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The Inscapability of Dwelling in Yoknapatawpha County
- Stefanie E. Sobelle (author)
Chapter of: The Imagery of Interior Spaces(pp. 171–192)
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| Title | The Inscapability of Dwelling in Yoknapatawpha County |
|---|---|
| Contributor | Stefanie E. Sobelle (author) |
| Landing page | https://punctumbooks.com/titles/the-imagery-of-interior-spaces/ |
| License | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ |
| Copyright | Sobelle, Stefanie E. |
| Publisher | punctum books |
| Published on | 2019-03-29 |
| Long abstract | At the opening of William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying (1930), Jewel Bundren walks into a window of a cotton house, through the building, and out the opposite window without breaking stride — as if the house were not there at all. Described as having a “wooden face,” Jewel is materially one with the log house. It does not impact his sense of self; it is his self. There is no distinction between interior and exterior for Jewel; he has no periphery. Rooms exist differently for his introspective brother, Darl, who narrates this remarkable scene. For Darl, rooms are the spaces in which he explores his selfhood. Whereas Jewel is one with an uninhabited house, Darl is alienated by uninhabited rooms — he avoids entering the cotton house entirely, and a bedroom creates for him an uncomfortable existential crisis. This contrast between Jewel and Darl demonstrates two ways that architecture — in particular, interior space — functions in Faulkner’s fiction — 1) as metonymic of the characters themselves and 2) as symbolic of the complex psychological, social, and political events unfolding in and around them. Faulkner brings these two functions together through narrative perspective. Architecture for Faulkner is thus not only a metaphor but also an organizing principle for the novel’s construction. His treatment of interiority functions differently than the ways interiority is experienced by his characters; whereas Darl’s and Jewel’s interiorities are constrained by their respective personal limitations, the reader moves easily between the textual rooms that comprise their inner lives. In other words, the architectural structures — assemblages of closed rooms — within Faulkner’s more experimental novels are often at odds with or challenged by the open architecture of the novels. This essay argues that Faulkner’s inquiry into domestic relations in American culture unfolds in the formal experimentation of his multi-perspectival narratives, a literary technique comparable to the open planning of modernist architecture contemporary to their publication. |
| Page range | pp. 171–192 |
| Print length | 22 pages |
| Language | English (Original) |
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