The Price of Desire

“I do not consider myself to be a follower, just a lonely deserted soul in a barbaric city, who walks his own treacherous path in life.” (McGready, 10) I, like many women before me covet love deep in my soul. I have gone to many lengths to protect that desire from those that seek to destroy it, at a price only I will know. An all consuming desire so strong as to change the course of the soul, back into ones self. How far will one go for the craving of love? What part of your soul will you be willing to sacrifice in exchange for the need to fill the void in your heart? When we look at stories about desperate love and the longing of the human heart we might look at William Faulkner. Born in 1897 into an old Mississippian family, the reader may find that most of his stories focus on the vast emotions that one feels when trying to understand the heart and the soul in small town southern life. “A Rose for Emily” written by Faulkner in 1950, tells the story of a proud southern belle robbed of her chances for love and to belong, by an overbearing father and a culture so stifling as to lock her away her with desire forever. Faulkner writes this story from an objective point of view as the reader is told only what Miss Emily does with her life as it is picked apart by the town gossip. “The Griersons held themselves a little too high”, as most would say and Miss Emily, a well bred southern daughter, described as “a slender figure in white”, (Faulkner, 84) a young woman, to be envied and hated for her privileged status. Approaching the age of an old maid, Miss Emily is shown to be suffocating by the shadow of her father, unable to even feel a whisper of love. Young men, intimidated by the “spraddled silhouette” (Faulkner, 84) of a horsewhip toting father, turned away time after time, “none of the young men were quite good enough”, (Faulkner, 84), as Miss Emily is pushed behind, watching yet another figure disappearing from her. The reader finds that instead of being freed by the death of her father she clings to the body, unwilling to let go to the one who held her chained. “We did not say she was crazy then” (Faulkner, 84). When we meet Hulga, in “Good Country People” written by Flannery O’Connor in 1955, we find a woman whose very soul was forever marked by a single moment in time. The reader finds a young woman, wounded by the tragedy of losing her leg. Suffering from a weak heart, struggling with the desperate need to be accepted, she hides her heart in a soul as wounded as her body. Her leg, once a living object is now just a piece of wood, as hard and unfeeling as she portrays her self to be, but the only part of her that is seen by the world. The desire to be something other than an object to be pitied and tiptoed around as she demands to be seen, “here I am –LIKE I AM”. (O’Connor, 369) Hulga, having changed her name, from the cheerful bouncy name of Joy, to Hugla, chose the name on the “basis of it ugly sound” (O’Connor, 369) and only then hitting upon the irony of her choice as the name now fits the vision that she sees when faced with her outer self. One can only assume that she seeks to eliminate any trace of the once happy cheerful girl. While Miss Emily cowered in the shadow of her overbearing father, Hugla flaunts her “ugliness” making use of every opportunity to thrust it into the face of her mother as she stumps around the house making awful noises just “because it was ugly-sounding” (Connor, 370), her mother was sure of it. Her mother certain that if Hugla would just look on the bright side of things and “keep herself up a little” (O’Connor, 370) she wouldn’t be seen as “bloated, rude and squint-eyed” (O’Connor, 370) and maybe if she would not look upon the young men with the attitude that “she could smell their stupidity” (O’Connor, 370), that things would be beautiful. When we next see Miss Emily she is found to be changed, “with a vague resemblance to those angels in colored church windows – sort of tragic and serene”. (Faulkner, 84) The town soon starts the whispering; Miss Emily has been seen driving with a Northerner, a day laborer. Homer Barron, a Yankee, a man that liked the company of other men and “he was not a marrying man”. (Faulkner, 85) Shocked by the behavior, the town is certain that she, a real lady, a Grierson, would not let even grief make her forget noblesse oblige. She must be “fallen” and so once again the circles of whispers start “Poor Emily” becomes the mantra of the town. Miss Emily head held high and her dandy man Homer, with his yellow glove, are seen as a disgrace to the town trotting about the streets, flaunting her success. Miss Emily purchases poison, the druggist sends arsenic, the package states, for rats. Faulkner limits our knowledge of Emily’s thoughts but one can only imagine that she is putting all her womanly faith in this man, finally a chance for her to belong, to have a husband. She has gone to the jewelers, she purchased an outfit for a man, toilet set with H.B. on them, and even a nightshirt for a man, “They are married” (Faulkner, 86) said the town. Time passes, the house ages and the town wonders about the mysteries hidden inside, Miss Emily, seen only from behind windows refusing entry to the curious, grows as old and gray as the cracked boards of the house. Upon her death at the age of seventy four, the town finds the true mystery and the power of a woman’s desire to hold onto her chance at love no matter the cost. We can only speculate as to the years but the evidence is clear a mans skeleton draped in a nightshirt lays in a bed coated with dust and beside him lays a pillow that had been used recently but abandoned with all but one gray hair left behind. The reader may conclude that Miss Emily finally having caught her man was willing to lock herself away with her desire rather than face losing him. In the story of “Good Country People” we are aware of Hugla thoughts as O’Connor tells the story thru limited omniscient narration. When Manley Pointer, a young man who describes himself as “real simple”, just a country boy from a place near a place, appears Hugla finds that the usual rudeness for which she treats all humanity has no effect on this simple man. We find her captivated by none other than a bible salesman. Arranging a rendezvous with him she finds that she is unable to contain her triumph, “she had lain in bed imagining dialogues for them” (O’Connor, 375), to talk about. Hugla feels that maybe she would seduce him, confident that with her superior mind, she would be able to “reckon with his remorse. True genius can get an idea across even to an inferior mind”. (O’Connor, 376) A self proclaimed atheist, unwilling to believe in a God that would allow her to be nothing but a wooden leg, having thoughts of joining with a salesman of God. The reader feels her shock and anger as Manley softly inquires, “Where does your wooden leg join?” (O’Connor, 376) Hugla begins to see that maybe someone finally sees through her nothingness to the little girl hiding within forsaken by God. Finally she is able to see that the one thing that makes her different is also what shapes her world and holds her soul trapped in the wood of her leg. “This boy, with an instinct that came from beyond wisdom, had touched the truth about her.” (O’Connor, 379) As she surrenders her leg to him and upon his returning it to her body, handling it as tenderly as a mother would a baby, Hugla feels the miracle of Joy “It was like losing her own life and finding it again, miraculously in his.” With the delight of a child with a prized possession he removes it from her body once more. Hugla surrenders the control of the leg and briefly imagines the joy of giving over the care of her leg and the tortured soul living within the wood. Too late she realizes that having allowed Manley to hold her body, he means to steal what she had given freely and with it her very soul. Looking back on the lives of Miss Emily and Hulga we might conclude that they both deal with the conflicts of love and life in two very different ways. Miss Emily seeing her chances at love and happiness slipping away grabs the opportunity of holding her man by any means necessary. After having spent her entire young life confined by an overbearing father struggling to get out and make her own life, she then creates her own prison to protect the love and desire that she found. Hugla, on the other hand, briefly finds the joy that she has kept locked in her heart and thinking she has found the one to mend her broken soul, gives away the very thing that makes her who she is, only to find that it has been stolen and she is left with nothing but the shattered remains of her innocence.

Works Cited

McGready, Sister Mary Rose. “Please Forgive Me, God” 10.
Faulkner, William. “A Rose for Emily” Meyer 84 -86.
O’Connor, Flannery. “Good Country People” Meyer 369 – 370.