Home In William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying

Sophia Garcia
McDonald
Comp 2 P 12
March 6, 2017
Essay 2 “How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.” In this quote, William Faulkner references his longing for the familiar comforts of his own home in his novel As I Lay Dying. To Faulkner, a home represents more than just a space or a private sanctuary. It represents stability, memories, security, and happiness. Home portrays multiple meanings to many people. For Charlotte Perkins Gillman, home represents happiness as well but happiness achieved through action. She refers to happiness as an attainable attribute one may work towards. “To attain happiness in another world, we need only to believe something, while to secure it in this world we must
do something.” For home to have meaning, it must represent what we hold dear. Faulkner and Gillman see home as an attainable comfort, a happiness of sorts, but they also see it as something out of reach at certain times in life, something which must be earned and appreciated in its absence. “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “A Rose for Emily” contain characters who do not understand what the world expects of them, but they cope with their situations in unique ways, ways that work for them.
First, Gillman describes her home in “The Yellow Wallpaper” as “A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reaching the height of romantic felicity” (Gilman 434). Jane and her husband rent a house for a short period of time. She states “It was the most beautiful place! It is quite alone, standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village” (Gilman 434). In the story, Jane references her house keeper who tends to her and
Garcia 2 takes care of the baby she has so readily abandoned. Although Jane’s illness keeps her from a sound state of mind, her husband hopes for her to get well for herself and their child. He remains adamant about not leaving Jane alone, afraid of what her illness may lead to.
While at home, Jane meditates on the new house.
The room she stays in, once a nursery, fills with light from the windows that adorn it. Her misery lies in the absence of others and her seclusion in the room with the yellow wallpaper, but as time passes, she becomes more comfortable with her surroundings and finds amazement in the pattern on the wallpaper. She begins to hallucinate and see things that do not exist in reality. The patterns of a woman, or what she thinks is a woman control her mind. The house begins to take over her psyche, over-powering her, and leading her to a state of mind she cannot return from. The place of happiness, comfort, and refuge no longer exists and in its place a terrifying reality takes hold of her mind. The home she works so hard for becomes her worst
nightmare.
Next, In Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily”, Miss Emily’s dark and lonely home hides secrets from a past Miss Emily no longer cares to remember.
Even the townspeople feel sorry for her stating that “The house was all that was left to her” (Faulkner). Her home, once full of life, becomes a dark place of solitude. After Miss Emily’s father passes away, her reclusive lifestyle worries the townspeople, leading to an intervention in order to save Miss Emily from the dark road she steadily retreats towards. When Homer Barron enters Miss Emily’s life, a new attitude of hope fills the once darkened home and new possibilities emerge. However, when Mr. Barron comes up missing, the townspeople simply believe their relationship dissipated, leaving Miss Emily alone once
again.
Garcia 3
Miss Emily’s death brings about horror no one sees coming. Her home, dusty and shadowed, moldy and yellowed, reveals secrets no one ever expects. The scene that awaits the onlooker’s shocks and horrifies its audience. “A thin, acrid pall as of the tomb seemed to lie everywhere upon this room decked and furnished as for a bridal: upon the valance curtains of faded rose color, upon the rose-shaded lights, upon the dressing table, upon the delicate array of crystal and the man’s toilet things backed with tarnished silver, silver so tarnished that the monogram was obscured. Among them lay a collar and tie, as if they had just been removed, which, lifted, left upon the surface a pale crescent in the dust. Upon a chair hung the suit, carefully folded, beneath it the two mute shoes and the discard socks” (Faulkner). The skeleton of Mr. Barron haunts the short-lived happy home and adds to the ghostly presence of decay and misery. “The man himself lay in the bed. For a long while we just stood there, looking down at the profound and fleshless grin” (Faulkner). The home Miss Emily found happiness and solitude in, even if for a short time, simply lies in a desolate nightmare for others to witness while its seclusion portrayed comfort and peace for Miss Emily in her final years.
Finally, while each story contains unique qualities, they carry the same theme. Home remains a happy place for those inside whether they are sane or insane. Its comfort simply remains in the heart of those who live inside. Perhaps Jane and Miss Emily contain similarities unknown to the outside world, but inside, they are one in the same. Their longing for happiness in a home engrained with shadows and heartache leads to solace in their own mind. Perhaps the saying “home is where the heart is” contains more truth than suspected.