51 pages • 1 hour read
William FaulknerSanctuary
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1931A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Loss of Innocence
Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses a violent act of sexual assault and includes graphic depictions of domestic violence and lynching, as well as alcohol addiction. The depictions of female characters in the novel are often based on misogynistic ideas. The source text uses the n-word, antisemitic language, and misogynistic language. Such language is reproduced in this guide only through quotations.
The notion of innocence, specifically that it can be lost or corrupted, is a significant theme in Sanctuary. Importantly, the idea of an innocence that can be irrevocably lost or taken away centers on the female characters in the novel. Ruby, for instance, had not always been cast out from the community. Her circumstances have taken her innocence, and therefore her social acceptability. For these women, the traumas they experience become public affairs that mark them as having lost their innocence. Instead of focusing on their personal feelings toward their experiences, this “loss” becomes about how the community treats them, turning Ruby into a pariah and Temple into a perfect victim.
Temple’s assault and abduction are the most obvious example of this theme. The narrative draws parallels between her life as a privileged university student and her life as Popeye’s captive, but Temple’s engrained behavior fades away the longer she is held captive. Temple mimicking the sex workers at Miss Reba’s emphasizes the change she has undergone since losing her innocence. Though at the Old Frenchman place she is very concerned with remaining clothed and presentable, by the time Benbow meets with her in Memphis, she is insistent upon remaining in bed, exposing her naked body to him with little care. Her dislike of drinking also fades in Miss Reba’s house. When she first arrives, Reba has to convince her to drink the gin given to her, but by the time she leaves, she is addicted to alcohol. She also becomes overtly sexual, attempting to have sex with Red in the bar. The narrative suggests that her exposure to sex and alcohol catalyze her trajectory from innocent to fallen; she is depicted as traumatized by the violence she experiences—blank, even—but more notable is her depiction as having changed morally.
Benbow has a certain innocence to him in his desire to escape society and its methods of being, but he is able to move throughout space and class lines without “losing” it. He only gives up on his desire for change and his attempts to start over when he sees Goodwin’s lynching. Benbow in this way does lose his innocence, but it is unconnected to violence against his person, nor is it based on society’s perception of him as innocent, unlike with Ruby and Temple. Benbow’s comparative innocence and its loss is a matter he is allowed to keep private.
The Impact of Social Pressures
Social pressure is a significant motivating factor for the characters in Sanctuary, and its effects are a major theme of the novel. While much of the novel’s social judgment is reserved for women in the novel, Benbow continually runs up against the dictates of society in his defense of Goodwin, being accused of “immoral” behavior with Ruby and collusion in the rape of Temple for trying to help them. There is never any solid or conclusive evidence that Goodwin was the one to kill Tommy, but because the town decided he was the person who had done it, the court would too.
Temple is also affected by the fear of social censure. Her panic when Popeye kidnaps her is due in large part to her fear of being seen, and then judged, by her peers. When Temple falsely accuses Goodwin of murdering Tommy, she is also motivated by the fear of social judgment: While sentencing an innocent man to death is immoral, her accusation gives her an “out,” a way back to the sanctuary of tradition and virtue in the eyes of the public. The preservation of the social order is thus more important than justice.
Narcissa is particularly worried about the way she and Benbow are viewed in society. Having married into an old Yoknapatawpha County family, her insistence on adhering to the social pressures of the Jefferson townspeople makes her a representation of the domineering and moralizing court of public opinion in Southern society. Through this representation, she also offers these social pressures some nuance: Though Narcissa doesn’t object to the social pressure the town exerts upon its inhabitants, she knows that to go against it would make her life as a resident, particularly as a female resident, much harder. As she tells Benbow “I live here, in this town. I’ll have to stay here. But you’re a man. It doesn’t matter to you” (178). Of course, Narcissa, as an upper-middle-class white woman, has far less to worry about than women like Ruby. As the comparison between Ruby and Temple shows, people like Ruby who are already poor and undesired are far more likely to face public scorn and censure.
At the climax of the novel, the town’s unyielding hold on determining who is innocent and who is guilty finally explodes into violence, the lynching of Goodwin serving as a representation of their repressed desire for violence against those who stray from the path established by tradition. The summation of the situation by Benbow’s cab driver in Kinston makes the selfish nature of these social pressures clear: “‘I see where they burned that fellow over at Jefferson. I guess you saw it.’ ‘Yes,’ Horace said. ‘Yes. I heard about it.’ ‘Served him right,’ the driver said. ‘We got to protect our girls. Might need them ourselves’” (291). In reality, the only thing that Goodwin’s lynching protected was the social order, particularly that in which women retain their purity and usefulness to men.
The Decline of the South Through Vice
In the novel, Yoknapatawpha County is depicted as a place with a long history of traditional Southern values and class norms that are violated by the presence of vice, particularly through Goodwin’s criminal enterprise on the outskirts of town. While Goodwin and his associates are mostly ostracized by the townspeople of Jefferson, the younger inheritors of Southern tradition—such as Gowan Stevens—eagerly buy and imbibe the bootleggers’ product. Gowan, like Temple, comes from a wealthy, respected, and established Southern family. Gowan’s façade of aristocratic behavior—illustrated through his repeated insistence that he drinks “like a gentleman” (34)—is stronger than his inclination to behave that way. Though he feels shame for what happens to Temple, he cannot face his actions and make up for them, instead abandoning her once again. He can’t bring himself to consider the broader implications and effects of his actions, telling Narcissa that he has “but one rift in the darkness, that is that I have injured no one save myself by my folly” (126), when Temple has in fact been far more injured than he has. In this way, Gowan reflects the corrupting influence of vice and criminality on Southern tradition and moral virtue.
Like Gowan, Temple’s aristocratic background is integral to her identity, as she represents the archetypal Southern belle of her time. She, too, clings to her inherited and intrinsic gentility when faced with difficulties, such as her chanting to herself, “My father is a judge,” when she can’t access prayer (50). In this way, the aristocratic system of power is her sanctuary, one that is violated through vice—not only alcohol, but violence and sexual assault. It is notable that throughout the narrative, Popeye is described as angular, dark, and cold—in this way, he represents that which is new, futuristic, industrial, and ultimately, damaging to the Southern way of life. While Temple is eventually able to access her sanctuary again in the end, it is only through falsely accusing Goodwin of murder, thus highlighting again the corrupting influence of the dark, criminal underworld on Southern morals.
This decline is also shown in Faulkner’s descriptions of the setting. The stereotypical image of old Southern society, the plantation house, is only depicted via the dilapidated and ruinous Old Frenchman place. Described as “a plantation house set in the middle of a tract of land; of cotton fields and gardens and lawns long since gone back to jungle, which the people of the neighborhood had been pulling down piecemeal for firewood for fifty years” (7), its derelict state is a reflection not only of the state of Southern society at this time but how the community has contributed to its fall. By tearing away materials from the house, the people of Jefferson have literally made it less and less stable and habitable; similarly, by condemning Goodwin’s operation but buying his alcohol anyway, they contribute to their own decline. The way that Southern society is depicted is clearly untenable in Faulkner’s world, but the way forward is unclear. The social and cultural developments of the 20th century destabilize what he depicts as the entrenched structure of life in the South, or at least, the entrenched structure of life for white people in the South.
Related Titles
By William Faulkner
