Benjy is confused; Quentin is depressed; Jason is angry; and Dilsey has to deal with all their problems. Faulkner’s final chapter focuses primarily on Dilsey’s role in the home, and how she interacts with the family. His shift to the third-person narrative is no surprise – if Faulkner were to give Dilsey a voice and allow the reader to follow her stream of consciousness, it would disrupt the social hierarchy that he thematizes in his analysis of southern living. As such, Dilsey is quoted often in this section and the third-person narrator is sympathetic to her plight.

Last week we discussed Faulkner’s thematic interest in the concept of failure, specifically addressing how each narrator fails to tell the story (or successfully portray the image of the girl with the muddy bottom in narrative form) in his respective section. It occurred to me as I read the would-be Dilsey chapter that she doesn’t actually have a chance to fail at telling this story, yet she does have a section devoted to her point of view. For instance, we may not be privy to Dilsey’s specific thoughts when she makes the great traverse up the stairs to tend to Mrs. Compson’s needs, but the narrator’s description of Dilsey’s Sisyphean struggle certainly provides insight as to what she may be thinking after “she began to mount the stairs, toiling heavily” only to find out there was no reason for her efforts: “Dilsey said nothing. She turned slowly and descended, lowering her body from step to step, as a small child does, her hand against the wall” (271-272). Even without access to Dilsey’s thoughts, the reader senses her struggle and in this case Dilsey’s silence reveals much more about her character and her relationship with Mrs. Compson than words might have.

Dilsey’s silence replaces Benjy’s moaning, Quentin’s talking to himself, and Jason’s yelling at everyone. Her character avoids those types of flaws by simply keeping her mouth shut, and upholds her duty in the Compson household using the same technique when it comes to Mrs. Compson. In her silence, Faulkner places Dilsey beyond failure in this novel, and Jason crudely points out that failing is a white man’s problem when he thinks back on an angry conversation he has with Dilsey, stating: “You’re a nigger. You’re lucky, do you know it? I’ll swap with you any day because it takes a white man not to have anymore sense than to worry about what a little slut of a girl does” (243). Jason feigns envy here for the lack of pressure on African Americans in the South at that time, choosing not to acknowledge the lack of rights and tiring work Dilsey was assigned as a black female in the south. At that moment he can only think of his personal failure to reclaim his family’s good name and wealth that was lost to his father’s alcoholism, Quentin’s suicide, and Caddy’s fornication.

So Dilsey cannot fail, but Jason’s ironic statement illuminates the fact that failure is actually a privilege of sorts. As a white man with a voice and the potential to succeed, it is Jason’s right to fail. Dilsey is the only prominent character in the novel that upholds her responsibilities and maintains her unjust social role as “mammy” of the Compson household through her silence. Dilsey talks back to Jason on occasion, and voices her opinion among her children and Benjy, but when it comes to Mrs. Compson, “Dilsey [says] nothing” (272). Because Dilsey’s role is so undesirable, I believe that “success” is too strong a word for her character. If failure is impossible, success must be impossible as well; one who has nothing to lose loses nothing.

Through Dilsey’s character, Faulkner demonstrates that even failure is a privilege that is not granted to all. While no one wants to fail, the very act of failing is a right to protect because where there is failure there is the potential for success. Faulkner’s own life is a great testament to this concept, as his “failure” of a novel, The Sound and the Fury, actually turned into his most  celebrated success.