American Literature: Romanticism final exam assignment Sample Final Exams 2013 Question 3

Meryl Bazaman

Nostalgia and Race in Romanticism

Race complicates the nostalgia of romanticism. In Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily, only the unmarked or non-racially identified have access to nostalgia, a nostalgia defined by its adherence to a distorted past. Those marked racially only exist as nostalgic extensions, passively reacting to the dominant race’s perceptions. Chesnutt’s “The Goophered Grapevine,” however, complicates Faulkner’s reading of nostalgia by making the marked race more actively involved in determining their relation to the dominant culture, as well as giving the marked race its own definition of romanticist nostalgia, that of a nostalgia grounded by a future. Expanding upon Chesnutt, Hughes also explores this future orientated romanticist nostalgia; yet, Hughes moves this nostalgia beyond the immediate good of the marked individual to something that impacts the community of marked individuals.    

However, before delving into the complications of race and nostalgia, how do these complications begin to present themselves? In William Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily, the recently deceased Emily functions as a nostalgic reminder of gentility and honor among the aged, non-racially identified veterans of the Civil War. Upon attending her funeral, Faulkner writes of these attendants accordingly:

…and the very old men-some in their brushed Confederate uniforms-on the porch and the lawn, talking of Miss Emily as if she had been a contemporary of theirs, believing that they had danced with her and courted her perhaps, confusing time with its mathematical progression, as the old do, to whom all the past is not a diminishing road, but instead, a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches, divided from them now by the narrow bottleneck of the most recent decades of years” (Faulkner, 5.1-5.2)

Consistent with the description of romanticism’s nostalgia being “something lost” (White) or “something past” (White), Faulkner observes that these non-racially identified, “very old” men tend to emphasize their perceived joyful times as evidenced by their viewing of this nostalgic time as “a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches.” That is according to Faulkner these men allow their perception of what is lost to delude them into believing they might have had access to gentility, might have obtained some semblance of honor through this possibly imagined intimacy with Emily, the final idealized representative of the town’s supposed lost ways and “august named” culture. Yet, their recent years are no longer wide but “bottlenecked;” a bottlenecking caused by romanticism’s nostalgia as it limits their perceptions to a desired past and skews the realities of history. This impact of nostalgia among these non-racially identified men minimizes the range of perception these very old men can take and confuses their desires with actuality. Made short-sighted by their adherence to their own non-racially defined desires, the men ignore the racially defined complications associated with the nostalgic idolizing of Miss Emily; they willfully ignore the role played by nameless “Negro” in favor of their non-racially defined, desire driven nostalgia.  

            In fact, the presence of the nameless “Negro” in Faulkner’s tale not only complicates how nostalgia is understood in romanticism; it complicates the way nostalgia in romanticism can be read, by defining those marked by race only in terms of their relationship to the non-marked. Faulkner wrote the following of Miss Emily’s hardened African American servant:

The Negro met the first of the ladies at the front door and let them in…and then he disappeared.” He walked right through the house and out the back and was not seen again.” (5.1)

Clearly, Faulkner gives no attention to whether or not the African-American servant shared the same romantic nostalgia as the non-racially identified “very old men.” All that is known or can be deduced of the man is how he functions in regards to the townspeople; that is- when he is outside of the peripheral vision of the narrator and the townspeople, he simply “disappears,” never to be seen again. However, when reading this disappearance based on an understanding of nostalgia in romanticism, the servant’s actions become clearer. If the recently Miss Emily is “an idol,” (2.10) of the past, what will happen to him when she is revealed to be fallen? If the spell of the nostalgic past is broken by realistic detail, what should become of him, the man who had access to Miss Emily’s house, who even “went in and out with the market basket” (4.5) while the front door remained closed to the public? If the nostalgia of romanticism places Miss Emily on a pedestal, how is her silent, nameless, marked servant viewed by nostalgia, when her death reveals the grim deeds of her (Miss Emily’s) life? According to the past based nostalgia of romanticism and its tendency to define marked race based on its relationship to the unmarked, a realized, befouled Miss Emily could very well lead to a realization of a befouled servant by association; yet, as Faulkner leaves what happens after the discovery of a long dead Homer Barron uncertain, the nostalgia of romanticism leaves only the possibility of reading the servant as an extension of Miss Emily, meant to vanish after her death; once the relationship between the marked and unmarked has been severed or obliterated by death, the marked servant, according to the past nostalgia of romanticism, must also fade and be extinguished– as a marked man and servant, who does not explicitly fit or contort to the majority culture desires and expectations, past based nostalgia in romanticism dictates he (the marked other) must vanish.        

