"It aint nothing but jest another Snopes": White Trash in Faulkner's Snopes Trilogy

Abstract

"It aint nothing but jest another Snopes":White Trash in Faulkner's Snopes Trilogy Justin Mellette In spite of its noticeable absence of major black characters, William Faulkner's Snopes trilogy offers fertile ground for expanding critical conversations on the racial concerns that Faulkner interrogated throughout his career. Thadious M. Davis suggests that Faulkner's "treatment of white people, within the normalizing, universalizing elision of racial identity, but with the complexity of the burden of racial subjectivity is an extraordinary achievement" and that As I Lay Dying and the Snopes trilogy, novels with "no visible black presence at all," are the "most racialized of Faulkner's work" (254). Rather than confronting the lingering specters of slavery or society's inherent fear and inability to stomach the idea of miscegenation, The Hamlet, The Town, and The Mansion bring to light anxieties over whiteness, specifically, the rise of white trash in Yoknapatawpha. In contrast to the old aristocratic families in Faulkner's fictional world—the Sartorises, McCaslins, Compsons, Greniers, and de Spains—the Snopes family seemingly arrives out of nowhere in the ruined vestiges of the post-Civil War South. Even Ab Snopes, the pater familias, is described as "never anything but a jackal" by Faulkner in a discussion of his mercenary actions during the Civil War (University 250). As opposed to, say, the lineage of the Compson family, which stems from 1699 and includes both a general and a governor, the Snopeses are introduced to readers as having no relevant ancestry, descending on Yoknapatawpha as little better than pests invading a fallen land. While many Snopeses do act perniciously in the stories in which they appear, their presence is most notable in that it triggers the bigoted mindset of the more middle-class, urban community at large that regards them as not merely class but also racial inferiors. Critical discussion on the Snopes trilogy tends to focus on Flem Snopes's inhumanity or the multiplicity of narrators Faulkner employs, from the chivalric grandiloquence of Gavin Stevens to the rustic wisdom of V. K. Ratliff; less critical attention has been paid to the novels' complex treatment of racial anxiety leveled against poor whites, which [End Page 41] complements and at some point even mirrors other forms of racism examined by Faulkner over his career. Flem's nefariousness has been of critical concern for decades: in James Gray Watson's important early work on the trilogy, he refers to Flem as "a character so completely resistant to moral definition as to be literally inhuman" (12). Similarly, Joseph Gold writes that to the villagers of Frenchman's Bend, Flem represents "an uncontrollable and incomprehensible force" (27) and Donald Greiner notes that Flem's shrewdness marks him as fully capable of manipulating human behavior, calling him "the better man when it comes to greed," as Flem easily outmaneuvers the townsfolk in the spotted horses deal (1135). Flem's villainy and shrewdness, then, have been well dissected by critics; what has gone somewhat understudied to this point is not Flem's immorality but rather the appropriateness of the town's response to him and his family. While Flem's actions are often self-serving, the language meted out against not only him in particular but also to the Snopeses in general is unbalanced in relation to their purported actions, which we will come to see as emblematic of the prejudice targeted against the family. As Richard Godden notes, because Flem is the son of an "unconvicted barn burner," the residents of Frenchman's Bend "suspect [him] of harboring purposes both criminal and political," long before he has made a name for himself ("Earthing" 79). Such criticisms are often leveled against the family before they have acted maliciously or selfishly: Yoknapatawpha's judgments of the Snopes family are based not on their actions but rather on a racist ideology that regards white trash as a fundamentally inferior and degraded group of people. Studying how Faulkner utilizes and depicts whiteness in myriad ways has emerged as a fruitful addition to Faulkner studies, thanks in large part to the publication of Jay Watson's Faulkner and Whiteness, an edited collection that originated as a 2006–2007 special issue...