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Literature
The quotations from William Faulkner'sAs I Lay Dying, will be designated by the lettersDYfollowed by the page number of the quotation. The edition used throughout was: Faulkner, William.As I Lay Dying. New York: Vintage Books, 1957. The quotations from Jean-Paul Sartre'sLe Mur will be designated by the lettersMU followed by the page number of the quotation. The edition used throughout was: Sartre, Jean-Paul.Le Mur. Paris: Gallimard, 1939. The quotations from Virginia Woolf'sMrs. Dalloway will be designated by the lettersMD followed by the page number of the quotation. The edition used throughout was: Woolf, Virginia.Mrs. Dalloway. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1925.
Joseph Blotner and Frederick Gwynn, eds.,Faulkner in the University. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1959), p. 113.
In her diary, Virginia Woolf reveals her goal in presenting different perceptual levels for Septimus than for the other characters. “Mrs. Dalloway has branched into a book; and I adumbrate here a study of insanity and suicide; the world seen by the sane and the insane side by side — something like that”.
See Virginia Woolf,A Writer's Diary (London: The Hogarth Press, 1953), p. 52 (entry October 14, 1922).
—Blotner,op. cit.,, p. 110.
Like Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner also carefully planned the perceptions Darl makes. He is of the opinion: “That maybe the madman does see more than the sane man. That the world is more moving to him. That he is more perceptive. He has something of clairvoyance, maybe, a capacity for telepathy”. —See Blotner,op. cit.,, p. 113.
Dorothy Brewster writes that Septimus's suicide is a defiance of the evil represented by Sir William Bradshaw, the psychiatrist. Through his death Septimus has preserved something that Clarissa has lost, perhaps truth and honesty. Dorothy Brewster,Virginia Woolf (New York: New York University Press, 1962), pp. 110–11.
Victor Brombert, “Sartre and the Existentialist Novel: The Intellectual as Impossible Hero”,The Intellectual Hero: Studies in the French Novel, 1880–1955 (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1961), p. 194.
Cleanth Brooks, however, thinks that Darl was basically incapable on any feeling. “But Darl's truth is corrosive and antiheroic, and in its logic perhaps finally inhuman. Does he really grieve for his mother at all? It would be hard to say. In a sense, he knows too much about her and too much about the absurdity of reality to have any emotional commitment”. Cleanth Brooks,William Faulkner: The Yoknapatawpha County. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963), p. 145.
John Simon writes that “for Darl, the pain of comedy is masochistic. His laugh is our laugh, but the world it is directed against includes that part of himself which is now objectified, and its resonance is endless”. John K. Simon, “What Are You Laughing At, Darl?”College English,25, 104–10, p. 109.
Although many critics view the Bundren odyssey as an absurd journey, some writers have voiced other opinions. For an interesting alternate interpretation of the novel which regards the pilgrimmage of the Bundrens as a heroic action — “an overwhelming ethical and moral demand” — “persistence in spite of all obstacles” — see Mary Cooper Robb,William Faulkner: An Estimate of his Contribution to the American Novel (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1957.) Another writer also considers their journey as a “heroic legend” — “this progress is not unlike that of the medieval soul toward redemption” — see the essay by George Marion O'Donnell, “Faulkner's Mythology” in Robert Penn Warren, ed.,Faulkner: A Collection of Critical Essays, Twentieth Century Views (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966), 23–33, pp. 27, 32. In an interview, Faulkner has commented on this question: “If there is a villain in that story it's the convention in which people have to live, in which in that case insisted that because this woman had said, I want to be buried twenty miles away, that people would go to any trouble and anguish to get her there. The simplest thing would have been to bury her where she was in any pleasant place.”. Joseph Blotner, ed.,Faulkner In the University, op. cit., Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1959), p. 112.
For a more complete and detailed discussion of this idea of the double inMrs. Dalloway, see Alex Page, “A Dangerous Day: Mrs. Dalloway Discovers Her Double”,Modern Fiction Studies, 7 (Summer, 1961), pp. 115–24.
William Rossky, “As I Lay Dying: The Insane World”,Texas Studies in Language and Literature, 4 (Spring, 1962), p. 35.
Although this is not an influence study, the question of literary borrowing does arise. The writers discussed are major authors who were well acquainted with the writing of their time. Faulkner was extremely popular in France. Sartre was known to Faulkner and both were very aware of Mrs. Woolf's experiments with the novel. Many studies have been done in this area. The following is a beginning reading. Percy G. Adams, “The Franco-American Faulkner”,Tennessee Studies in Literature, 5 (1960), pp. 1–13. Jean V. Alter, “Faulkner, Sartre and the nouveau roman”,Symposium, 20 (Summer, 1966), pp. 101–12. Jean-Paul Sartre, “William Faulkner'sSartoris;” “On The Sound and the Fury: Time in the Work of Faulkner”, inLiterary and Philosophical Essays (New York: Collier Books, 1955), pp. 78–93. John K. Simon, “Faulkner and Sartre: Metamorphosis and the Obscene”,Comparative Literature, 15 (Summer, 1963), pp. 216–225.
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Brumm, AM. The world as madhouse: Motifs of absurdity in Virginia Woolf'sMrs. Dalloway, William Faulkner'sAs I Lay Dying, and Jean-Paul Sartre'sLe Mur . Neohelicon 4, 295–330 (1976). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02029236
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02029236