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“She was already beaten”: Drusilla

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I learned from “The Digital Yoknapatawpha Project,” an online Wikipedia-like resource edited by students at University of Virginia that the “Skirmish at Sartoris” chapter was originally titled “Drusilla” by Faulkner. I understand the decision to go with “Skirmish…”, yet I feel that “Drusilla” is a more apt and appropriate title considering how she features prominently, especially towards the end of the narrative.  

I do not know why, but for some reason the unnamed narrator-protagonist in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” comes to mind as I witness Drusilla’s unraveling—via Bayard Sartoris’s myopic narrative scope/vantage point—during the last two chapters of The Unvanquished. Could the association have been made when there is mention of the “yellow” boards of Granny’s coffin? Or Drusilla’s dreaded “yellow” ball gown? Or is it because of the recurring use of repurposed window shades and wall paper? Is it entirely coincidental that both Drusilla and the unnamed narrator have a patriarchal figure/husband named John, as well as a female chaperone named Jenny/Jennie? I suppose these two female-presented characters warrant comparison because of how the confines within their respective narratives constrict them to the point of madness with no other recourse but to become “hysterical” women. As tempting as it would be to go down that rabbit hole, I will stay on task and explore the “heritage” of the South that weighs down on Drusilla.

I find Drusilla to be a fascinating, enigmatic character. I am far from well-versed, but I would be curious to encounter and engage in a queer and/or feminist reading of Drusilla. Interest is definitely piqued by the following cryptic statement from Bayard: “[Aunt Louisa] had expected the worst ever since Drusilla had deliberately tried to unsex herself by refusing to feel any natural grief at the death in battle not only of her affianced husband but of her own father” (189, emphasis added). What do we think Bayard means when he uses “unsex”? Within the same excerpt, Bayard’s use of “natural” also catches my attention. “Natural” grief to whom? By whom? Lastly, the discordant description of “affianced husband” comes across as slightly silly. Unless a minister and a witness(es) are involved, an affianced husband is still only a fiancé. No need to give Gavin Breckbridge the ball-and-chain status of husband just yet. 

At the start of the “Skirmish at Sartoris” chapter, Bayard flashes back to a tableau which appears—for all intents and purposes—to be a showdown: a battle of the sexes. However, at center stage drawing in these opposing forces is John Sartoris…and Drusilla. Not forgetting that Drusilla ran away from her life in Alabama to spend a period of time riding with Colonel Sartoris and his regiment as an unsexed, disguised soldier (how else would she have been permitted to remain within the homosocial space of the Confederate military?), it would make sense that Drusilla also inhabited “a world ordered completely by men’s doings, even when it is danger and fighting, you don’t want to quit that world: maybe the danger and the fighting are the reasons, because men have been pacifists for every reason under the sun except to avoid danger and fighting” (188). Drusilla wholeheartedly integrates this “world” and its mentality into her being. The tragicomic attempts by Drusilla’s mother to “beat” Drusilla—a mission that is accomplished eventually—are relentless. That is why I interpret the male and female figures within the aforementioned tableau as agents having an intervention of sorts to “beat” and coerce Drusilla back into her sphere as the Southern belle, the “spotless” woman whose “highest destiny”…is “to be the bride-widow of a lost cause” (191). It is unfathomable to all present—Bayard included—to consider what Drusilla wants outside of what is expected of her as a Southern woman. Other than “unsex”, Bayard cannot even articulate with language the possibility of Drusilla inhabiting a sphere that is not altogether male nor female. What is really impactful is to witness as a reader what lengths Southern women (represented by Aunt Louisa, Mrs. Habersham and Mrs. Compson) take to uphold the limited role of their sex. As the reader sees, the prioritization of the optics of how Southern womanhood ought to be presented rivals that of Southern manhood. The ball gown Drusilla is forced to wear by her mother (and later by her husband, John Sartoris) becomes a symbolic straitjacket to “beat” and “whip” her into the dutiful, submissive Southern woman. 

