A light on Faulkner—the women in his life

NONFICTION

Writer William Faulkner, by virtue of subject matter and residence, was most closely affiliated with Mississippi. His family history and local history were deeply intertwined in Oxford, and he spun most of his tales out of that context, creating his own mythical chronicle of the fictional Yoknapatawpha County.

But he was also associated with Virginia. In the spring of 1957, Faulkner became writer-in-residence at the University of Virginia, and after a second semester in that position in 1958, he purchased a home in Charlottesville. His wife, Estelle, spent much of her time there before and after Faulkner's death in 1962, and their daughter, Jill, spent her entire adult life and raised her children in Charlottesville.

While nearly all Faulkner biographers have focused on the paternal figures in his life, as well as the larger forces of Southern history and culture, in an effort to explain his achievement, Judith L. Sensibar shifts the focus to the women in his life, who have generally been seen as background figures and shadowy presences of little influence.

In this moving and remarkable biographical study, "Faulkner and Love: The Women Who Shaped His Art," Sensibar explores as never before the influence of three women in particular: Caroline Barr, the former slave who raised the writer; his iconoclastic and talented mother, Maude Butler Falkner (the author added the "u" to the spelling of his name), who inspired his interest in art and literature; and his wife, Estelle Oldham Faulkner, usually viewed as an alcoholic hindrance to his career but here seen as a major creative collaborator in his ground-breaking fiction. She may, indeed, have been the key that opened the lock of his artistic genius.

Sensibar spent extensive periods of time in Charlottesville interviewing the daughter, Jill Faulkner Summers, before her death in April 2008. These interviews, along with hitherto unavailable documents and records, and other interviews with people who knew the Faulkners, richly inform this exhaustively researched and documented study. Their experiences with the black and white families that raised them, the cultural and psychological influence of alcohol in their world, and the relation between their collaborative fantasy and his creativity are issues that are explored throughout the book.

She finds surprising things about the family life that Carolina Barr had outside her time spent as a maid and nanny in the Faulkner household; the serious efforts of Estelle to have her own career as a writer; and the importance of art, photography, and visual aesthetics in their lives. Especially intriguing are her readings of a series of photographs taken by Faulkner of 2-year old Jill that recreates the central image that inspired the writing of "The Sound and the Fury."

Sensibar's sensibility is that of a major literary critic, and this book serves to sustain that judgment. All future biographers of Faulkner must take into account her findings, and they should be grateful for the intelligent light she has cast on one of our most inexplicable and challenging authors.

M. Thomas Inge is the Blackwell Professor of Humanities at Randolph-Macon College, where he teaches and writes about Southern culture, American humor and Asian literature.