LITERATURE: The Reivers – Fiction as a Time Capsule

Posted on January 17, 2009 by susan

Faulkner wrote this novel, his last, in 1961–it was published in 1962, the year that he died at age 65. The story takes place in the present, that is, around the 60s when one considers that the narrator is in the present, telling a story that happened to him back fifty years ago, or around 1905. Faulkner's own life span corresponds somewhat to the time frame, his being around the same age as the narrator as a child. What makes this interesting then, is adding in the time factor of the era in which it is being read, for example, my reading of it in the year 2009.

So much had changed in the American South between 1905 and 1960 and particularly in the areas of race and gender rights and struggles on which Faulkner focuses. I have been through Georgia on a road trip back in '61; though I was only a kid myself I do remember the separate public bathrooms for blacks and whites. Here, nearly a half century later things have changed so very much again, striving for a balance and equality of spirit that transcends the legal letter of the law that was itself so ponderously slow in coming.

How different do we read a book then, a story that encapsulates a time period of which we have little knowledge except from slanted history texts, if not through those who've been there, who write the feeling rather than the flatness of the time?

And meanwhiles, stop fretting about that gal, now you done said your say to Boon Hoggenbeck. Hitting a woman don't hurt her because a woman don't shove back at a lick like a man do; she just gives to it and then when your back is turned, reaches for the flatiron or the butcher knife. That's why hitting them don't break nothing; all it does is just black her eye or cut her mouf a little. And that ain't nothing to a woman. Because why? Because what better sign than a black eye or a cut mouf can a woman want from a man that he got her on his mind?"  (p. 263)

Then again, I guess some things take longer to change.

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