Themes and Agency in As I Lay Dying and Salvage the Bones

Amalie Bischoff Odgaard Lkb332 The Faulkner Factor 2/1/2017 University of Copenhagen Themes and agency in As I Lay Dying and Salvage the Bones Amalie Bischoff Odgaard, Lkb332 University of Copenhagen Professor: Dr. Martyn Bone MA‐Level The Faulkner Factor: Influence and Intertextuality Winter exam January 2nd 2017 Units: 41.870 Page 1 of 24 Amalie Bischoff Odgaard Lkb332 The Faulkner Factor 2/1/2017 University of Copenhagen Table of contents Front page P. 1 Table of contents P. 2 Introduction P. 3 Female agency constituted by language P. 3 Motherhood P. 7 Impact of narration style P. 10 Natural forces as limiting or enforcing agency P. 11 The wet seeds – Future determined by pregnancy P. 14 Intertextuality and the influence of Faulkner on subsequent writers P. 17 Conclusion P. 19 Works Cited P. 20 Pensum P. 22 Page 2 of 24 Amalie Bischoff Odgaard Lkb332 The Faulkner Factor 2/1/2017 University of Copenhagen Introduction Flannery O’Connor stated in an essay in 1965 that “Nobody wants his mule and wagon stalled on the same track the Dixie Limited is roaring down.” (O’Connor, 45). The key here is grammar, because while nobody would want anybody to compare their work to Faulkner’s, nobody can ignore him either, so why not take matters into own hands? Jesmyn Ward seems to be doing just that, as she invites her readers to make the connection between her own work and Faulkner’s when she early in her novel Salvage the Bones (2011) places As I Lay Dying (1930) in the conscience of her narrator and protagonist Esch, and thus the reader. In doing so she takes control of the intertextuality and it becomes a vehicle for both acknowledging Faulkner and engaging in a discussion with his work. Although the format differs quite a lot, and although the main intertextual reference in Salvage the Bones is arguably to the myth of Medea, many themes from As I Lay Dying recur in Ward’s novel. These themes will serve as the basis for drawing parallels between the novels in a comparative analysis and ignite the discussion of motherhood and the representation of female agency in a post‐structural discourse in the two novels. The discussion of thematic similarities includes nature as both a limitation and vehicle for female agency, and the power of words as constituting of meaning. The formal differences, such as choice of narration, will partake in the discussion of representation of female agency. Lastly, the intertextuality and Faulkner’s influence on subsequent Southern authors will be discussed with regard to O’Connor’s statement and to Ward’s literary negotiation of this influence. Female agency constituted by language The definition of agency differs according to context and conviction. Technically, it means the “Ability or capacity to act or exert power;” to act (OED online); however this ability can be construed in different ways. In humanistic theory, agency is equated with being a person. According to post‐structural theory, you can only be a person in the extent that available discourses allow (Davies, 42). The humanistic discourse of agency offers the same amount of agency to all human beings, and each individual is responsible for its own use of this. On the contrary, the post‐structural discourse recognizes the Page 3 of 24 Amalie Bischoff Odgaard Lkb332 The Faulkner Factor 2/1/2017 University of Copenhagen conditions of each human being in their ability to act. In other words, the latter discourse acknowledges the changing surroundings of external reality of a human being, and these external conditions impact the degree of agency or ability to act. According to this theory, we can only speak ourselves into existence and we can only do so within the available discourse (Davies, 42). This makes the concept of agency fundamentally illusory, because the discourse available is constituted by those in power, this would, in a patriarchal society, be men (Davies, 46). What is interesting in the post‐structural theory is the combination with language as constituting of reality. As we will see in both As I Lay Dying and Salvage the Bones some of the female characters use language as a way to cope with their situations and as an attempt to change it or deconstruct or undo the situation, language becomes the vehicle of their agency (Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms & Literary Theory; “deconstruction”; “post‐structuralism”). In the reading of Salvage the Bones and As I Lay Dying post‐structural thoughts and discourses can be applied in different ways. In terms of agency, the poststructuralist discourse takes into account the external factors of the female characters, who are all situated in male dominated societies; this essay will focus mostly on the characters Esch Batiste, Dewey Dell Bundren and to some degree Addie Bundren. The following will investigate how the fact of their gender might compromise their agency and limit their options in a poststructuralist view, discussed as opposed to the humanistic view. The characters’ choice of words will often manifest their agency in relation to their male characters and reveal their ability or inability to act as agentic persons. In Dewey Dell’s first section she accounts for her relationship, or at least sexual encounter, with Lafe. In the paragraph describing their time together in the “secret shade” of the woods (Faulkner, 27) Dewey Dell stresses that the actions were initiated by Lafe, and not by her. It seems she is almost trying to convince herself that he, and to some degree fate, chose her destiny for her, that she could not have acted differently, thus using language in order to try and justify her situation: “I said if it dont mean for me to do it the sack will not be full… but if the sack is full, I cannot help it.” (Faulkner, 27). She then explains how Lafe started filling her sack and ends the paragraph with “I could not help it.” (Faulkner, 27). The words used in her narration of this section, such as “I cannot help it”, and “I could not help it” (Faulkner, 27, my italics) Page 4 of 24 Amalie Bischoff Odgaard Lkb332 The Faulkner Factor 2/1/2017 University of Copenhagen express a lack of ability to act, to be agentic. Thus we get a sense that