Essay: Literature addresses the plight of the working class through a middle or upper class lens

The vast majority of critics and academics, like writers, belong to the middle to upper levels of our social hierarchy. As Julia Leyda notes, although “the racial and classed term white trash has peppered American oral and written culture” since the 19th century “few scholars have seriously questioned how this term functions in American literature” (38).
When literature has addressed the plight of the working class it has most commonly been filtered through a middle or upper class lens. Working class culture, in particular that of the lower, poor working classes, has historically been treated with condescension and derision, a ___) that continues to this day. Literature in particular often falls strictly along class lines. For instance, Literature geared towards the working classes throughout the 19th and early 20th century came in the form of dime novels, often sensationalized stories of murder, sex and intrigue. The fuel of middle and upper class “moral panics” (p. 47, Denning) looked down upon with derision by the “polite classes”, serious writers and even librarians (47).
Much like the entertainment that society outside of white, working class culture perceive as cornerstones of “white trash” culture today such as daytime talkshows, ghost-written celebrity tell alls, country music, National Enquirer, Fox News, the home shopping network, TV judges and televangelists. The working poor are often presented as existing on the fringes of society, uneducated, backward, stereotyped as “white trash”, society’s notion of their existence hinging on a vague notion of the existence of people of lesser than themselves: in education, appearance, culture and even existence. As Leyda notes, “the paucity of research on the term [white trash] is telling: white trash is an epithet whose history is still largely unexamined.” (38) Until recently, not worthy of (sympathy? Understanding?) by society at large, nor serious examination in academia.
Thesis: Although, William Faulkner undoubtedly treats certain characters in As I Lay Dying with sympathy and dignity ultimately, As I Lay Dying reinforces stereotypes of the poor, white, working classes, a direct result of a class viewed through Faulkner’s upper class lens. The result is a complex, but ultimately stereotypical view of poor, white, working class Southerners.
Portrayals of the working classes were not abundant in literature at the time AILD was released. As Portia Williams Weiskel writes: “Leftist critics of the 1930s appreciated Faulkner’s detailed rendering of the economic struggles of luckless people” (45).
It is clear that Faulkner imbues Darl and Dewey Dell with a rich, poetic voice.
For instance, burdened by an unwanted pregnancy and heavy with grief after the death of Addie, Dewey Dell emotes “I feel wild like a wet seed in the hot, blind earth (AILD, 64, Dewey). There is an undeniable poetry to Dewey Dell’s thought and Darl’s as well, who narrates: “The sun, an hour above the horizon, is poised like a bloody egg upon a crest of thunderheads; the light has turned copper: in the eye portentous, in the nose sulphurous, smelling of lightning.” (AILD, 40, Darl). Although less surprising coming from the articulate Darl, Dewey’s occasional poeticism portrays a depth and richness of thought that, although perhaps obscured by a lack of education in other passages, entreats the reader to acknowledge that she has no less of a complex or compelling interior life; the poetry of our thoughts, our existence, that lies within every human. Additionally, Faulkner portrays Cash as a skilled carpenter, paying close attention to detail and taking pride in his work. Hardworking and meticulous, Cash defies the stereotypes of poor working class whites as lazy, haphazard and frivolous.
Dewey Dell also strives to avoid another stereotypical fate of “white trash”: young, single and a mother. Faulkner makes it clear that Dewey Dell’s search for an abortion is not simply an impressionable girl obeying the wishes of her reluctant lover. As Joe Kovesdy notes, Dewey Dell is makes an “aggressive effort to terminate her pregnancy” (Kovesdy, 263). A conscious rejection of the oppressive nature of poor, white working class motherhood in the strict class structure of the American South.
Furthermore, as Palmer notes, an example of Faulkner’s sympathy can be found in the role of Addie controlling her family even after death. Palmer asserts that Addie’s wish to be buried amongst her family in Jefferson ultimately functions as an “invisible hand” an allegory of Adam Smith’s capitalism (129), an acknowledgement of “the destabilizing influence of commodity capitalism on the agrarian economy that has dominated the lives of the Bundren’s” and their subsequent plagued journey to Jefferson (129). A journey they are as ill-equipped for as they are for the changing economic landscape of the South, exacerbated by the poverty of the Great Depression to come. Indeed, Faulkner published AILD the day after the infamous stock market crash, with an almost clairvoyant depiction of the brutal poverty to afflict most families mirrored in the lives of the Bundren’s and their difficult journey to Addie’s requested resting place. Although Faulkner at times writes about the poor, working class Bundrens with a degree of honesty and sympathy, his characters and their resulting stories undeniably peddle the pseudo-science of eugenics, which was a popular theory during his lifetime. The poor are naturally imbued with a myriad of defects whether uselessness and selfishness (Anse), ignorance and teenage motherhood (Dewey Dell) and perceived madness (Darl). A middle class woman, such as Addie (a former schoolteacher) who dare marry beneath her is suitably punished for the transgression. In eugenics such families were to be pitied, disgusted by and ultimately eliminated by avoidance and sterilization. In Faulkner, they are presented as a grotesque road show, a family to be simultaneously repulsed and entertained by. A highbrow, literary portrayal of another family like the “Kalliaks” cloaked in the aesthete of modernism for apostles of high literature. As Louis Palmer contends, it is conceivable that Faulkner did not set out to monstrosize(word?) poor whites, and indeed Palmer echoes Weiskel in his assertion that Faulkner gave a “class often invisible not only in literature but also in society a voice” (120). However, as Palmer, highlights the Southern Gothic tradition tends to “start out as a resistant discourse, a “voice” for the white-trash party if you will, but then becomes a mechanism for racial transference, a way of racing, marking and pathologizing the poor, Southern white.” (Palmer 126). Faulkner’s treatment of the Bundren’s is no exception as novels such as AILD betray a bias towards eugenicist theories of white hierarchy (Palmer 126). The hapless Bundrens are not fully shielded by their whiteness as more affluent whites in the South are, the Bundren’s poor, struggling whiteness, their designation as “white trash” by society is a “discounted whiteness”, a “Southern system designed to keep both blacks and the white poor in their place” (Palmer 126). As AILD frequently does, the Bundren’s, despite their efforts find themselves set upon by floods, broken limbs, societal exile, even prayed upon by middle-class forces in the midst of crisis, as Dewey Dell experiences when she is sexually assaulted by a pharmacist assistant who insists he can assist her with obtaining an abortificant, all exacerbated by their own haplessness and their inability, even their inability to communicate with eachother exacerbating their trials, and further complicated by the selfishness of family patriarch Anse, who himself is the ultimate allegory of white trash stereotypes throughout the novel.
