There Was a Queen

Faulker's short story about the decline of a southern Sartoris family is interesting for several reasons. Faulkner goes to good lengths to describe how the Sartoris house came to be full of women and two male children. As a result, the story's only characters of substance are women. Furthermore, the women have a good amount of voice in the story, as opposed to simply being puppets of a third person narrator. The story is third person, however, the narrator does not take extraordinary license when telling the reader what the women think. The narrator allows for much of the womens thoughts to be shared by the women themselves as opposed to constantly saying, "Elnora thought X or Miss Jenny's mind told her Y". The family's decline could certainly have been told from the male perspective and had all the female characters be the ones who had died or gone to jail. Choosing this point of view could stem from a sense of Faulkner perhaps wanting to make women heard in a way. His biography stated that he was committed to changing or at least addressing the racism in America. Thus, it is possible that he felt at least somewhat sympathetic to women's place in society.

In going along with this idea, it is also worth noting that Faulkner gives Elnora, a half black woman, alot to say in the story. Elnora speaks her mind to Miss Jenny when she tells her flat out that Narcissa "wont never be a Sartoris woman". This is a little striking to hear from Elnora because of her place in the household. This statement makes it seem like Elnora has a strong belief in what is means to be a Sartoris and that she takes it seriously. It is a little shocking to say the least that she would care about such a thing because it does not seem like she serves any other function in the household other than a maid/cook. She seems to think her opinion will be valued by Miss Jenny but it clearly is not as Miss Jenny tells her not to say things like that. Elnora also seems to almost contradict her previous satement when she answers Miss Jenny's question about whether or not she thinks Bory missed Narcissa while she was gone. She replies, "Aint no Sartoris man never missed nobody". She could have simply said no, but she made it a point to reference again what it means to be a Sartoris. In this case, it is not a good criticism she is making and subsequently not a reason to be proud of being a Sartoris. Thus, why she would put down Narcissa for not being much of a Sartoris and then essentially put down Bory for being a typical Sartoris is slightly perplexing.

William Carlos Williams

In "Portrait of a Lady", William Carlos Wililiams presents what at first seems to be a a poem seeking to describe an unidentified woman. However, by the third line Williams has made it clear the poem takes the form of a conversation of sorts. By not having any information that precedes the start of the poem, the most likely identity of the other person in the conversation is indeed the woman Williams seeks to describe. Although, Mordecai Marcus makes a good point that it could very well be an imaginary conversation taking place in the head of the author. Were this the case, the slightly stream of conciousness feel that the poem has would make more sense. I say that it has a stream of conciousness feel because right after Williams answers the first question of, "Which sky?", he goes off on an random tangent that brings into the character of the painter Fragonard. Also, when the woman (either real or imagined) asks, "Which shore?", Williams replies, "the sand clings to my lips" and when pressed again for his answer, "Agh, petals maybe. How should I know?" These statements taken together do suggest the author to be writing in a slight stream of concious manner and could serve as further evidence that the conversation is taking place in the author's head as opposed to real life.

Also worth noting about the poem, is the fact that the woman even presses for the specific sky and shore which the author say describe her. Had the author directly compared her to a painging for example, it would make sense to ask which painting they meant. However, the fact that the author has these be the types of questions asked could point to his own attention to detail or his own need for specificity, even though his ability to answer the questions is not quite perfect.