she does not act; she is acted upon, echoing the humanist discourse of agency, in which women are too emotional to be considered agentic (Davies, 42). Furthermore, the first “it” refers to nothing in particular, and can be read almost as a poetic apostrophe, addressing a non human force, in this case fate, to act on her behalf, choose on her behalf: “…if it dont mean for me to do it…” (Faulkner, 27, my italics). However, The poststructuralist view, as mentioned, takes into account the external factors of a person’s ability to act. Dewey Dell’s factors in this case would be that she lives in a time where women were not asked, they were told. This reality is also true for her mother Addie. In her account of why she married Anse, the discourse is not directly passive, but we never hear her actually say yes to him, and it seems more like a means of getting away from her life as a teacher, which she hates “I would go down to the hill to the spring where I could be quiet and hate them…Sometimes I though that I could not bear it…So I took Anse” (Faulkner, 170‐ 171). Taking external factors into account in the discussion of these women’s agency might seem to remove all kinds of responsibility of own actions. One might argue that Dewey Dell could have refused to go into the woods with Lafe and thus avoided her unfortunate situation of being a pregnant teenager, or Addie could have married someone else and not have lived her entire life in a way she did not enjoy. But, if we do accept the external reality of their situations, they are female and Lafe and Anse are male, and their agency is thereby limited in the post‐structural sense. Similarly passive discourse outlines Esch’s description of how she “let’s” boys have her: “The girly heart that, before Manny, I’d let boys have because they wanted it, and not because I wanted to give it.” (Ward, 16). Esch is obviously aware of her own wishes, and she verbalizes this through the fact that she does not wish to give herself to boys, however, she does so anyways. She “lets them have her” even though it goes against her own wishes. The fact that she renders their wishes over hers, bears witness to the fact that she is female in a male dominated reality, just like Dewey Dell. The passive rhetoric of “letting” someone else have the control resembles that of Papa Joseph selling the land to the white people. Here lies an indication that Esch had as little choice in “letting” the boys have her “girly heart” as Papa Joseph did in “letting” the white people exploit him and his land. Papa Joseph lived in a reality dominated by white men, restricting his agency (Ward, 14). In Esch’s reality, her agency is restricted by Page 5 of 24 Amalie Bischoff Odgaard Lkb332 The Faulkner Factor 2/1/2017 University of Copenhagen gender and race or the male/female and black/white dualisms in the poststructuralist view. Esch is restricted by her gender and Papa Joseph restricted by race in their ability to act as agentic human beings. The humanistic view of this would be that they should claim the agency that is there, and they chose not to: “Embedded within the dominant humanist discourse... is an understanding that each person is one who has an obligation to take themselves up as knowable…who ‘speaks for themselves’ and who accepts responsibility for their actions.” (Davies, 42). However, as Ward shows in different ways, the agency of Esch, her family and everyone in Bois Sauvage is not just something they can claim, they are indeed restricted by their social reality. Ward’s portrayal of the social status over the generations in this family points to the fact that the social situation in America may have changed to some degree, but that women are still lacking authority in the same way as racial minorities always have. Also in Esch’s account of her first time, passive verbs dominate the description of the situation and emphasizes the fact that she is somehow at the same time in control of the situation and of her own body, yet she is still passive and giving Marquise the power over her. This again echoes the exploiting of minorities whether it is race or gender or something else entirely. The passivity or lack of female agency also echoes that of Dewey Dell in As I Lay Dying. “…Marquise asked if he could touch my titty… I let him, and he asked me to show him my private… I did… And it was easier to let him keep touching me than ask him to stop, easier to let him inside than push him away…” (Ward, 23). This same discourse of the power to act or at least initiate action is present when she wonders about Big Henry: “I thought that one day we might have sex, but he never came for me that way;” (Ward, 27). The male characters are the ones with the agency, or in humanistic sense, the ones who make use of their agency (Davies, 42). In Salvage the Bones, Esch tries to constitute agency through the use of words. Even though her reality is being female in this male dominated society, and even though she is used to giving up her agency and “letting” the boys have the control, she at one point fights back against this passivity. She does so with the only resource she has; her words. The fight for agency or power over her self comes to show when she repeats, “He will look at me” (Ward, 146), when she is having sex with Manny in the school bathroom. She is at the same time searching for some kind of recognition from him and claiming her agency. The actions in the bathroom are clearly initiated by him: “This is Page 6 of 24 Amalie Bischoff Odgaard Lkb332 The Faulkner Factor 2/1/2017 University of Copenhagen the girls,’ I say weakly. ‘Been thinking about you,’ says Manny, and then he has pushed me back into the stall, closed it behind us, grabbed my arms…” (Ward, 145), and they seem more like a struggle for agency than anything. It is a mental, but also physical struggle between the two, both trying to maintain control over the other; Manny by looking away, Esch by forcing his face towards her own and mentally repeating the sentence: “He shrugs, twists his head to the side. Flipping like a caught fish. I roll my hips. It is so sweet. He will look at me. He snorts, puts his head down into my shoulder. I pull hard, and my hands slide along his face. I grab again. He