Addie has all the characteristics of an excessively terrible
person. She likes beating children: “I would look forward to the times when
they faulted, so I could whip them” (170). She cheated on her husband. She even hates
spring (every sane person’s favorite season and you can fight me on that); she
goes down to a stream after school “especially in the early spring, for it was
the worst then” (169).
And yet I found her one of the most sympathetic characters
in the book? So how could such a terrible person be sympathetic? Well for one
thing, a lot of the terrible things she does have some sort of justification.
Addie hates her job and the children she has to work with
but as a single woman without any family to support her, she has to work and
she wouldn’t really have any options besides teaching. There’s no excuse for
beating kids but at least it doesn’t just bring her joy because she’s a sadist,
it brings her joy because she is able to hurt the people she associates with
the cause of her terrible life.
Addie also hates her husband. She marries him not because
she loves him but because she wants to stop teaching. When she has her second
child, she’s really angry at him: “Then I found that I had Darl. At first I
would not believe it. Then I believed that I would kill Anse” (172). So it makes
some sense that Addie would try to do something to stop the pain her marriage
is causing her. If she actually left Anse, she wouldn’t have any way to support
herself, she could be a pariah, and she doesn’t really have anywhere else to
go. So having an affair makes sense.
Addie’s hatred of spring also isn’t just the result of a
terrible temperament – she has her reasons. She explains why spring is
difficult for her: “In early spring it was worst. Sometimes I thought that I
could not bear it, lying in bed at night with the wild geese going north and
their honking coming faint and high and wild out of the wild darkness” (170). Part
of the reason everyone should love spring is that it’s a time of new
beginnings. As all the plants are coming up it feels like anything is possible.
But Addie is still stuck in the teacher job she hates while geese get to
experience the wild and migrate to exciting new places. All the rest of nature
gets to start in on a new cycle of life full of possibilities while Addie has
no options for changing her life. It makes sense that Addie is jealous of the
world during the spring.
There’s motivation behind Addie’s hatred but I think what
makes me actively like her instead of just understand where she’s coming from
is her anger. Addie is stuck in a terrible life with no options of leaving and
no resources to change the environment she’s stuck in. But even though her
situation is hopeless, she’s still angry and still trying to direct her anger
at the things that make her miserable. What she does with her anger might not
help her and might hurt other people but I think it’s commendable that she’s
still trying to rail against the system that confines her. I’ve read a lot of
books depicting women who are passive or sad or manipulative or completely on
top of everything but it’s pretty rare to read about a woman who is straight up
enraged.
I always had trouble with Addie when as the book progressed. On the one hand she is an awful person who hates everyone, but on the other hand she made the mistake of marrying Anse and from there her whole life was out of her hands. It's not like she can do anything. I want to sympathize with her, I do, but I think what makes me really dislike her is her death. I mean not that she died, although I'm still wondering how her death came about. No, I look back to the scene where she dies as alone as she can. I think she waited until her sons were gone on the trip so that she could die without having to face them. She doesn't look Anse in the eyes, and that's easy enough to do, but if her sons were in the room with her that would be hard to deal with. But she waits to die holding on to her secret disconnected from her family. Maybe I'm reading to deep into it.
ReplyDeleteI see Addie as perpetrating a cycle of... not abuse, more like ill feelings in general. She's been put into this really tough position where society basically gives her no options because of her gender. But she doesn't occupy the position of a feminist hero because she's so evil (all of your examples from the first paragraph support this claim). I think that this juxtaposition makes her a tragic feminist character, because it portrays her as a woman whose personality, desires, and problems transcend female stereotypes, but doesn't give her a fundamentally good personality or a character arc of heroism/redemption.
ReplyDeleteAddie certainly isn't a hero, given that all of her actions directly or indirectly geniunely hurt people, but she does have a very distinctive personality. I wasn't expecting Addie to start narrating, and as soon as she did, the tone of the book flipped yet again. She's absolutely not the character that Anse or Tull paints her, and it's another way Faulkner throws the reader off balance with false descriptions of people. I don't know how sympathetic I find her - I get why she did everything she did, but I think I would feel better about it if her actions had actually hurt Anse, instead everyone else got caught in the blast and Anse got off scot-free. That made her revenge weaker to me, and the irony weakened my sympathy for her.
ReplyDeleteIt was definitely shocking for me when I read Addie’s passage – everyone had talked about her so much, she had been such a focus up to that point, and I was expecting something totally different. Motherly, feminine, kind, basically the image of a “Southern hospitality” woman. Maybe the fact that the children seemed all shades of screwed up should have tipped me off to the fact that maybe she might not be great, but still, throughout the beginning of the novel, seeing how terrible Anse was made me really feel bad for her. After reading her sections, and getting to know her better both from her own perspective and the perspective of others, my feelings towards her are certainly complicated. Like every character in this novel, there is a lot to dislike, but also a lot to pity.
ReplyDeleteI wholeheartedly agree with this interpretation of Addie. So much of her had been a product of her environment, and although sympathetic, I don't think it can lead to liking her. And I think Darl represents this the strongest. He is driven practically insane from Addies death. And I don't think its because he liked her either. And I think thats represented in a few scenes, primarily his hatred for Jewel. He knows Jewel to be the product of Addie's affair, which he finds more and more irritating solely because of the journey progression and the obstacles they encounters. He sees Anses diehard devotion to Addies wishes as he is willing to sacrifice not only the money he saves for his teeth, but also to sell out his sons. He sees both Jewels active separation from the family, but also his defensiveness towards Addie, even though he is the reason why Addie and the rest of the family had become torn. But also lastly, I think that Darl feels some personal hurt as, most likely, Addie had focused most of her ill will towards Darl, as he was the unwanted child, and that she wasn't able to live out until he could get his revenge.
ReplyDeleteI'm personally not a big fan of Addie. I can definitely understand the poor circumstances that she's in, but if you go to work looking forward to spanking some poor kid's backside that's a no from me. In our section, I think Solo said that "Addie and Anse are perfect for each other, in the worst possible way", and I think I can definitely agree with each other. They're both just bad people, and the story of their marriage has so much betrayal it's kind of disheartening to read.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. Faulkner does a great job of making the protagonists (Anse and Addie, kinda?) morally questionable.
ReplyDelete