As Null notes, in AILD the Bundren’s “genetics justifies their degradation” (Null, 18), they are portrayed, and remain “a family incapable of functioning rationally in society” (N 18).
Anse is the most obvious stereotype of “white trash” in AILD. He spends the money and uses the resources of others often with little regard or consultation, whether it be Dewey Dell’s abortion money on his false teeth (that are required due to lack of care for his own) or selling Jewel’s horse to move forward on their journey, all the while focusing on himself in a selfish manner with little responsibility paid to the effects of his actions on those around him. Anse even prolongs calling a doctor to check on Addie until it is too late due to his cheapness, neglects medical help for Cash whilst jury rigging a cement plaster in an act of mind boggling ineptitude. The lack of planning, financial stability and even basic common sense are all portrayed as the result of Anse’s personal defects: he portrayed as a man of much laziness and carelessness, bringing hardship upon himself and others, a mirror of the middle and upper class views that often blame the poor for their travails in life. “Anse is figured by Faulkner’s text as lazy, dishonest, self-righteous, duplicitious trash.” (Leyda, 40). The “implication is that ANse is greedy because he is poor, poor because he is lazy, lazy because he lacks ambition” (Leyda, 42) Leyda notes that characters refer to a “fellow like Anse” (43) who “Faulkner marks Anse as a parasitical figure who deserves his social situation” (Null, 15). Faulkner further describes Anse’s physical form by comparing Anse to “a figure carved clumsily from tough wood by a drunken cartoonist” (Null 16, AILD 163). In Faulkner’s words, cutting a grotesque figure, Anse could be mistaken for a member of the infamous eugenist study of the Kalliaks,(repetition?) all without acknowledging that traditional beauty is a luxury stemming from the sort of self care that a poor, working class person such as Anse, with “only one tooth in [his] head” (AILD, pg #?) could hardly be expected to afford.
Although it can be argued that Anse is adept at soliciting the charity of others, it is only through “making others feel guilt and shame” (Weiskel, 45). Dewey Dell, though trying to secure an abortion, is ultimately resigned to a stereotypical “white trash” fate of the unwed, young mother after Anse steals her abortion money. Even articulate, poetic Darl finds himself ultimately confined to a mental institution after burning a generous family’s barn, but perhaps moreso for being too privy to his family’s secrets. Faulkner gives Darl a final monologue, complete with stereotypes of the mentally ill such as “foaming at the mouth” (N, 18), repitition, talking in the third person (N18, F 254). Weiskel contends that Darl’s “detached, incongruous laughter suggests schizophrenia (44)” the Bundren’s descend into farce and stereotype. Darl cannot escape the stereotypes of his class. Even Vardaman seems to be aware of the Bundrens and his social standing: As Leyda states, even Vardaman is aware of his status as ‘less than’ his counterparts in society, in this case, represented by the middle class townsfolk: “Why ain’t I a town boy, pa?” I said, God made me, I did not said to God to made me in the country.” (Leyda, 41, AILD pg 100)
Not only are the poor viewed through the upper class lens of Faulkner, as Palmer points out, Addie, a “former middle class schoolteacher” (130) who has “married beneath her” to Anse (130), serves as “another mediator between the reader and the Bundrens” (130). “She gives these ‘no count’ people-people who literally don’t count-the will and motivation they need to return her to her own class position her “own people” back in Jefferson” rather than an eternal resting next to the inferior class position of “Anse’s country kin” and their rural graves (130).
The eugenist strain continues as Palmer theorizes that Addie’s “falling across class boundaries” results in pathology, an “obesession to escape, even in death” (131) from her life as a Bundren, the lingering, self-chosen societal demotion she cannot reconcile with. Indeed, Addie’s favourite son is Jewel, whose father, Reverend Whitfield, is a man closer to her own class. As Cora notes in AILD, Jewel was “the one she laboured so to bear and coddled and petted so and him flinging into tantrums or sulking spells” (AILD pg 22). Jewel’s difficult behaviour and subsequent cold treatment of his mother, although tenderness and deep love undoubtedly lingered beneath, was a particularly difficult and stinging rejection for Addie.