William Faulkner's The Wishing Tree: Maturity's First Draft

In writing what is ostensibly a children's narrative in The Wishing Tree (c. 1927), William Faulkner was merely following a pattern common to a number of writers of more "serious" literature such as Steinbeck and Barthelme; and in writing for the specific audience of a particular sick little girl, he was simply pursuing an important strand of the same typical pattern. Since its 1964 publication by Random House, however, The Wishing Tree has been readily available to all sorts of readers, large and small, general and critical, and we are hardly surprised to find the prints of its maker all over its surface, and in its substance too: as such writers as Faulkner's leading critic Michael Millgate and his biographer Joseph Blotner have pointed out, there are numerous instances of parallels between the children's book and the eventual series of atiult writings on which the writer's reputation rests. In following the story line of this slender volume (82 pages, including illustrations), I wish not only to suggest that these parallels are greater in number than has been noted previously, but also to speculate about the significance of The Wishing Tree to Faulkner's development as a novelist—the while according the book the respectful attention I think we are agreed literature for children deserves.

The Wishing Tree begins with the description of a little girl awakening on her birthday; she rises into consciousness as a balloon would rise, but there is a second balloon within her on this special morning, trying to rise to the surface and filling her being with excitement:

She was still asleep, but she could feel herself rising up out of sleep, just like a balloon: it was like she was a goldfish in a round bowl of sleep, rising and rising through the warm waters of sleep to the top. And then she would be awake.

And so she was awake, but she didn't open her eyes at once. Instead, she lay quite still and warm in her bed, and it was like there was still another little balloon inside her, getting bigger and bigger and rising and rising. Soon it would be at her mouth, then it would pop out and jump right up against the ceiling. The little balloon inside her got bigger and bigger, making all her body and her arms and legs tingle, as if she had just eaten a piece of peppermint. What can it be? she wondered, keeping her eyes shut tight, trying to remember from yesterday.¹

We may assume that this second "balloon" represents the girl's subconscious self arising, coming to bring her the special gifts of her inner yearnings on this very special day. But nothing this heavily literary looms above the narrative, for the explanation of specialness comes from a living presence: "a strange boy, with a thin ugly face and hair so red that it made a glow in the room" (p. 6). This odd visitation, who reminds her that it is her birthday and informs her that his name is Maurice, has eyes with "queer golden flecks in them, like sparks" (p. 6). It is perhaps less strange that this harbinger of magical events is described as ugly when one remembers that yellow eyes are associated, in such works as The Wild Palms and Soldiers' Pay, with the pagan world of unbridled lust. What is a creature from this world doing in a young girl's bedroom on her birthday—or any other day? It would seem most valid to suggest that Maurice is an emissary from the inner self, an agent of initiation into the world of new and wished-for experiences.

But none of this is meant to coat this fragile narrative with the slime of a grosser Freudianism; in Faulkner's handling of events, young ugly Maurice is merely the resource person for the Dionysian urges of the immature: the afforder of the chance to break some rules, if also avatar (as Faulkner might have termed him) of darker future deeds. Without meaning to distort what is really...