr.Compson is mentioned. Only in Quentin section, these troubles come into

light. Quentin recollects, “Father will be dead in a year they say if he doesn’t

stop drinking and he won’t stop he can’t stop since I since last summer and
 39

then they’ll send Benjy to Jackson” (SF 107). His father’s alcoholism proves to

be fatal, and its consequences lead to Benjy’s departure from the household.

Jason is frustrated with his father’s uncaring attitude. He feels the finance of

the family is dwindling because of his father’s addiction to alcoholism and his

decision to sell the land for Quentin to go Harvard. His anxiety is emphasized

as, “I never had time to go to Harvard or drink myself into the ground” (SF

156).

Of all the children, Quentin is much influenced by his father’s

pessimistic view of life, which causes the psychological decay of the family. The

first of the many gloomy and sarcastic opinions appears in Quentin’s section as

Mr. Compson says, “no battle is ever won. . . They are not even fought. The

field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of

philosophers and fools” (SF 65). This advice of hopelessness remains in

Quentin and creates a mental struggle all his life. At times, he tries to ignore

his father’s advice and acts on his own, but in the end his efforts are in vain.

When Quentin attempts to fight with Gerald Bland, the latter easily beats

Quentin; when he aims to do well in college, he is unofficially expelled for

missing classes; when he tries to lie about his virginity, he is unable to hide

from Caddy that he is a virgin; and when he makes effort to help the little

Italian girl, he is misunderstood for kidnapping the girl and arrested. The

unfortunate end of all his attempts obviously shows his mental weakness

inherited from his nihilistic father.

 40

Despite his efforts to change his nature, Quentin’s subconscious mind

believes the words of his father and he seems to be powerless to escape it. He

believes that being a virgin makes him flawed because that is what Mr.

Compson tells him. Quentin recollects his father’s instruction about the notion

of virginity as:

Father said it’s because you are a virgin: don’t you see? Women are

never virgins. Purity is a negative state and therefore contrary to

nature. It’s nature is hurting you not Caddy and I said That’s just

words and he said So is virginity and I said you don’t know. You

can’t know and he said Yes. (SF 99-100)

Mr. Compson does not trust women and so he constantly makes negative

statements about them. For instance, he claims that women are “never

virgins.” He tries to transmit the same unreasonable opinion to Quentin.

Brooks depicts Mr. Compson’s influence on Quentin as follows:

Quentin was apparently very close to his father and the influence

of his father on him was obviously very powerful. The whole of the

Quentin section is saturated with what “Father said” and with

references to comparisons that Father used and observations

about life that Father made. Though his father seems to have

counseled acquiescence in the meaninglessness of existence, it is

plain that it was from him that Quentin derived his high notion of

the claims of honor. (Yokna 336)

 41

Since Quentin is greatly influenced by his father, he is unable to reconcile with

his father’s contemptuous approach to women. And in the end, Mr.Compson’s

cynicism, determinism and fatalism drive Quentin commit suicide. Richard P.

Adams observes the failure of Quentin:

His [Faulkner’s] most completely defeated characters, such as

Quentin Compson… go down because they are fundamentally

opposed to life. They try to find something unchanging to stand on,

motionless in the midst of change. But motion sweeps them on so

relentlessly that their only escape is one or other kind of suicide.

(13)

For Quentin, the crucial thing to depend upon was his father’s unfailing

dignity. However, Mr.Compson’s flaws tear down Quentin’s conviction in his

ideal of defending the moral integrity of his family. As he is obsessed with

Southern morality, he is not able to pass beyond the shadow of the past. He

finds it hard to shake off his humiliating weakness. His failure in preserving

their once grand tradition leads him to end his life. As Matthews clarifies the

motives of Quentin’s suicide:

This son of the South (he never becomes a son of Harvard) cannot

escape the conviction that the past is nothing but catastrophe-the

catastrophe of the Civil War, slavery, aristocratic decline in the

New South, and the humiliation of a ruined family. Like so many

other Southerners, Quentin sees nothing but a legacy of loss. His

 42

suicide suggests that he refuses to accept the repetition of that

past in his future. (62)

This ‘legacy of loss’ which Quentin inherits from his father deprives him of the

resolution which is necessary to cope with the downfall of the Southern

aristocracy. Quentin experiences what his, “Father said a man is the sum of

his misfortunes. One day you’d think misfortune would get tired, but then time

is your misfortune Father said” (SF 89). In his internal narrative, he also

recalls, “[Father taught us that] all men are just accumulations dolls stuffed

with sawdust swept up from the trash heaps where all previous dolls had been

thrown away” (SF 151-52). His mind starts to run on what his father said and

his very being is shaped by his father.