will look at me.” (Ward, 146). The repetition of this almost becomes a mantra, as if, saying it to herself enough times, will make it true. She forces him with her hands and words to look at her; to see her, and in doing so, she fights for her agency constituted in the recognition from him, of her as a human being. However, once he finally recognizes her, it is only to disown her and her pregnancy. The fact that her agency is constituted by his recognition of her as agentic person is evidence of the male domination of Esch’s world. Motherhood Ward’s early reference to Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying is also an early hint that motherhood is going to play an important part throughout the novel, because the reference involves Vardaman experiencing his mother being a fish. “…we read As I Lay Dying, and I made an A because I answered the hardest question right: Why does the young boy think his mother is a fish?” (Ward, 7). The reader is made alert to the fact that motherhood is central to the story and maybe to the fact that regular concepts, such as motherhood, might be constituted to be something else entirely by the use of words, since Addie after her death is in fact a fish in the eyes of Vardaman. The meaning of words is emphasized by the previous Vardaman section in which he does no longer think of the fish he caught as a fish after it is dead, but as a not‐fish: “It is cut up into pieces of not‐fish now, not‐ blood on my hands and overalls.” (Faulkner, 53). In the same way, his mother, Addie, is no longer his mother. After her death, she becomes a fish to him. “My mother is a fish.” (Faulkner, 84). Ward uses Vardaman, “the young boy”, to signal the importance of motherhood and the way we understand motherhood and the way we create it through Page 7 of 24 Amalie Bischoff Odgaard Lkb332 The Faulkner Factor 2/1/2017 University of Copenhagen language. Thus she addresses and adds to Faulkner’s discussion of motherhood as seen by Addie in As I Lay Dying. Addie Bundren does not care much for words and their meaning, and she also expresses scepticism towards the idea of motherhood. We get a clear sense of this in her section of As I Lay Dying. For example she does not acknowledge the word “motherhood” she says: “When he was born I knew that motherhood was invented by someone who had to have a word for it because the ones that had the children didn’t care whether there was a word for it or not.” (Faulkner, 172). She applies the same logic to the words: fear, pride and love. It alerts the reader to the fact that Addie does not believe in words and that she does not believe motherhood to be real to anyone who uses the word. The same goes for love. This is how she signals that she does not acknowledge Anse’s love for her as real, but that the love between her and Cash is, since they do not need words to express it. Thus, following her own line of thought, she does not need to say the words to Cash, because the love is there, so when Anse uses the word, it is because the love is not real as the love between Addie and her son Cash. Just like motherhood is as real whether you have a word for it or not, the word changes nothing. Words are to Addie, “just a shape to fill a lack.” (Faulkner, 172). Vardaman thinks of the fish as a “not‐fish” after it has been cut up, and the blood as “not‐blood” after it has left the living body it used to run in (Faulkner, 53), adding to the rhetoric of words as constituting of things, emotions, actions. Motherhood in As I Lay Dying is pervaded with nothingness, at least to Addie it seems like nothing. Motherhood in Salvage the Bones is pervaded with violence. Ward makes many intertextual references to narratives of unwanted children such as Hansel and Gretel (Ward, 75; 255), and of course As I Lay Dying (Ward, 7), but mainly she refers to the Greek myth of Medea and Jason, a myth in which Medea murders her own children. A strong example of this intertextuality appears in the scene where the pit bull China kills her strongest puppy. “China is bloody‐mouthed and bright‐eyed as Medea. If she could speak, this is what I would ask her: Is this what motherhood is?” (Ward, 130). Esch, witnessing the violence of motherhood in relation to China and to her own mother’s death (Ward, 4; 221), is left to wonder, and find answers in the books she reads. Her own mother is dead and there is no other maternal figure in her life, thus the books and China become her guides to motherhood. Page 8 of 24 Amalie Bischoff Odgaard Lkb332 The Faulkner Factor 2/1/2017 University of Copenhagen Esch’s thoughts about getting rid of the baby demonstrate the despair she is feeling, and demonstrate her lack of ability to choose motherhood or not. She cannot afford an abortion, and the methods she has heard about at school, she rules out, quickly coming to the conclusion that she has no choice but to keep the baby, thus motherhood is chosen for her, due to lack of opportunity to act, or as mentioned before, lack of agency. “These are my options, and they narrow to none.” (Ward, 102). The reference to Medea, by comparison to China killing her puppy, indicates Esch’s bewilderment over the thought of having to kill her child whether or not it is before or after the birth. Her question as to whether this is what motherhood is, shows her scepticism towards the concept of motherhood and pregnancy, as she knows it; almost as if she is saying: “this cannot be it”. Esch’s worry seems partly to spring from her desperate love for Manny, like Medea’s desperate love for Jason in the myth. This is a love so strong that Medea kills her own children over it. Esch ties her love for Manny to the love between Jason and Medea, and the lack of choice: “…distracted again by Medea, who can only think of Jason, her face red, her heart aflame, engulfed by sweet pain. The goddess struck her with love, and she had no choices. I could not concentrate. My stomach was its own animal, and thoughts of Manny kept surfacing like swimmers in my brain;” (Ward, 109). Even though she tries to fight it and distract herself with reading, her love for Manny keeps resurfacing and it seems is in some ways defining of her feelings towards motherhood and the baby. Here, she refers to her stomach