Thomas Sutpen: Mountaineer Stereotype in Absalom, Absalom!

Abstract

\u Hi. -SK Thomas Sutpen A Mountaineer Stereotype inAbsalom, Absalom!¿ni by Lynn Dickerson i Lynn Dickerson, a student of literature as well as of the Southern Appalachians, has been for many years a strong supporter of Appalachian Heritage and a Contributing Editor. He teaches at the University of Richmond, Virginia. William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! is many things. It is a portrait of nineteenth-century Southern life, a statement about the relationship ofthe past to the present, an exercise in oral history, and a comment on the meaning oftruth. It is also a story about storytelling, especially about Quentin Compson's attempt to reconstruct the story ofThomas Sutpen. Focusingon the telling ofthe story, I shall argue that the narrator or narrators rely heavily upon the stereotype of the Southern mountaineer to provide Sutpen with a mystique that is commensurate with his role in the story. The story that Quentin reconstructs in 1910 with a dearth of tangible evidence , a sizeable amount oforal history and a very active imagination is essentially the tragedy of a mountaineer who fails in his attempt to establish a dynasty in Yoknapatawpha County. Although he builds a magnificent house on one hundred square miles of land which he mysteriously acquires in 1833, Sutpen even73 tually loses both land and heirs. The Civil War ruins him financially, and his conflict with his sons deprives him ofheirs. The story closes with the specter ofthe idiot negro Jim Bond, Sutpen's only living male heir, howling in the night among the ashes ofthe Sutpen mansion. Although critics have written on practically every aspect of the novel, they have said little about Sutpen's mountain heritage. This oversight has been unfortunate , for the evidence suggests that Faulkner's choice ofa Southern mountaineer for the protagonist in Absalom, Absalom! was deliberate. First, Faulkner devotes a number ofpages in the text to Sutpen's mountain birth, alludes to it on several occasions , and emphasizes it in both the chronology and genealogy sections. Speaking through Quentin Compson, Faulkner makes the point that Sutpen is not simply poor white, the descendent of an indentured servant who came from England to tidewater Virginia in the eighteenth century but that he is also the son of a proud "mountain woman" of "Scottish" descent who enjoyed a self-respect that the poor whites never knew.1 Second, Faulkner seems to have had a special interest in books about mountain people at the time that he was working with the Absalom material. In 1932 Faulkner showed his esteem for three mountain books by autographingand placing them in his library. These books are Grace Lumpkin's To Make My Bread, autographed September 1, Emmett Gowen's Mountain Born, September 12, and George Harris's Sut Lovingood, also September 12.2 Third, Faulkner places Quentin's reconstruction of the Sutpen story at Harvard immediately after the successful publication ofTKe Trail ofthe Lonesome Pine, theJohn Fox, Jr. novel that was third on the best-seller list in 1908 and fifth from the top in 1909.3 Although numerous writers had focused on the Southern mountaineer in their prose and fiction, Fox was the most successful in popularizing the stereotype. In 1910 the Fox novel would have been as popular as Ben Hur with Harvard students , for not only did it enjoy a status that would carry it to the New York stage (1912) and Hollywood (1916, 1922, 1936) but also Fox was himself a distinguished Harvard graduate and closefriend toTheodore Roosevelt.4 Although identifying precisely the source or sources that Faulkner may have used in developing the mountaineer character of Thomas Sutpen is difficult, several likely candidates exist. To Make My Bread, Mountain Bom and Sut Lovingood stereotype the Southern mountaineer. Shreve McCannon's allusion to Ben Hur in his comment to Quentin suggests that Faulkner not only was acquainted with the best-selling novels of the period but also had these novels in mind when he was writing Absalom, Absalom! Faulkner therefore probably knew The Trail of the Lonesome Pine either directly or indirectly. He may have read Edgar Allan Poe's "A Tale of the Ragged Mountains." He probably was familiar with some of the representative prose works...