In fact, towards the end of his memory flow, it becomes clearer that

Quentin is completely obsessed with the past. He seems to yearn for the

glorious days of their grandfathers and their patriarchal power. He looks at

death as a patriarch, a man like his grandfather and also as his grandfather’s

friend. His interior monologue makes clear that he desires to attain the

patriarchal power and meet his grandfather and his friend:

It used to be I thought of death as a man something like

Grandfather a friend of his a kind of private and particular friend..

.. I always thought of them as being together somewhere all the

time waiting for old Colonel Sartoris to come down and sit with

them waiting on a high place beyond cedar trees Colonel Sartoris

 43

was on a still higher place looking out across at something and

they were waiting for him to get done looking at it and come down

Grandfather wore his uniform and we could hear the murmur of

their voices from beyond the cedars they were always talking and

Grandfather was always right. (SF 152)

This passage reflects his positive view on death. Col. Sartoris and his

grandfather are God like figures, who are admired and honoured by him. Col.

Sartoris is identified as a parallel figure to Faulkner’s great-grandfather;

Faulkner conscientiously modelled this character to show his own reverence for

his great grandfather.

Quentin’s thoughts signal his surrender to his father’s influence, no

longer fighting to overcome his misfortunes but embracing them instead. His

father’s undermining utterances on the values, what he fervently holds put him

in a psychological turbulence. Undeniably, Mr.Compson has become a

principal enemy to his life and of other’s too. Thus, Mr. Compson with his

cynical approach destroys the line of a once aristocratic family and lets his

descendants under pressure to prevail over their innate flaws.

Though, Mr. Compson is regarded as a main reason for the downfall of

his family in terms of morality and wealth, Mrs. Compson also plays a pivotal

role in the disintegration of the family. She is obsessed with the ideals of the

Southern society which does not sway to any further extent. She is unable to

get over the clash between the past and the present state of the South. In that
 44

respect, at least, she is similar to her husband. Significantly, she holds over

her family through her attitudes. She considers herself as an embodiment of

Southern lady.

Within the Southern aristocracy, women were assigned with the notions

of purity, piety and virtue. They served as the idealized symbols of beauty and

chastity. They never deviated from the specified roles of the patriarchal society.

They were educated in the same manner as their men but they were not

allowed to prove their intellectual capabilities. They were the role models to

their children. Motherhood remained as their everlasting responsibility. They

were notable in maintaining discipline, honour, pride and nobility of their

families. They admired and played the crucial role in keeping the patriarchal

hierarchy. After the defeat of the Civil War, even women were affected to a great

extent. The devastation led them incapable of protecting their social status.

Their once favoured principles had ‘gone with the wind,’ they became the fallen

monuments by yielding to the circumstance and watched the fall of their

traditional families.

Apart from the ideal motherhood responsibility, Mrs.Compson stands as

a perfect model of a woman who follows the line of such a descent. The clash

between the traditional concept of woman and the new conducts are gravely

difficult for Mrs. Compson to deal with. It is impossible for her to act opposite

to the frame of behaviour which she internalized throughout her life. She

becomes incompetent to live through this clash and fails to take care of her
 45

family, leading her to retreat in ‘self- pitying narcissism’ and hypochondria,

just like her husband, who seeks refuge in nihilism and fatalism. Gwendolyn

Chabrier points out, “Caroline Compson is completely self involved, a self

pitying hypochondriac, unable to give her children the minimal emotion they

require except, of course, for Jason whom she favors and even smothers with

love at the expense of others” (109). She is a self-centered mother, who gives

utmost importance to the notions of respectability and gentility. She believes

that Bengy, born as an idiot child, is a punishment and she fails to care for

him as she is concerned only about the social status (the Bascombs) of her

family. She specially favours and loves Jason, and believes him to be her “joy”

and “salvation.” But the truth is that she is unaware of Jason’s true nature.

