Dionysus in Literature: Essays on Literary Madness

Faulkner and the Furies

Faulkner and the Furies Kenneth L. Golden In many works, Faulkner-whether by design or inadvertently -seems to take a particularly Greek view of madness. To be insane or demoniacal is, for whatever reason, to disobey the Delphic admonition-"Nothing in excess." Again and again, major characters show something very close to what the Greeks called "hubris." A person puts an extreme emphasis on something-an idea, an ideal, or a part of himself-frequently in such a way that this emphasis causes a dangerous repression of a part of life or of his own psyche which is quite necessary for a healthy psychology. In the case of the character in which the problem is extreme, the Furies punish him, sometimes in the form of total disfunction (as in a despair leading to suicide), sometimes indirectly in what happens to him at the hands of others because of his imbalanced attitude. This definition of madness based on Greek myth is ignored in the criticism. It is never mentioned in the Joseph Blotner biography. Yet it has significant parallels in the work of twentiethcentury psychologists e.G. Jung (1875-1961) and Rollo May (1909- ). Many of Faulkner's characters become so obsessed with some idea or attitude (frequently relating to Southern aristocratic ideals or to the past) that they become neurotic, and some become psychotic to the point of total disfunction because of their attachments to the past or to some ideal in one way or another. Gail Hightower in Light in August, has clearly crippled his social and psychological life by such a fixation. His fanatical volubility concerning the Civil War, especially his grandfather's part in it, has alienated him from the community and from his wife; indeed, it has perhaps been a factor in his wife's suicide. Hightower's problem, though a serious imbalance, must be termed a neurosis and not true insanity, since it does not drive him to a point of total and final disfunction. In fact, at the end of the novel, partly through the agency of his friend Byron Bunch, he has been so drawn back into the lives of others that his attitude becomes relatively objective and essentially 183 184 Dionysus in Literature healthy. Indeed, near the end of the novel, Hightower has something like a religious vision reconciling him to the dilemmas of his experience (465-67). Yet Joanna Burden, another character in Light in August, has problems that fall in the more extreme category. Miss Burden, by the way, is not a Southerner, though she has lived in Mississippi much of her life. She comes from a family of New England abolitionists who instilled her with a fear of her own sexuality and with a missionary zeal to help the Negro as one would a class of people cursed by God (234 ff, 239-40). Her affair with Joe Christmas, a man clearly off balance himself and harried to the extreme by the question as to which race he belongs-represents a swing of the pendulum in the direction of her own femininity. Yet the compensatory swing has been too sudden, too extreme. The affair ends when the other side, the one for so long emphasizedthe masculinized fundamentalism of her rearing-causes her to start praying over him (265). This motherly and religious attitude she develops toward him along with her own murderous-suicidal urges when she discovers she is pregnant goad her erstwhile lover into killing her (251-52, 263, 267-70). Quentin Compson, in The Sound and the Fury, is obsessed to the point of extreme psychological imbalance by the ideal of past Southern nobility and respectability, especially as regards his own formerly aristocratic Compson family. This ideal is one of masculine control and, to some extent, of repression, certainly suppression. His final despair leading to suicide is brought on particularly by the realization of the sexual profligacy of his sister Candace as sign of the degeneration of the masculine-aristocratic, "Southern" ideal (9798 , 127-29 ff). Thomas Sutpen, in Absalom, Absalom!, is clearly possessed to the point of madness by the masculine desire to carry out what he calls a "design" (263), a quest for an old style Southern dynasty characterized by wealth and social standing. Sutpen's case is perhaps the best example for illustrating the complexity and depth of the Greek pattern of psychological imbalance appearing typically in Faulkner characters. In the process of acting out his schemes, he becomes clearly excessive, like the Greek...