as an animal and previously she has referred to it as a wet seed and the secret inside of her. It is only after Manny finds out about her pregnancy and disowns her, that she starts to think about the “seed” as a baby. During the hurricane she thinks about whether or not she will be able to keep the baby safe (Ward, 219), and after the hurricane, she starts imagining her life with the baby: “Wonder where the baby will sleep, wonder if it will lay curled up in the bed with me. If I will teach Junior to give it a bottle, the way Daddy taught us. He is old enough now.” (Ward, 247). As her love for Manny fades, her feelings of motherhood grow. The general discourse of motherhood in Salvage the Bones is paradoxical. Mothers are seen both as strong and weak. They are strong because they have something to fight for, and weak because they have something to loose. The strong/weak dualism comes to show in the references to the dog China and the Page 9 of 24 Amalie Bischoff Odgaard Lkb332 The Faulkner Factor 2/1/2017 University of Copenhagen connections between China and Esch made because of their roles as mothers. China is seen as weak for different reasons; one is that she has to stay alive in order for her puppies to stay alive, which is why Randall advises Skeetah not to fight her (Ward, 169). This dualism means that motherhood can be an enforcement of power and agency but also an impairing thereof. The impact of narration style The narration of Ward’s novel further emphasizes female agency in general by choosing a female narrator for her entire novel, whereas Faulkner’s narration is dominated by male voices. In giving Esch a voice, Ward gives voice to women and minorities and if words, and voice, can constitute agency, she invokes this agency in doing so. Faulkner’s novel does have sections narrated by Cora, Dewey Dell and Addie, but their sections add up to eight against the fifty‐one male narrated sections. What this means for the novel, I will get back to. Of course there are fundamental differences to take into account, not only between the two authors, but also between the times in which they wrote these novels. One difference between them, of course, is their own gender, which might very well play a role in their choice of narration. Sinéad Moynihan argues that the difference in narrating style is mostly due to the fact that Ward does not have the same need for formal experimentation as Faulkner did (Moynihan, 560). Either way, the result is, that Salvage the Bones is dominated by a female voice in a male dominated sphere as opposed to As I Lay Dying, where the female narrated sections are minor to the male narrated ones. The difference in time must be taken into consideration too. As Louis D. Rubin argues, Faulkner’s experience of the South cannot be that of the present generation of Southern writers (Rubin, 487). Furthermore, if his experience of the South is not the same, then how could his experience of race or gender be the same? It is not. Thus the differences between Faulkner and Ward as authors are not peculiar in any way, but this does not mean that they are not interesting. As I Lay Dying revolves around many themes and plots, the main plot being the death and burial of Addie Bundren, however she is not the main narrator. Faulkner chose several different narrators, which results in fragmentation and overlapping of several points of view sometimes narrating the same events. Furthermore, it is also Page 10 of 24 Amalie Bischoff Odgaard Lkb332 The Faulkner Factor 2/1/2017 University of Copenhagen noticeable that Faulkner gives voice to persons who might be seen as non‐agentic such as women, children and the insane (Davies, 42). Addie Bundren is the center of As I Lay Dying, however, she is a periphery and mostly absent character. Another major plot of the novel is Dewey Dell’s pregnancy, which also, by neglect of narration becomes a periphery side story to the main storyline which becomes, due to the narration, the inner life of Darl Bundren, and the family’s status in their small rural, Southern society. Ward’s one female narrator provides the reader with access to the mind of this young woman and shows nuance of her feelings toward the anticipation of the hurricane, her unexpected pregnancy and the relationships within her family. In doing this she provides the nuance of her characters that she criticized Faulkner for not portraying in his black characters (Hoover, The Paris Review). However, the single narration only gives us one angle on the story, and we must trust Esch to be a reliable narrator. Natural forces as limiting or enforcing agency In both Ward’s and Faulkner’s novels natural forces become the center of the storyline and impacts in different ways the characters’ ability to act in. Nature can enforce agency, but it can also limit it. In Salvage the Bones hurricane Katrina can be seen as a symbol of Esch’s pregnancy in that Katrina is a threat to society in the same way that the pregnancy is a threat to Esch and her future. In terms of agency, the same lack of opportunity to act is present in the Batiste family, and the other families in their neighbourhood, as Esch’s lack of opportunity to get an abortion. The family covers the windows in order to minimize the damages, but that is all they are able to do, and still, they are limited, they do not have enough wood to keep them safe, they can only minimize the risk. “There is always glass showing after we nail the boards, an eye’s worth or a hand’s worth, no matter how we switch the wooden pieces and shuffle.” (Ward, 188). Esch has no way of minimizing the effect of her pregnancy, thus nature steps into the mother role Ward gives it: “She was the murderous mother who cut us to the bone but left us alive, left us naked and bewildered as wrinkled newborn babies, as blind puppies, as sun‐starved newly hatched baby snakes…Katrina is the mother we will remember until the next Page 11 of 24 Amalie Bischoff Odgaard Lkb332 The Faulkner Factor 2/1/2017 University of Copenhagen mother with large, merciless hands, committed to blood, comes.” (Ward, 255), and becomes the master over life and death. This is echoed in the fact that the covering of the windows had no impact, because the hurricane flooded the