She withholds the real love and affection for her other children.

Mrs.Compson’s self-centeredness affects Quentin the most and he

directly gives a voice to his experience of the absence of his mother, which

occurs several times toward the end of his section: “if I’d just had a mother so I

could say Mother Mother” (SF 149). This shows how Quentin yearns for his

mother’s love and care. Mrs.Compson’s cold and lack of maternal sensitivity

distances her children Quentin and Caddy from her and consequently a close

bond blossoms between the brother and sister. Mrs.Compson offers nothing to

her children but simply talks about virtue and entertains certain false ideas on

the social status and the name of the Bascomb family she hails from. She talks

about her family with great pride. She is shattered, when Caddy deviates from
 46

the set mould of their tradition. She hates Caddy as she brings only shame and

dishonour to her family name.

With a more intense accusation, Brooks claims: Mrs. Compson, one of

Faulkner’s most brilliantly realized characters, stands at the core of the novel

as she stands at the core of the family, the decay and the disintegration of the

Compsons affected largely by her failure (qtd. in Chabrier 108). On the whole,

her selfishness, negligence and disregard contribute directly to the family’s

downfall.

After the death of Mr.Compson, the cold, selfish, compassionless Jason

rises up to run the family. His father’s decision to pay for Quentin’s education

inevitably leaves Jason with debts, which makes him obsessed with money.

When Herbert, Caddy’s husband, fails to provide him the promised job, Jason

is frustrated and he becomes more obsessed with money than before. He

develops a disgruntled attitude towards the rest of the family, often displaying

a pessimistic attitude which his father had.

Jason’s narration begins with “once a bitch always a bitch, what I say”

(SF 155). He is referring to his niece, Miss. Quentin. Part of his animosity for

his niece is his dislike for Caddy. His niece becomes the object of his

frustration and anger since Caddy causes him to lose his opportunity of

attaining a bank position. He takes money from his niece, which Miss. Quentin

receives from Caddy, as a mode of revenge against Caddy. The other part of his

bitterness relates to his responsibility as the oldest and last male of the family
 47

to take care of Miss. Quentin and his other relatives. His references to his

brother and his father suggest that he has not had the chance to waste his

time or life away as they did; he could only work to take care of everyone and

the debts left by his father.

Referring to Benjy, Jason concludes, “Like I say, if we’ve got to feed

another mouth and she won’t take that money, why not send him down to

Jackson. He’ll be happier there, with people like him” (SF 191). Jason prefers

sending Benjy away because Benjy is a financial burden in his eyes. He

interprets everything in terms of loss and gain. He values only money and his

obsession with it reveals a flaw in his character. He is characteristically

sarcastic and demonstrates the self- pitying notion that he is a victim.

However, his unpleasant remarks, abusive attitude and ruthless

behaviour toward his niece Miss. Quentin, Dilsey and Luster do not win any

sympathy for him. In particular, he hates and mistreats Miss Quentin, to

which she asks, “Why does he treat me like this, Grandmother?” and says “I

never hurt him” (SF 224). To Mrs. Compson, Jason’s act is a duty of paternal

responsibility and she ignores her granddaughter’s trouble. She is self-

absorbed, and so she thinks, “She [Miss Quentin] is the judgment of Caddy

and Quentin upon me” (SF 255). Miss. Quentin is aware of the fact that her

grandmother dispossesses her and Jason makes her life horrible. Thus, she

bursts out and says: “I’m bad and I’m going to hell, and I don’t care. I’d rather

be in hell than anywhere where you [Jason] are” and also says, “‘whatever I do,
 48

it’s your fault. If I’m bad, it’s because I had to be. You made me. I wish I was

dead,’ ” (SF 189, 224). Miss. Quentin in turn hates them and does not hesitate

to be disloyal to her family. She takes all the money he keeps locked up in his

safe and runs away from her house. Her act shows that it is the outcome of the

forces that have wielded her throughout her life. In fact, it is very difficult for

people to be good while they are disturbed and extremely unhappy.

