Changes in the Southern society

One of the topics of this unit that has caught my attention the most is how difficult is for the Southeners to adapt themselves to the changes of the society after the Civil War. 

Slavery had a crucial role in shaping the antebellum South society. This society was characterized by being stratified. The landowners with the biggest plantations and most slaves and the aristocrats were considered to be at the top of the society, whereas the slaves were at the very bottom. Besides, this was a patriarchal system, in which males were the primary authority figure in the social organization. They had a strong influence regarding politics, the control of property and in the families, in which the father hold authority over women and children. Even though women were clearly subordinated by men, they were idealized. Here it comes the idea of the Southern belle. 

Nevertheless, after Civil War, this structure is broken, changes are coming and in a way Southeners try to hold on a system that no longer works and William Faulkner portraits perfectly how the people reject these changes. 

I am going to focus my attention mainly in A Rose for Emily and Dry September.

In A Rose for Emily, we can see the main character Emily, an aristocrat woman, being idolized by the people, even though she has a unusual behavior. She has feelings of superiority and the other people were raised to look at her in that way. The changes in society are represented in the story when the sidewalk outside Emily's house is being paving, which from my point of view is a sign of modernity. Along with this, she meets Homer Barron, a man with whom she starts to have a sort of relationship. By doing this, Emily is trying to free herself from her father's past control and the tradition of being a proper lady. However, in this attemp to change because the society itself is changing, Emily fails, and this can be seen when she murders Homer and keeps his dead body in a locked room. In my view, this is a clear sign that in the end Emily refuses to change.

As for Dry September, this is a story of a rumor that Will Mayes, a black man, supposedly raped a white woman, Miss Minnie Cooper. What is interesting about this tale is basically that Mayes and Minnie Cooper are judged by the society based on irrational prejudices. In the case of Mayes, he is accused of having committed a crime even though there is no evidence about it, but just because he is a black man, most of the people believe that he is guilty and therefore, he is presumably murdered by a group of men just because of feelings of racism. Here we can see that the only one who leaves this prejudice behind is Hawkshaw. As for Minnie Cooper, some people believe her story just because she is a woman, and a white woman's word has to be acted upon as a truth, being this a traditional code of honor from the antebellum South society. While others do not believe her story because she is an old unmarried woman who is unreliable due to her lack of sexual experience, and has made up this crime just for attention. 

All in all, what I like the most about William Faulkner is his way of representing the Southern society after the Civil War and how difficult was for them to face the changes and try to get used to them, but telling the story using different techniques such as some features of the Southern Gothic, exaggeration, and so on.