house, instead of breaking it. Something they had not anticipated and could not have controlled. Another natural force used in this way is water. The symbolism of water, whether in the form of rain, tears or flood, is present throughout the narrative. Esch expresses a feeling of powerlessness when she discovers she is pregnant. “Color washes across the stick like a curtain of rain.” (Ward, 36). The powerlessness is expressed in the simile of rain, also something natural that cannot be controlled. But rain is also a life necessity. Thus natural forces become associated with both passivity and agency (Moynihan, 563). In both novels, the natural forces become the symbol of death and life all the same. There is the anticipation of respectively a storm and a hurricane and there is the development of the wet seeds. The image of the seeds in relation to pregnancy in both novels is key, as seeds need water to grow. However, water also indicates anticipation of death or at least danger in both novels. In As I Lay Dying, the storm is associated with death in several occasions; one is the anticipation of the storm tying together with the anticipation of Addie’s death. The connection is made by Dr. Peabody: “You picked out a fine time to get me out here and bring up a storm.” (Faulkner, 44). Furthermore, most of the other characters also mention the coming of the rain leading up to her death. Thus the rain and the death of Addie is linked. However, it is hinted a couple of times that Addie has chosen her own death to some degree; Cora Tull says: “…Addie Bundren dying alone, hiding her pride and her broken heart. Glad to go.” (Faulkner, 23), and Dr. Peabody says: “…I believed death to be a phenomenon of the body; now I know it to be merely a function of the mind…” (Faulkner, 44), thus her death as a function of the mind is an act of agency, in which she regains power over her own body, after having let Anse control over it for so many years, giving birth to all his children. “’Nonsense,’ Anse said; ‘you and me aint nigh done chapping yet, with just two.’” (Faulkner, 173). Addie amplifies her agency further in making Anse and the rest of the family make the trip to Jefferson to bury her. This is, in her own words revenge: “..my revenge would be that he would never know I was taking revenge.” (Faulkner, 173). Page 12 of 24 Amalie Bischoff Odgaard Lkb332 The Faulkner Factor 2/1/2017 University of Copenhagen Arguably, if Addie chose to die, she might have chosen to wait for the weather to worsen, she might have chosen to die right before the storm, in order to make sure that Anse will have a horrible time and a lot of difficulties getting her body to Jefferson. Thus Faulkner leaves it partly to the reader to determine her degree of agency, or the degree of her revenge. In the reality of Addie, her agency has been regained in two ways, one is by having an affair with the reverend, and the other is by, with nature in the form of death and storm as her partner, making Anse take the difficult trip to Jefferson to bury her body. However, in the reality of the reader, this act loses some of its power when we learn that Anse actually welcome the excuse to go to Jefferson, so he can get himself a new set of teeth and a new wife: “…kind of hangdog and proud too, with his teeth and all, even if he wouldn’t look at us. ‘Meet Mrs Bundren,’ he says.” (Faulkner, 261). At least she made the trip all the more difficult for him. As Cora Tull notes, Addie might as well have gone to Jefferson while she was still alive, and spared her family the trouble; “’But she wanted to go,’ Mr Tull said. ‘It was her own wish to lie among her own people.’ ‘Then why didn’t she go alive?’” (Faulkner, 23). What is interesting is, that Anse does not come to this conclusion himself, and it shows his self‐righteousness. He does not see why god (or anyone) would want to punish him: “But I do not say it’s a curse on me, because I have done no wrong to be cussed by.” (Faulkner, 38). This emphasizes his view of Addie as a non‐agentic person. In relation to Addie, nature in the form of the storm comes to symbolize death but also a vehicle of agency. In other aspects of the novel nature is the symbol of life and femininity. For example, the river makes Dewey Dell’s dress stick to her body and shows off her motherly or at least female shapes, which are noticed by her brother Darl. Thus the river, or water in any form, becomes a sign of life, the life that grows inside Dewey Dell’s body. Also, this life can only grow by the means of water, as a seed in the ground. It is the wetness of the dress that makes Darl notice her shapes, and again Dewey Dell is associated with nature and the land: “Squatting, Dewey Dell’s wet dress shapes for the dead eyes of three blind men those mammalian ludicrosities which are the horizons and the valleys of the earth.” (Faulkner, 164). In her essay about Salvage the Bones and As I Lay Dying Sinéad Myonihan discusses the fact that the people hurt by hurricane Katrina were, by some politicians, regarded as reckless and rebellious citizens, rather than victims, because, as Ward Page 13 of 24 Amalie Bischoff Odgaard Lkb332 The Faulkner Factor 2/1/2017 University of Copenhagen testifies, they had been warned (Moynihan, 555). This discourse of neoliberal ideology, in which each person is the master of his or her own destiny, resembles the humanistic individualistic theory regarding agency as discussed earlier. In this view, both Esch’s pregnancy and the damages done by the hurricane are seen as results of a mismanaged life rather than an effect of poverty (Moynihan, 555). This neoliberal discourse of choice would deem the family reckless for not evacuating their home during the hurricane rather than see it as a necessary evil for them to stay. The phone call warning them about the hurricane makes clear the severity of their poverty and inability to evacuate, and the same can be applied to Esch’s pregnancy. Her thoughts of abortion and her account of her possibilities makes clear, how severely her situation limits her agency and her opportunities to act and she comes to the conclusion that her options “narrow to none.” (Ward, 103). Thus it becomes clear, that poverty is a restriction of agency, and