In the beginning, all think that Miss. Quentin might have committed

suicide but later Jason finds that he lost his money and confirms that she has

run away with her boy friend. Jason does not find anything in her room except

her personal things and he says:

It was not a girl’s room. It was not anybody’s room, and the faint

scent of cheap cosmetics and the few feminine objects and the

other evidences of crude and hopeless efforts to feminize it but

added to its anonymity, giving it that dead and stereotyped

transience of rooms in assignation houses. The bed had not been

disturbed. On the floor lay a soiled undergarment of cheap silk a

little too pink; from a half open bureau drawer dangled a single

stocking. (SF 244)

The interpretation of her room symbolizes the moral corruption of the South.

The young Southern woman, Miss. Quentin is corrupted and she fails to

maintain what her grandmother and great grandmother passionately

embraced. Morality becomes the out dated concept to Caddy and Miss Quentin.
 49

Like Caddy, her daughter grows up promiscuous. Miss. Quentin’s ‘soiled

undergarment’ and climbing down the tree recall the events of Caddy’s “muddy

bottom of her drawers” and “climbing up the forbidden pear tree.” Thus, Miss

Quentin’s character resembles that of Caddy.

Caddy is the only character, who is being spoken about throughout the

novel. She is at the center of most of the problems plaguing the Compsons’

children. For each of her brothers, Caddy represents something. For Benjy, she

is the smell of trees; for Quentin, honor; and for Jason, money or at least the

means of getting it (Vickery 30). Indeed, despite her young age, Caddy loves

and cares her entire family and serves as a central force. When her husband

Herbert discovers that she is pregnant by another man before their marriage,

he divorces her, setting off a chain of events that ultimately ruins the family.

Nonetheless, Brooks asserts that it was just the impact of the decaying family

situation that made Caddy behave as she did; because she could not find

warmth, joy and life itself at her home which she was looking for somewhere

else (First Encounters 53). In William Faulkner, Hoffman indirectly supports this

when emphasizing that:

Truth [about Caddy’s sin] would seem, therefore, to be a matter of

perspective; we are aware not so much of truth itself but a version

of the truth, a distortion of it, which must be set right, and

eventually is. Above all, Faulkner is saying that any truth is far

more complex than it appears on the surface to be. (52)

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Analyzing the history of the family through its members in brief, Brooks

stresses that it is actually represented by the three brothers: Benjy lives in the

virtual present since his references to the past are for him indistinguishable

from the present experiences, Quentin is so completely committed to the past,

that for him even the present events have no forward reference and the third

brother, Jason, has repudiated the past, and nearly everything that he thinks

and does has a reference to the future (Bloom 122). Nevertheless, there is no

future for the Compsons, just as there is no future for the Old South. Caddy

and her daughter have fled the Compsons’ place never to return and Jason,

because of his personality, will never marry. So neither he nor Benjy will have a

child to carry on the line (Brooks, First Encounters 74).

Dilsey, the old loyal black servant of the Compsons alone remains

undefeated by the harshness of the fall of the South. In fact, she is the only

character who maintains the integrity of the Compsons’ family. In view of

morality and humanity, she is found to be the strongest woman. Her

selflessness, patience, wisdom and distinguished manners are the centre force

and attraction in the novel. She has immense faith in God. Robert Penn Warren

says, “Only Dilsey, of the main character, is rendered objectively, and one is

tempted to hazard that this objectivity is an index of her strength and

fulfillment. She really exists, objectively exists” (252).

Dilsey is considered as a rational and stabilizing force in the family.

Along with her responsibility of maintaining the household chores, she

 51

nurtures the Compsons’ children as if they were her own. Her physical

description shows how her dedicated hard work reduced her from a big woman

to a mere skeleton:

She had been a big woman once but now her skeleton rose, draped

loosely in an unpadded skin that tightened again upon a paunch

almost dropsical, as though muscle and tissue had been courage

or fortitude which the days or the years had consumed until only

the indomitable skeleton was left rising like a ruin or a landmark

above the somnolent and impervious guts….(SF 229-30)

Edmund Volpe states about the care and humanity of Dilsey’s as: “The

source of Dilsey’s strength is her humanity. She is incapable of thinking in

abstractions, in terms of servant or employer, negro or white; hers is a genuine

response to individuals and to life” (124). In fact, her presence in the Compsons

family for several generations enables her to build up an objective view of their

moral decline. Carvel Collins comments upon Dilsey’s section in this way:

The final section of The Sound and the Fury sets up, in contrast to

the selfish Compsons, the loving servant Dilsey. Through her,

readers see a better way which life might take, and thus they may

feel some reduction of the novel’s tragedy. But it remains a

tragedy, nevertheless, for Dilsey is by no means able to offset the

destructive effect of the Compsons’ overwhelming emotional failure.

