スノープス一族の終息 : The Mansion の世界

The End of the Snopeses : The Mansion

Tanaka Hisao

中・四国アメリカ文学研究

Studies in American Literature

The Mansion (1959) brought to an end "the thirty-four-year progress of this particular chronicle," the story of the Snopeses. This paper is primarily a study of Mink's role in The Mansion, paying attention to Faulkner's intention in his characterization, and a brief exploration of several topics in cluding the nature of Snopesism.

The three sections which comprise this book are arranged to progress toward the subject of the self destruction of the Snopeses. The first section, "Mink," emphasizes both his abject poverty and his singlemindedness in "defending his simple rights," to suggest that his murder of Houston is a step leading to his revenge on his cousin Flem, "a prominent banker and financier," who had ignored "the ancient immutable laws of simple blood kinship." The second section, "Linda," more expanded in time and space than the first, suspends for a time the progress of Mink's story. The section, however, by alluding at times to contemporary international situations such as the Spanish Civil War which affected Linda's life, gives the background of the personal change which leads to her aiding Mink indirectly in his murder of Flem. The final section, "Flem," is an attempt to put into relief the hollowness of Flem's ownership of the mansion, his attempt to acquire a symbol of "respectability and aristocracy." Further, by showing Mink's change in his view of "Old Moster" as well as in his attitude toward Negroes, Flem's section creates a magnified image of Mink, so that his murder of Flem may produce some sense of poetic justice. If Mink appears to become a hero at the end, it is because he proves to be not so much a man with a sense of honor as a man with the will to live out his bad luck, there by showing his piide and integrity as a sentient human being.

The murderer Mink is more culpable in terms of law than Flem, who cheats "only once" in The Town and The Mansion, but the latter is more guilty in that he commits what Hawthorne would call "the Unpardonable Sin" by disregarding "the old verities and truths of the heart" simply for the attainment of his goals. Mink's passion and singlemindedness may be dramatic qualities to enhance a work of art according to Cowley's idea of "the Symbolist precepts." If we sense Faulkner's subtle sympathy with Mink, however, it is not only because Mink's character satisfies Faulkner's artistic vision, but also because of the author's sympathetic view of human nature, which he terms "something stronger in man than a moral condition."

The place to which Mink returns at the end is not the Old Frenchman's Place, as Noel Polk insists, but the house which was once Mink's: he returns to his old rotten house, a good reminder of "the hard savage years of his hard and barren life," instead of the Place, which was the legendary symbol of physical splendor and which Flem once used in seeking a higher social position.

English and American literature [ 930 ]

jpn

中・四国アメリカ文学会

[ISSN] 0388-0176

[NCID] AN00341643