However, nostalgia in romanticism does not always have to be based on a past nostalgia that renders marked races as obsolete when their unmarked employer dies or limits the unmarked employers to focusing on distortions of time based on distorted past based desires. Charles W. Chesnutt demonstrates this alternative by complicating Faulkner’s assertions on nostalgia in romanticism by arguing that those marked by race, such as his character Julius in “The Goophered Grapevine” can be driven by their own variation on desire, a variation defined as nostalgia that “values something beyond,” such as  “a dramatic future” (White). Chesnutt makes this nostalgia for a stable future particularly evident in Julius’s own words:

Dey did ‘pear ter die, but a few ov’em come out ag’I, en is mixed in mongs’ de yuthers. I ain’ skeered ter eat de grapes, ‘caze I knows de old vimes fum de noo ones; but wid strangers dey ain’ no tellin’ w’at might happen. (51)  

In order to appeal to the unmarked couple that will most likely (and do) purchase the plantation, marked Julius actively projects himself into their future by claiming he has expertise distinguishing “de old vimes fum de noo ones.” Unlike Faulkner’s nameless, marked servant, who disappears after the death of Miss Emily, Julius represents himself as a part of a forward moving, dream of the future. Chesnutt’s Julius refuses to allow himself to be invisible or nameless, he has a name, he has a story, a function, and he has an expertise and experience with the grapes. Julius projects himself into the nostalgia of a future by predicting his value and making himself an asset that can honorably protect the unmarked “strangers” with whom there is “no tellin w’at might happen.”

Yet, Chesnutt’s Julius is not the only example of how race complicates nostalgia in romanticism by transforming a longing for the distorted past into a dream for the future. The poet Langston Hughes also offers a marked projection pitting a future oriented nostalgia against the dominant culture’s past based nostalgia in his poem “I Too Sing America.” Hughes offers his nostalgic future projection as follows:

 I, too, sing America

I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen

When company comes,

But I laugh

And eat well,

And grow strong

…

They’ll see how beautiful I am

And be ashamed –

I, too, am America

By focusing on how “they’ll see” and what “they’ll see,” Hughes also creates a venue for race to complicate the nostalgia of romanticism as its nostalgia shifts from the dominant culture’s past based to marked culture’s future basis. In fact, Hughes expands upon Chesnutt’s interpretation by offering more goal oriented behaviors that would allow this future based nostalgia to come to fruition. Moving beyond Faulkner’s invisible marked servant and beyond Julius’s limited self-projecting into the future by creating doubts about what may be for the dominant culture, Hughes specifies how “the darker brother” laughs, eats well, and grows strong, actions that will lead towards a future where his beauty is realized. Unlike Chesnutt’s Julius who transforms nostalgia for the benefit of his immediate future, Hughes further transforms this future nostalgia of romanticism to incorporate all avenues of existence. Hughes’s “darker brother” will not only survive by negotiating with the unmarked, he will exist alongside them, living in a nostalgic future that demonstrates how he is equally as beautiful.       

            Reiterated by examples from Faulkner, Chesnutt, and Hughes, race does in fact complicate the nostalgia of romanticism. Faulkner creates racial complications by only acknowledging the fallacious, past based nostalgia of the unmarked race and either silencing the expression of nostalgia in the marked or representing the marked only through their association with the unmarked. Meanwhile, Chesnutt uses the character of Julius, a man of marked race, as a means of demonstrating how the past nostalgia of romanticism can be transformed into a future based nostalgia based on the action and manipulations of the marked Julius. Hughes, however, pushes the idea of nostalgia as future based deeper by organizing acts that will elevate the marked man beyond immediate good future to an equalitarian, all-encompassing good future.