(Stegner 227)
 52

The Reverend Shegog’s Easter Sunday sermon serves far more than a

religious interpretation. Though the major events in Jesus’ life and his

resurrection are described, they remind Dilsey only of the moral corruption of

the Southern family. The sermon influences her to a great extent and when

she leaves the church, she starts to weep, stating to her daughter Frony, “ ‘I’ve

seed de first en de last’… ‘I seed de beginnin, en now I sees de endin’ ” (SF

258). Having witnessed the splendour of the Old South, she naturally becomes

emotional and grieves about the present state of the once grandiose tradition.

Volpe notes what Faulkner indicates the commonplace fact as that human

compassion is what modern man has lost and what he must recover to achieve

regeneration (97).

Similar to The Sound and the Fury, the ninth novel of Faulkner’s

Absolam, Absolam! also portrays the collapse of the Old South and the future

of the New South through the decline of Sutpen’s dynasty. Cowley describes

this novel as: a “legend” recording history of the South which was ruled by

white men of power; those men brought about the Civil War as a result of their

exploitation and curse of black slaves (xx). In this novel, Thomas Sutpen, a

white man born into poverty, aims to create an astounding dynasty, which he

calls ‘design’. It “begins with the realization of his own powerlessness as a poor

white in a class- and race- structured society” (Ross 212). He believes that if he

achieves his ambition, he will turn out to be a respectable man and member of

the Southern aristocracy. In fact, he completes his ‘design’ and seems to rest in
 53

peace, but a crucial mistake that he had committed once, results in the ruin of

his dynasty.

The narrative style is very complex in this novel, so it requires a careful

reading. There are four narrators but what is remarkable about the narrators is

that among the four, apart from Rosa Coldfield, other three narrators are the

characters of The Sound and the Fury, whom the readers are already

acquainted with: Mr.Compson, his son Quentin Compson, and Shreve

McCannon, Quentin’s Canadian roommate at Harvard. These three emerge as

the key narrators, unravelling the mysterious figure of Sutpen and tell stories

about him in terms of morality and status, before and after the Civil War. The

story is told from different perspectives and entirely in flashbacks. It is

predominantly narrated by Quentin to his friend Shreve, who makes a re-

evaluation through conjectures. As Daniel Hoffman summarizes the narrative

process:

The whole of Absalom, Absalom! is a told narration, in which one

teller tells what another teller told him; sometimes the narrative we

are given is repeated at third hand, as when Quentin tells Shreve

what Mr.Compson had repeated to him of what Rosa Coldfield has

said. Thus is the truth about Thomas Sutpen enwrapped,

ensnared, entangled in memories of memory, in the ways one

character’s character at the same time conserves and distorts what

another had said. (11)

 54

However, Sutpen’s story is unveiled only through narrators; he is never

presented directly in the novel (Vickery 84). Born into a poor white family in the

mountain area in Western Virginia, “where what few other people he knew lived

in log cabins boiling with children like the one he was born in … where the only

colored people were Indians and you only looked down on them over your rifle

sights…”(AA 221). And he is entirely unaware what it meant to be rich or to

want to be rich: “Because where he lived the land belonged to anybody and

everybody and so the man who would go to the trouble and work to fence off a

piece of it and say ‘This is mine’ was crazy” (AA 221). Sutpen and the people

around him do not know the concept of ‘property,’ because in the mountains, a

man can live anywhere he wants. He “had never even heard of, never imagined,

a place, a land divided neatly up and actually owned by men who did nothing

but ride over it on fine horses or sit in fine clothes on the galleries of big houses

while other people worked for them…”(AA 221). Sutpen is also unaware of the

system of slavery:

He didn’t even know there was a country all divided and fixed and

neat with a people living on it all divided and fixed and neat

because of what color their skins happened to be and what they

happened to own, and where a certain few men not only had the

power of life and death and barter and sale over others, but they

had living human men to perform the endless repetitive personal

offices, such as pouring the very whiskey from the jug and putting
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the glass into a man’s hand or pulling off his boots for him to go to

bed. (AA 221-22)