so is nature in many ways, not only to Esch, or the females like her, but their entire neighbourhood. The wet seeds – Future determined by pregnancy If we see agency as restrained by the gender dualism, then pregnancy, is one form of the restrain that is confined to the female body. Both Esch and Dewey Dell express a kind of loss of agency due to pregnancy. Their abilities to act are limited as both of them are female and poor, thus their pregnancies come to determine their future. Dewey Dell’s loss of agency is expressed in her wish for someone else, in most cases Dr. Peabody, to do something. Several times, she states; “He could do so much for me if he just would” (Faulkner, 58; 59; 63). Esch’s loss of agency is expressed in her comparison of herself to Medea and the power of Jason becomes the comparison to the power of Manny over her body resulting in this pregnancy. “I am still reading about Medea…Here is someone that I recognize…She has magic, could bend the natural to the unnatural. But even with all her power, Jason bends her like a young pine in a hard wind;” (Ward, 38). Esch makes the connection to Medea right after she learns that she is pregnant, and the rhetoric of Jason’s power over Medea is striking. It is almost incomprehensible to Esch, that her heroine, with all her power, could be controlled by her love for someone. We can then make the connection that Esch feels powerless, in a similar way, bend like a young pine Page 14 of 24 Amalie Bischoff Odgaard Lkb332 The Faulkner Factor 2/1/2017 University of Copenhagen by Manny and his impact on her body and now her future. The image of the pine echoes Esch’s feelings towards the pregnancy as fallen pine needles (Ward, 36). The pine should be strong, but in the power of love, it bends and drops its needles. Esch’s negative feelings toward her pregnancy also come to show through the fact that she considers dangerous methods of abortion. This shows how severely the pregnancy impacts her, and the fact that she will risk her own life to get rid of it, shows that it is life changing in a negative way. Her social and economical situations, being a young, poor, black female partly constitutes the negativity towards the pregnancy. Also, in her view, the pregnancy comes to stand in the way of Manny’s love for her. This is expressed as an element in her thoughts of abortion. “If I took care of it, he would never know, I think, never know, and then maybe it would give him time. Time to what? I push. Be different. Love me.” (Ward, 102‐103). It becomes clear, that Esch is aware that the baby will not bring them closer together, it will push them apart, and in her desperate love for him, that is the worst that could happen. The pregnancy thus comes to determine her future with Manny, but she is also aware that it will change other aspects of her life. This comes to show in that she does not want her family to know about her situation, and it might be an expression of the anticipation of their reaction as something negative. The notion of Esch’s pregnancy as determining her future first appears when she takes a pregnancy test, and it shows her future with the two lines. “Seconds later, there are two lines, one in each box…The terrible truth of what I am flares like a dry fall fire in my stomach, eating all the fallen pine needles.” (Ward, 36). The strong words used to describe her feelings toward the result of the test emphasize the gravity of her situation. Other characters contribute to the discourse of pregnancy as determining the future for a woman. For example, Manny links motherhood to weakness, and unknowingly, he also makes a metaphorical link between China and Esch. “’I ain’t saying either of them weak.’…’Any dog give birth like that is less strong after… Price of being female.’“ (Ward, 96). According to Manny, weakness is a part of being female. His first statement, that he is not saying any of them (referring to China and Esch) is weak, contributes to the discourse, that they are of course weak, but only because they are female. Just like that, he takes their agency away, giving them no chance to ever be strong, because they are female, and the price of being female, is that Page 15 of 24 Amalie Bischoff Odgaard Lkb332 The Faulkner Factor 2/1/2017 University of Copenhagen you are weak, and you will give birth and become weaker. The negative associations with pregnancy also tie together with the memory of Mama. Everyone in the Batiste family, except Junior, have the memory of Mama’s pregnancy with Junior as the cause of her death explained rather violently by Esch, “I can see her, chin to chest, straining to push Junior out, and Junior snagging on her insides, grabbing hold of what he caught on to try to stay inside her, but instead he pulled it out with him when he was born.” (Ward, 4). So along with the stigma, the anticipation of Manny’s reaction and her future as a single, teenage mom, the fear of death is also present in Esch’s reality. Esch and Dewey Dell use similar rhetoric to describe their situations, for example they both refer to a wet seed, Dewey Dell about herself and Esch about her baby. Dewey Dell says “I feel like a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth.” (Faulkner, 64) and Esch says, “If I could, I would reach inside of me and pull out my heart and that tiny wet seed that will become the baby.” (Ward, 122). The use of the words “wet seed” to describe their situations signals the continuing intertextuality between the two novels and emphasize the cruel reality of the fact that Esch, even though Salvage the Bones takes place nearly eighty years later than As I Lay Dying, have almost as limited options for abortion as Dewey Dell (Moynihan, 560). Furthermore, the seeds continue the discourse of nature as something that impacts and is a part of their lives. Due to narration, we do not hear as much about Dewey Dell’s thoughts of her pregnancy as we do with Esch. What we do get is a sense of her desperation towards getting an abortion. She is willing to try anything, including the very questionable methods of Skeet MacGowan, even though she suspects that it will not work, and he is taking advantage of her situation “’Hit smells like turpentine.’…’Will it work?’”