[books 2010] The Unvanquished
Jul. 3rd, 2010 12:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
inulro43. The Unvanquished by William Faulkner
This is by far the easiest to read of his works that I've encountered so far. The prose is still lyrical and wonderful, though. It's a historical novel, set in and just after the Civil War and follows the adventures of Bayard Sartoris, son of a major planter in the area, and his slave Ringo, who are 12 when the story starts. There are seven chapters, and all except the last were published as short stories in The Saturday Evening Post.
Even though you can see the tragedy coming a mile off, the middle two chapters are hilarious. Bayard's Granny and Ringo have a scam forging letters from Federal generals requisitioning mules and sell them back to different units. They are undone by a rogue Confederate unit, and indeed Faulkner is much more scathing about the lawlessness in the South after the Union army leaves than he is about the damage done in the actual war.
Having recently read Within the Plantation Household and They Fought Like Demons, I picked up on a lot of things I probably wouldn't have noticed otherwise.
Most notable is the relationship between Bayard and Ringo. They have grown up and done practically everything together, and John Sartoris (Bayard's father) treats them both with affection. This leads me to read it that, even though Ringo's father is named as Loosh, Sartoris is in fact Ringo's father. I don't know enough about attitudes in the '30s, and Faulkner, to know if this is how it's supposed to be read.
Then there's the cognitive dissonance between the slaves and Sartorises having real affection and respect for each other, yet being owner and property. Again, I'm not sure if Faulkner meant to make this explicit (though there is a line about both parties being adrift after Emancipation because the obligations that ran both ways are no longer there).
When the towns and houses are burned by the invading army and everyone moves into the woods & hills, the story has a real frontier feel to it. It's obvious if you look at a map, but one thing I learned from Within the Plantation Household is that while the societies of the coastal states such as Georgia and the Carolinas were old and well established when the war broke out, the plantation economy in states such as Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee was really only getting started at the time. This is really well illustrated in The Uvanquished - indeed, we find out in the last chapter that John Sartoris moved from an established plantation in the Carolinas to Mississippi, so the estate is very much first-generatio.
There's also a woman (Bayard's cousin) who goes off to fight with the Confederate army. Her mother disapproves, to the point of making her marry the head of her unit after the war because no amount of denial on both sides will convince her that her daughter didn't go out there to have sex rather than fight the enemy. This accords with the thesis of They Fought Like Demons, that the historical record says that at the time women who fought were largely approved of, but by the time Faulkner was writing, attitudes had changed and women soldiers were seen as little better than prostitutes. Interestingly, though, young Bayard (and by extension Faulkner) admires Drusilla immensely, so he's doing something really complicated here.
So, in short, I absolutely loved it. I think I would have enjoyed it greatly even if I hadn't been reading about the Civil War and plantation society recently, but that reading brought an awful lot to the table that I wouldn't have otherwise noticed.
June reading stats
Books read: 8
Non-fiction: 2 (counting the Sebastian Horsley autobiography, which is pushing it a bit)
Library books: 6
Books purchased: 3.
Eep! So I read a lot, but the to-read pile is even bigger.
This is by far the easiest to read of his works that I've encountered so far. The prose is still lyrical and wonderful, though. It's a historical novel, set in and just after the Civil War and follows the adventures of Bayard Sartoris, son of a major planter in the area, and his slave Ringo, who are 12 when the story starts. There are seven chapters, and all except the last were published as short stories in The Saturday Evening Post.
Even though you can see the tragedy coming a mile off, the middle two chapters are hilarious. Bayard's Granny and Ringo have a scam forging letters from Federal generals requisitioning mules and sell them back to different units. They are undone by a rogue Confederate unit, and indeed Faulkner is much more scathing about the lawlessness in the South after the Union army leaves than he is about the damage done in the actual war.
Having recently read Within the Plantation Household and They Fought Like Demons, I picked up on a lot of things I probably wouldn't have noticed otherwise.
Most notable is the relationship between Bayard and Ringo. They have grown up and done practically everything together, and John Sartoris (Bayard's father) treats them both with affection. This leads me to read it that, even though Ringo's father is named as Loosh, Sartoris is in fact Ringo's father. I don't know enough about attitudes in the '30s, and Faulkner, to know if this is how it's supposed to be read.
Then there's the cognitive dissonance between the slaves and Sartorises having real affection and respect for each other, yet being owner and property. Again, I'm not sure if Faulkner meant to make this explicit (though there is a line about both parties being adrift after Emancipation because the obligations that ran both ways are no longer there).
When the towns and houses are burned by the invading army and everyone moves into the woods & hills, the story has a real frontier feel to it. It's obvious if you look at a map, but one thing I learned from Within the Plantation Household is that while the societies of the coastal states such as Georgia and the Carolinas were old and well established when the war broke out, the plantation economy in states such as Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee was really only getting started at the time. This is really well illustrated in The Uvanquished - indeed, we find out in the last chapter that John Sartoris moved from an established plantation in the Carolinas to Mississippi, so the estate is very much first-generatio.
There's also a woman (Bayard's cousin) who goes off to fight with the Confederate army. Her mother disapproves, to the point of making her marry the head of her unit after the war because no amount of denial on both sides will convince her that her daughter didn't go out there to have sex rather than fight the enemy. This accords with the thesis of They Fought Like Demons, that the historical record says that at the time women who fought were largely approved of, but by the time Faulkner was writing, attitudes had changed and women soldiers were seen as little better than prostitutes. Interestingly, though, young Bayard (and by extension Faulkner) admires Drusilla immensely, so he's doing something really complicated here.
So, in short, I absolutely loved it. I think I would have enjoyed it greatly even if I hadn't been reading about the Civil War and plantation society recently, but that reading brought an awful lot to the table that I wouldn't have otherwise noticed.
June reading stats
Books read: 8
Non-fiction: 2 (counting the Sebastian Horsley autobiography, which is pushing it a bit)
Library books: 6
Books purchased: 3.
Eep! So I read a lot, but the to-read pile is even bigger.