When Sutpen’s family moves to the Tidewater lands, his life undergoes a

sweeping change. Since that time he is not aware of the idea of property and

the system of slavery at the plantation where his father works for a rich

planter. The new concept he learns on this plantation seems to be “his ordeal

of social initiation,” in which he experiences the incident that changes his life

(Lind 298). One day, his father sends him with a message to a big mansion of a

Southern aristocrat. Without knowing what kind of a relationship his father

and this rich man have, he goes to the front door of the mansion and knocks

on it. The ‘nigger’ butler opens the door and without giving Sutpen a chance to

tell what he has come for, he tells him that he must go to the back door, as the

front door is apparently intended just for “the masters” to come in:

And now he stood there before that white door with the monkey

nigger barring it and looking down at him in his patched made-

over jeans clothes and no shoes, and I dont reckon he had even

ever experimented with a comb because that would be one of the

things that his sisters would keep hidden good. He had never

thought about his own hair or clothes or anybody else’s hair or

clothes until he saw that monkey nigger, who through no doing of

his own happened to have had the felicity of being house bred in

Richmond maybe, looking [...] at them and he never even

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remembered what the nigger said, how it was the nigger told him,

even before he had had time to say what he came for, never to

come to that front door again but to go around to the back. (AA

232)

It takes time for Sutpen to understand what it means because he “had sprung

from a people whose houses didn’t have back doors but only windows and

anyone entering or leaving by a window would be either hiding or escaping,

neither of which he was doing”(AA 233). Evidently, it is Sutpen’s innocence

which causes him to experience such disillusionment. However, this incident at

first startles Sutpen and then, after meditating upon it, suddenly and radically

changes him forever, from a boy wanting no privilege to a man wanting all. It is

the beginning of the “design”, which he later arrives to fulfill in Yoknapatawpha

County.

Sutpen starts to pursue a wild ambition of a need to possess power, to

be the man who owns the house and the slaves who would tell others to go to

the back door. Faulkner’s commentary on Sutpen’s feeling in this matter is as

follows:

He [Sutpen] wanted revenge as he saw it, but also he wanted to

establish the fact that man is immortal, that man, if he is man,

cannot be inferior to another man through artificial standards or

circumstances. What he was trying to do – when he was a boy, he

had gone to the front door of a big house and somebody, a servant,
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said, Go around to the back door. He [Sutpen] said, I’m going to be

the one that lives in the big house, I’m going to establish a

dynasty. I don’t care how, and he violated all the rules of decency

and honor and pity and compassion, and the fates took revenge on

him. That’s what the story was. But he was trying to say in his

blundering way that, why should a man be better than me because

he is richer than me, that if I had the chance I might be just as

good as he thinks he is, so I’ll make myself as good as he thinks he

is by getting the same outward trappings which he has, which was

a big house and servants in it. He didn’t say, I’m going to braver or

more compassionate or more honest than he- he just said, I’m

going to be as rich as he was, as big as he was on the outside….

(FIU 35)

Sutpen is a man who lacks contemplation; consequently, he acts upon

intuition. No matter how, his ultimate desire is to become ‘as rich as’ the

plantation owner, whose mansion he was not allowed to approach. Ignoring all

of the moral values that a man should posses, he immediately sets off for the

West Indies, where he has learnt at school that shrewd and brave, and the

shrewdness can “be learned by energy and will in the school of endeavor and

experience.”(AA 242). Sutpen becomes an overseer at a plantation in Haiti, and

gets married to the daughter of the French landowner. They have a son, and

after a short time, Sutpen discovers that his wife has some black blood. As he

is profoundly devoted to his ‘design’, it is impossible for a ‘nigger’ to become the

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heir of his dynasty. At this point, he abandons her and their newly born child,

leaves the island, and vanishes from sight for some years.

Sutpen then reappears, this time in Jefferson in 1833, at the age of

twenty-seven and once again he sets about fulfilling his design. He brings with

him, from the West Indies, a horde of “wild Negroes” and a captive French

architect. He acquires land, one hundred square miles northwest of Jefferson

and makes them clear the swampland and build a plantation mansion, which

is an ideal building of the Old South.