(Faulkner, 247). After her visit to the basement with Skeet, we know from Vardaman’s section, that Dewey Dell knows she has been deceived “She looks at me. ‘It aint going to work,’ she says. ‘That son of a bitch.’” (Faulkner, 251). Her desperate search for an abortion is the most tangible evidence of her knowledge of what this pregnancy might mean for her future. And from her visits to the pharmacies on the way to, and in Jefferson, we get an idea of the stigma that accompanies her situation; “How old are you?” (Faulkner, 200), “You are not married, are you?” (Faulkner, 102), “You aint married, are you?” (Faulkner, 243). Furthermore, it seems like Darl’s knowledge of her pregnancy is so problematic for her, that she has him institutionalized and taken away in order for her to keep her Page 16 of 24 Amalie Bischoff Odgaard Lkb332 The Faulkner Factor 2/1/2017 University of Copenhagen pregnancy secret. This knowledge does not come from Dewey Dell herself either but from a piecing together of Vardaman and Cash’s sections. Vardaman witnesses Darl setting fire to the barn, “I saw something that Dewey Dell told me not to tell nobody.” (Faulkner, 217). From Cash we get more of an explanation: “Vardaman seen him do it, but he swore he never told nobody but Dewey Dell and that she told him not to tell nobody. But Gillespie knowed it.” (Faulkner, 232). In both novels the pregnancy is discovered by one of the brothers in the family. In As I Lay Dying, in one of Darl’s early sections he confronts Dewey Dell with the fact that she is pregnant. In this confrontation he takes apart her attempt to undo the pregnancy simply by ignoring it, or as he suggests, by not saying it out loud: “The reason why you will not say it is, when you say it, even to yourself, you will know it is true: is that it?” (Faulkner, 40). This echoes Esch’s thoughts about telling her brother Skeetah about her pregnancy. The fear of words form through the belief that the act of saying something out loud will make it real or true. “…I can’t tell him, because I can’t say it. I haven’t said it to myself yet, out loud.” (Ward, 86). This parallel between Esch and Dewey Dell is interesting in that they both attempt to control their situation by means of words and the fact that they do not speak of their situation, at least not out loud. Also, the two scenes draw parallels between the relationship between them and their brothers. However, as Moynihan states: “this family… in which cooperation and empathy rather than atomization and selfishness are the distinguishing features.” (Moynihan, 557). The Batiste family is cooperating and empathic whereas the Bundren family is pervaded by atomization and selfishness. Intertextuality and the influence of Faulkner on subsequent writers Flannery O’Connor discusses the troubles of being a Southern writer in her essay “Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction” and she verbalizes the issue of what authors of the South can and cannot do due to expectations and the legacy of William Faulkner. O’Connor argues that “If you are a Southern writer, that label, and all the misconceptions that go with it, is pasted on you at once, and you are left to get it off the best you can.” (37). This, along with her famous quote about the influence of Faulkner on subsequent authors: “Nobody wants his mule and wagon stalled on the same track the Page 17 of 24 Amalie Bischoff Odgaard Lkb332 The Faulkner Factor 2/1/2017 University of Copenhagen Dixie Limited is roaring down” (O’Connor, 45), expresses some of the difficulties that present day Southern authors face. It also exemplifies a doing of exactly that: trying to get the label off as best she can. Being a female Southern writer, it can be argued that O’Connor, in making this statement, attempts to create a space for herself in the Southern canon by invoking Faulkner as a presence she is aware of, but not afraid of. O’Connor mentions that Hawthorne also attempts to removes himself from the expectations by means of a technicality. And, what Hawthorne did by calling his work romances rather than novels (O’Connor, 38; 45), Ward does by referring mainly to the myth of Medea rather than to Faulkner. She does, however, as mentioned previously, begin her novel by making a very direct intertextual reference to As I Lay Dying. In doing so, she at the same time recognizes Faulkner’s role of influence, a smart move since he cannot be ignored in the context of Southern literature, and uses the intertextual reference to Medea as a counterpoint, and perhaps as a means to move out of Faulkner’s shadow or “get out from under him” as Louis D. Rubin puts it (Rubin, 487). One could argue that Ward, in her positioning of the intertextual references, hints to a leaving behind of Faulkner and a focus on something else, in this case the myth of Medea and a new South. “After my ninth‐grade year, we read As I Lay Dying… This summer, after tenth grade, we are reading Edith Hamilton’s Mythology.” (Ward, 7). Furthermore, as Rubin says, the world changes all the time and so does the South (Rubin, 487). Ward’s reality is different from Faulkner’s in so many ways, not only because she is a black female and he is a white male, but also because they are so many years apart. Ward verbalizes this through Esch’s account of the hurricane as having washed away the world that was before and left them another one to live in: “…I wonder where the world where that day happened has gone, because we are not in it.” (Ward, 251). Rubin probes younger Southern writers to gain perspective (Rubin, 488), to use this distance between Faulkner’s time and their own to gain perspective and thereby bring something new to the Southern canon, which arguably, Ward has done. Page 18 of 24 Amalie Bischoff Odgaard Lkb332 The Faulkner Factor 2/1/2017 University of Copenhagen Conclusion In conclusion, the limitations of female agency are similarly portrayed in both novels through Esch and Dewey Dell and their unwanted pregnancies. This is expressed through the use of nature as a paradoxical metaphor for both agency and powerlessness. Whether you see their situation as a result of a mismanaged life or as a product of their social situation, their options of how to deal with the pregnancy are strikingly similar. And, whether you see Salvage the Bones as a rewriting of As I Lay Dying, a writing back against it or simply a Southern novel, Ward, while echoing many themes from As I Lay Dying, still brings a different perspective to the South, how could she not? Many hurricanes have swept over Mississippi since Faulkner’s time, and each of them left a new world to account for. Ward may have placed her work on Faulkner’s track, but she did so deliberately, and she has switched the mule and wagon with a pit bull and a dumb truck and claimed her place in the Southern canon. Units: 41.870 Page 19 of 24 Amalie Bischoff Odgaard Lkb332 The Faulkner Factor 2/1/2017 University of Copenhagen Works Cited Faulkner, William. As I Lay Dying. 