Maury+Bascomb

Maury Bascomb, referred to most frequently as Uncle Maury, appears in //The Sound and the Fury // and is the brother of Caroline Compson. Maury is not a highly likeable character; //The Sound and the Fury //shows him to be a user, a manipulator, a womanizer, and a loafer who materializes in and disappears from the Compson house with some regularity. Jason Compson IV sums him up thusly: "Uncle Maury would do anything for ten dollars" (206). Although Maury is a relatively minor character through whose eyes we never view the story, he does have significance within the novel in the sense that he is Benjy's original namesake, as Benjy (Benjamin)'s name is changed once his disability becomes apparent, and that he provokes the exploration of a host of issues such as social class, patrilineality, and race such that they can be distinguished from the noise that is //The Sound and the Fury //. Much of this exploration is accomplished through other characters' conversations that are focused on Maury; we learn almost as much, if not more, about Maury from others' reactions to and attitudes about him than from his own utterances.

Maury manipulates those around him, selecting vulnerable family members who have something he needs, focusing on Caroline in particular. A perfect manifestation of this manipulation is the letter Jason receives from Maury in 1928 in which he asks Jason for money from Caroline's bank account for a "business opportunity." Maury uses the cover of restrictive female gender roles to mask his request, as Ulrike Nüssler explains, stating, "In the letter, Mrs. Compson's brother wields power over his sister's body, intellect, and speech, which should remain resting, passive, and banal, respectively. Thus, his Lady sister serves as the perfect excuse for his insincerity" (577). Indeed, Maury refers in the letter to Caroline's "delicate health and that timorousness which such delicately nurtured Southern ladies would naturally feel regarding matters of business" (223-224). Additionally, at an earlier point in the story, Maury even stoops to using his niece and nephew (Caddy and Benjy) to carry a letter to his lover, a neighbor woman with whom he is having an affair.

Despite Maury's unsavory tendencies, however, he is also somewhat of a marginalized character, particularly in terms of his social class. Through his treatment of Maury, we see Jason Compson III working out his preoccupation with social class and both he and Caroline revealing a focus on "purity" and patrilineality. Maury's use of his sister and her family for their money provides his brother-in-law ample opportunity to ridicule him for his social class of origin. Jason believes that his wife's social class, and by extension, that of her family of origin, is "beneath" that of the upper-class Compsons.

Maury is also othered in the sense that he is placed alongside African Americans and subjected to others' racist beliefs about African Americans, as lurking beneath Jason III's feelings of social superiority to Maury is his racism. Although muddled, Quentin's stream-of-consciousness journey through memories of his family emphasizes this connection: "but Father said why should Uncle Maury work if he Father could support five or six niggers that did nothing all day but sit with their feet in the oven he certainly could board and lodge Uncle Maury now and then and lend him a little money who kept his Father's belief in the celestial derivation of his own species at such a fine heat then Mother would cry and say that Father believed his people were better than hers that he was ridiculing Uncle Maury to teach us the same thing ..." (175). More succinctly, Jason III states earlier in the novel, "I admire Maury. He is invaluable to my own sense of racial superiority. I wouldn't swap Maury for a matched team" (43). Maury is also marginalized in the sense that he suffers from alcoholism, but even this struggle, which he shares with Jason III, does not soften Jason's heart toward him.

Caroline counters this attitude with an obsession with Maury's status as "the last Bascomb." Revealing her belief in the supposed purity of patrilineal family lines, Caroline reveres "real Bascombs" like Maury, as well as her son Jason IV, whom she also views as a Bascomb, and caters constantly to Maury's needs. Regarding the Compsons' marriage, Philip Weinstein notes that "the text rarely pairs her with her husband. Faulkner often has Benjy's first memories of Mrs. Compson join her instead with Uncle Maury. The novel signals recurrently that the man most on her mind, the man she uses as a shield between herself and her husband, is Uncle Maury" (68). When all of the above converge, what emerges is a fractured portrait of a man who is at once both powerful and powerless.

Works Cited

Nüssler, Ulrike. "Reconsidering the Function of Mrs. Compson in Faulkner's //The Sound and the Fury//." //Amerikastudien/American Studies // vol. 42, no. 4, 1997, pp. 573-81. JSTOR.

Weinstein, Philip. "'If I Could Say Mother': Construing the Unsayable about Faulknerian Maternity" //<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury //<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, edited by Harold Bloom, Infobase Publishing, 2008, pp. 67-80.