In Old South, acquiring the respect of the community was possible only

by being the member of an honourable family. Although people valued money,

nobility was the most important factor in becoming the member of the

Southern aristocracy. The town’s people attend late night “raree shows” and

drink with him but they never acknowledge and respect him due to his shady

origins and uncivilized behaviour. Brooks describes this hypocritical attitude

of town’s people as follows:

The society into which Sutpen rides in 1833 is not a secularized

society. That is not to say that the people are necessarily “good.”

They have their selfishness and cruelty and their snobbery, as men

have always had them. Once Sutpen has acquired enough wealth

and displayed enough force, the people of the community are

willing to accept him. But they do not live by his code, nor do they

share his innocent disregard of accepted values. Indeed, from the

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beginning they regard him with deep suspicion and some

consternation. These suspicions are gradually mollified; there is a

kind of acceptance; but… Sutpen had only one friend, Quentin’s

grandfather, General Compson, and this in spite of the fact that

the society of the lower South in the nineteenth century was rather

fluid and that class lines were flexible. Men did rise in one

generation from log cabins to great landed estates. But the past

was important, blood was important, and Southern society thought

of itself as traditional. (Yokna 297)

In order to get the respect in the “traditional” Southern society, Sutpen makes

friendship with the honourable General Compson. He is who lends Sutpen the

first cotton seed to start his plantation. Only through General Compson,

Sutpen’s origin comes to light. Sutpen tells about him and his plans when

they go for a ‘hunt’ for his runaway French architect. To support his

respectable status and strengthen his ‘design,’ he goes to town in search of a

wife. He finds a wife “exactly as he would have gone to the Memphis market to

buy livestock or slaves” (AA 42). His preference to Ellen Coldfield, a respectable

local merchant, Goodhue Coldfield “is deliberate and unerring, and [...]

together with Sutpen’s land and money, her presence as mistress of Sutpen’s

Hundred is sufficient to give Sutpen the status he requires” (Abadie 174).

The way he chooses Coldfield shows that Sutpen does not look for a wife

but only a breeder of children who will help to pursue his design. This time, the
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design seems near completion; but, though Sutpen has set aside the past, it

returns to haunt him. The unexpected presence of Sutpen’s son by the first

marriage, Charles Bon becomes a friend of Henry, Sutpen’s son by the second

marriage, and falls in love with Judith, Henry’s sister. The families are

dangerously near being unified in an incestuous relationship. The issues

recurrent in the tragedy of the Southern history are fratricide and incest.

Correspondingly, “the triangular relationship of Henry, Judith and Charles

Bon…” sets a main trouble to Sutpen (Watson131). To protect his ‘design’ from

being corrupted, Sutpen has to avoid the marriage between Bon and Judith. He

tells Henry a part of Bon birth. Henry refuses to listen to his father and leaves

the ‘Sutpen’s Hundred’. However, the Civil War interrupts, both Henry and Bon

enlist in the Confederate Army. Sutpen becomes a Commander of regiment in

the War:

when the first Confederate uniforms began to appear in Jefferson-

where Colonel Sartoris and Sutpen were raising the regiment

which departed in ’61, with Sutpen, second in command, riding at

Colonel Sartoris’ left hand, on the black stallion named out of

Scott, beneath the regimental colors which he and Sartoris had

designed and which Sartoris’ womenfolks had sewed together out

of silk dresses. (AA 80)

Thus, the Southern aristocrats leave Yoknapatawpha County to fight for the

Confederacy, which surely is praised as a courageous and creditable gesture on

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their part. Of course, Sutpen is a courageous man with valour and he had

gone to take part in the Civil War not to show his patriotism towards the South

but only to protect his design. As Rubin notes: Sutpen has no inclination and

involvement in overthrowing the Yankee-enforced government; any government

that would keep things sufficiently orderly, so that he could concentrate upon

his design is presumably acceptable to him (Scarlet 172-73).