In the optional reading of Professor Allred’s paper, something in the following mention of Drusilla had me wonder: “[t]he plot confronts the prospect of an abstract, race-dissolving citizenship with brutal economy, having John Sartoris and Drusilla Hawk take an unannounced detour on the way to their wedding to murder the Federal officials overseeing the polls. This depiction of masculine sovereignty asserting itself through extralegal violence in the service of what Sartoris calls, without a hint of irony, “law and order,” is unsurprising to the point of cliché” (Allred, 15, emphasis added). What is the reader to make of Drusilla’s involvement in the murder of the voting officials? True, she did not wield “masculine sovereignty” and pull the trigger on either pistol during either of the fatal shots…but, she accompanied John Sartoris into the homosocial space of the makeshift voting area within the hotel as his accomplice. Drusilla’s involvement is further complicated when she does in fact take on the role of “bride-widow of a lost cause” upon John Sartoris’s death, and bequeaths the derringer pistols to her stepson/fourth cousin, Bayard, further along in the narrative. After John nonchalantly sweeps the matter of his arbitrary “law and order” under the rug, I do not quite know how to make out the meaning of Drusilla becoming the appointed “voting commissioner” by John, nor the implications of the voting box being in her hands. 

Drusilla, Dru. Dru, Drusilla.

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[#3]

The Unvanquished (TU) provides a space for the characters of women to be bold and courageous, something that has been uncommon in Faulkner’s work. Normally, women in Faulkner’s texts are seen as traditional women who are meek, sensitive, and powerless. However, in TU, Drusilla is a character who embodies the male spirit, especially during the Civil War. She is strong and unafraid, and respectable in the eyes of the male figures in the text, especially young Bayard Sartoris.

We’re first introduced to Drusilla (Dru) in the chapter “Raid.” Bayard compares her to the likes of a man several times in our introduction. For example he states, “…Cousin Drusilla riding astride like a man and sitting straight and light as a willow branch in the wind. They said she was the best woman rider in the country.” and again, “Then she saw me. She was not tall, it was the way she stood and walked. She had on pants, like a man. She was the best woman rider in the country;…” (89). Bayard admires and even respects his cousin. He can admire her, while also acknowledging that she is still a woman. The repeated phrase, “She was the best woman rider in the country, ” makes her an equal to a male counterpart with the same skill set.

It’s clear that Drusilla rejects the traditional values that are placed onto women. In the midst of the Civil War, she takes advantage of the freedom that has been granted to her so briefly. During the war, Drusilla was free to  embody the qualities and lifestyle that was granted to men. Being able to live like a “man,” Drusilla is able to reflect and comment that there’s much more to life than just growing up in “your father’s house.With her taste for freedom, Drusilla believes it be almost like a dream in which she doesn’t want to get up because if she were to wake up from her dream, then she’ll be forced to go back to living an ordinary life, which is something she is strictly against. Drusilla almost wishes that it wouldn’t end or that it didn’t have to. She doesn’t want to live a routined life. The war has given her so much to think about and experience:

 Who wants to sleep now, with so much happening, so much to see? Living  used to be dull, you see. Stupid. You lived in the same house your father was born in and your father’s sons and daughters had the sons and daughters of the same negro slaves to nurse and coddle, and then you grew up and you fell in love with your acceptable young man and in time you would marry him, in your mother’s wedding gown perhaps and the same silver for presents she had received, and then you settled down forever… (100-101).

Interestingly, Drusilla used the word “stupid” to describe her life before the war. Or more specifically, life for a woman before the war. She describes life as being simple and ordinary; you’re born, live in your father’s house, grow up with brothers and sisters, fall in love, get married, and on and on the cycle goes. It offers no excitement or alternate perspective to living except for the one simple fact that as a woman, you’re destined to perpetuate this cycle of being confined to the house and familial duties. Drusilla doesn’t want the simple kind of life, she doesn’t want to be sheltered from the experiences real life has to offer.

 

For women, traditional values only point in one direction: family. Men have their own set of traditional values, but many of these values overlap. Men aren’t bound to the home the way women are. Being a man means experiencing life, taking action, having flexibility. These are just some attributes Drusilla wishes she can take on without having to be a man. I think she questions if there can be such a life/or time for a woman to live outside the boundaries of tradition.