1st Vintage international US Paperback ed. 1990. (Written in 1930). Flannery O’Connor, “Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction.” From Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose. 1972, (essay, first published 1965) Hoover, Elizabeth. “Jesmyn Ward on Salvage the Bones.” The Paris Review, August 30, 2011. http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2011/08/30/jesmyn‐ward‐ on‐salvage‐the‐bones/ (Web. December 23, 2016) Moynihan, Sinead. "From disposability to recycling: William Faulkner and the new politics of rewriting in Jesmyn Ward's Salvage The Bones." Studies in the Novel, vol. 47, no. 4, 2015, p. 550+. Literature Resource Center, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=LitRC&sw=w&u=dkb&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE% 7CA439682474&asid=4a9ca03efe53459d7b16f15968633311. (Web. 26 Dec. 2016) O’Connor, Flannery. “Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction.” From Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose. 1972, (essay, first published 1965) OED online: "agency, n." Def. 4. OED Online. Oxford University Press, December 2016. http://www.oed.com.ep.fjernadgang.kb.dk/view/Entry/3851?redirectedFr om=agency#eid (Web. 28 December 2016) Penguin Reference. Dictionary of Literary Terms & Literary Theory. Penguin Books, 4th ed. 1999. Rubin, Louis D. “The Difficulties of Being a Southern Writer Today, or, Getting Out from Under William Faulkner.” Journal of Southern History, vol. 29, no. 4. 1963. Page 20 of 24 Amalie Bischoff Odgaard Lkb332 The Faulkner Factor 2/1/2017 University of Copenhagen Ward, Jesmyn. Salvage the Bones. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. US Paperback. 2012. (Written in 2011). Page 21 of 24 Amalie Bischoff Odgaard Lkb332 The Faulkner Factor 2/1/2017 University of Copenhagen Pensum Bauer, Margaret. “Miss Jane Is Still Not in the History Books: Gender, Race, and Class Discrimination in the Fiction of Faulkner and Gaines.” From William Faulkner’s Legacy: “what shadow, what stain, what mark” (2005) 28 pages Blackhurst, Chris. “A Swift rewrite, or a tribute?”, The Independent, March 9 1997: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home‐news/a‐swift‐rewrite‐or‐ a‐tribute‐1271831.html (Web. Dec. 28 2016). 3 pages Bone, Martyn. “Postsouthern.” Scott Romine and Jennifer Greeson eds. Keywords for Southern Studies, 2016 12 pages Faulkner, William. The Sound and The Fury. 1st Vintage international US Paperback ed. 1990. 321 pages As I Lay Dying. 1st Vintage international US Paperback ed. 1990. 260 pages “A Return”. 1938. 30 pages Excerpt from Flags in the Dust. 1973. 16 pages Ford, Richard. A Piece of My Heart. 1st Vintage contemporaries US Paperback ed. 1985. 295 pages “Walker Percy: Not Just Whistling Dixie.” National Review, vol. 29. May 13 1977. 7 pages Page 22 of 24 Amalie Bischoff Odgaard Lkb332 The Faulkner Factor 2/1/2017 University of Copenhagen Hale, Dorothy J. "As I Lay Dying's Heterogeneous Discourse." Novel: A Forum On Fiction 23.1 (1989): Humanities International Complete. http://web.b.ebscohost.com.ep.fjernadgang.kb.dk/ehost/detail/detail?sid= 3ad30b3d‐9e35‐4eec‐8687‐ 2d3019c43224%40sessionmgr101&vid=0&hid=101&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZW hvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#AN=15830050&db=hlh (Web. 28. Dec. 2016). (Web. 28 Dec. 2016) 20 pages Hannah, Barry. “Dragged Fighting from His Tomb”. Airships. 1978. 14 pages Hoover, Elizabeth. “Jesmyn Ward on Salvage the Bones.” The Paris Review, August 30, 2011. http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2011/08/30/jesmyn‐ward‐ on‐salvage‐the‐bones/ (Web. December 23, 2016) 3 pages Kreyling, Michael. “Southern Writing under the Influence of William Faulkner” Inventing Southern Literature. 1998. 44 pages Matthews, John T. ed. The New Cambridge Companion to William Faulkner. Cambridge University Press. 2015. 200 pages Moynihan, Sinead. "From disposability to recycling: William Faulkner and the new politics of rewriting in Jesmyn Ward's Salvage The Bones." Studies in the Novel, vol. 47, no. 4, 2015, p. 550+. Literature Resource Center, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=LitRC&sw=w&u=dkb&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE% 7CA439682474&asid=4a9ca03efe53459d7b16f15968633311. (Web. 26 Dec. 2016). 18 pages O’Connor, Flannery. “Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction.” From Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose. 1972, (essay, first published 1965) 15 pages Rubin, Louis D. “The Difficulties of Being a Southern Writer Today, or, Getting Out from Under William Faulkner.” Journal of Southern History, vol. 29, no. 4. 1963. Page 23 of 24 Amalie Bischoff Odgaard Lkb332 The Faulkner Factor 2/1/2017 University of Copenhagen 10 pages Styron, William. Lie Down In Darkness. 1st Vintage international US Paperback ed. 1992. 400 pages “William Faulkner” essay. 7 pages Swift, Graham. Last Orders. 1st Vintage international US Paperback ed. 1997. 295 pages Tamsen, Douglas Love. “Defining Postmodernism: Styron’s ‘Complicitous Critique’ of Faulkner.” Southern Literary Journal, vol. 28, no. 1. Fall 1995. 17 pages Terrell Tebbetts, “Discourse and Identity in Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying and Swift’s Last Orders.” The Faulkner Journal, vol. 25, no. 2. Spring, 2010. 21 pages Ward, Jesmyn. Salvage the Bones. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. US paperback. 2012. 258 pages Total pages: 2.304 Page 24 of 24