Crisis, Mimetic Desire, and Communal Violence in William Faulkner’s Sanctuary

Abstract

Faulkner' Journal Kevin G. Wilson Crisis, Mimetic Desire, and Communal Violence in William Faulkner’s Sanctuary ULYSSES. O, when degree is shak’d, Which is the ladder ofall high designs, The enterprise is sick! How could communities, Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities, Peaceful commerce from dividable shores, The primogenity and due ofbirth, Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels, But by degree, stand in authentic place? Take but degree away, untune that string, And hark what discord follows! Each thing melts In mere oppugnancy.... —William Shakespeare 'Troilus and Cressida 1.3) I decided I might just as well make some of it [money] my­ self. I took a little time out, and speculated what a person in Mississippi would believe to be current trends, chose what I thought was the right answer and invented the most hor­ rific tale I could imagine and wrote it in about three weeks. —William Faulkner (qtd. in Blotner 605) Introduction Sanctuary stands apart from the novels of Faulkners Yoknapatawpha cycle. Most notably, the focus is community and not the family (Kerr, “Creative” 15). Themes identified by many Faulkner scholars do not seem to apply. Signs of disorder and corruption permeate the novel as bedrock institutions of family, social class, patriarchy, and the courts fail to secure peace and protection for the novel’s protagonists. Southern myths are shattered. Hypocrisy is exposed as the righteous members of proper society are shown to be lacking in Christian mercy, and the deviant members of outlaw communities are shown to be car­ ing and faithful. Novelistically, the work is also problematic. The characters do not grow. There is no salvation or redemption. Indeed, apart from the rape of Temple Drake and the lynching of Lee Goodwin, nothing happens (Tate 426). Moreover, Faulkner provides few clues to the reader concerning the meaning of these violent events. 49 50 Kevin G. Wilson Crisis, Mimetic Desire, and Communal Violence in Sanctuary Rene Girard’s theory of scapegoating is a useful lens through which to view the violence in the novel. According to Girard, scapegoating is a cultural mechanism designed to defuse the uncontrolled spiral of violence that a com­ munity in crisis would otherwise direct against itself. The origins of this vio­ lence are to be found in mimetic behavior—the propensity ofhuman beings to imitate or borrow from others, including others’ desires. When the concepts of mimetic desire and mimetic rivalry are applied to an interpretation of Sanctu­ ary, it becomes clear that Temple’s rape and the lynching and rape of Goodwin are related in unexpected ways. In Sanctuary, it is not so much the presence of Temple Drake and Ruby Lamar as objects of male desire that unsettles these communities. Rather, it is the encounter between exclusive groups and the excluded other (in the per­ sons of Temple Drake, Lee Goodwin, and Ruby Lamar) that prompts a series of mimetic responses which culminate in conflict and violence. According to Girard, the seeds of communal violence are sown when members of a group enter into mimetic relationships and these relationships become continuously doubled through repetition (Girard, Mimesis 227; Ciuba 8). When mimetic ri­ valry spirals out of control, it produces a crisis of differentiation in the social and cultural order of the group. Faulkner’s Sanctuary portrays such a world through its dramatization of mimetic relationships involving Temple Drake, Ruby Lamar, and Narcissa Sartoris. However, the most significant index of mimetic appropriation is the relationship between Horace Benbow and Lee Goodwin. In effect, Goodwin becomes the model-mediator of Horace’s desire to affirm himself as a virile male capable of exerting patriarchal authority over his family/household. More importantly, these mimetic relationships, involv­ ing members ofexcluded and exclusive communities, demonstrate how far so­ cial differentiation has broken down in Mississippi society under Prohibition. Sanctuary’s Triptych Structure and its Geography of Exclusive and Excluded Places Paying careful attention to the geography of Sanctuary, Arthur Kinney notes that Faulkner organized the novel according to narrative blocks correspond­ ing to three locations: the Old Frenchman place, Jefferson, and Memphis. The first third of the novel takes place almost entirely at the Old Frenchman place with the remainder divided between...