As Sutpen is not a typical Southerner like Mr.Compson, Sutpen’s

characteristics incline to support a fact that his design should not be shattered

due to the destiny of the Old South. As Rubin opines:

Thomas Sutpen is not a ‘typical,’ or even a ‘representative’

antebellum Southern figure. There is little doubt of that. The

abstract nature of his design, the contempt for the community he

inhabits, the utter ignorance and lack of feeling for tradition, his

very pragmatic attitude towards race (he doesn’t share in the

prejudice, but because the society is prejudiced he must shape his

design so as to keep his dynasty pure white) — surely none of

these attributes is characteristic of the Old South. (Scarlet 181)

Unlike his father, Henry seems very Southern in his attitude. He goes to

War to fight for the interest of the Confederacy. He is basically a sensitive man

and he loves who is dear to him. Even in the course of the Civil War, he thinks

about the relationship between Judith and Bon. He loves both of them, but, on

having been told the complete truth about Bon by Sutpen, he decides that he
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must not allow the miscegenation to happen. Thus, Henry kills Bon, his half-

black brother and closest friend at the gate of Sutpen’s Hundred in 1865, just

after their return from the Civil War; then he immediately leaves the country,

escaping law.

Judith appears as a strong gentlewoman all her life. When she is caught

up in the harsh times during the Civil War, she manages to overcome the

difficulties. Sutpen’s Hundred, like the rest of the South, experienced

devastation. Despite the threat of hunger she continues to live with hope. She

manages to survive the four years of war by doing heavy work. She does not

seem affected when Sutpen forbids her marriage with Bon. She watches her

mother die in 1863. In another two years of time his fiancé Bon is murdered

and she buries him next to his mother. She waits patiently with confidence for

her father to return and restore their dynasty. She also encourages and

supports Sutpen in every way to restore his ‘design’. She disregards his

mistreatment of her aunt Miss Rosa and Milly, granddaughter of Wash Jones, a

squatter who lives on the Sutpen’s property. She is actually similar to her

father in most cases, the following lines support this view: “They were too much

alike” (AA 122) and “She would have acted as Sutpen would have acted with

anyone who tried to cross him” (AA 120).

As Sutpen lost Henry, his heir, he needs another ‘pure’ male heir for the

continuation of his dynasty. Therefore he proposes to Miss. Rosa, sister of

Ellen Sutpen, with a demand that she has to bear him a son, before their
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marriage. Rosa takes this as an insult and leaves Sutpen’s Hundred and does

not return for about forty years. After that, Sutpen begins an affair with Milly

who is the fifteen-year-old girl. Meanwhile, as Sutpen is unable to restore his

plantation, he has sold a major part of the land and has started a store for the

family survival. When Milly gives birth to a daughter, Sutpen becomes terribly

disappointed and states: “‘Well, Milly; too bad you’re not a mare too. Then I

could give you a decent stall in the stable’ ” (AA 286). Wash Jones becomes

furious by Sutpen’s words and kills him with a rusty scythe.

Although after his death, the remaining Sutpen’s kin continue living at

Sutpen’s Hundred, they are doomed to their ultimate fall in 1909, when the

decaying family mansion is burnt down by Sutpen’s Mulatto daughter

Clytemnestra. After this disaster, the only existing progeny of Thomas Sutpen

is Charles Bon’s big, ‘hulking saddle-colored idiot’ grandson, Jim Bond; but he

eventually runs away from the estate and vanishes.

With no doubt, the rigidity of the norms of the Southern aristocracy

victimizes Sutpen. His attraction towards the grandeur of the Old South causes

him to become a man “even more ruthless and arrogant than the Virginia

plantation lord who first hurt him into action. He becomes, in short, an

extender of the same patriarchal, slave society that has victimized him, his

family…” (Bercovitch 274). Sutpen is a man who personifies the fundamental

nature of the Old South. In fact, Faulkner uses the Sutpen’s family legend to

ultimately reveal the fate and the fall of the South.

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In The Sound and the Fury, the Compsons are incapable in progressing

towards the present as they got struck with the sense of past, and in Absolam,

Absolam!, the Sutpens cultivate false values rather than developing essential

human virtues. Faulkner’s depictions of both the paterfamilias show that they

were unable to escape the prejudices and the repressive culture of the Old

South. But Faulkner means that the principles and its values were not

necessarily wrong but corrupted. Furthermore, his implied craving confirms

that for any of the South’s greatness to return, these values must be preserved

by some means or other. The Southerners considered themselves as the most

superior people and they strived to preserve their racial purity by keeping their

women on the pedestal, which is discussed in the following chapter.