Sin

Sin presents in the novel //The Unvanquished// quite prominently through the actions of the Sartoris matriarch Granny or Rosa Millard. At first, Granny presents as the family’s moral pillar, which is evinced by the way she punishes the boys (Ringo and Bayard) for improper behavior, especially their use of obscene language. They are frequently featured washing their mouths out with soap, which is Granny’s punishment for swearing. She even corrects Ringo when he fails to refer to Ab Snopes as “Mister Snopes” (U 126). Granny also seems to be an upstanding woman of God. Her spiritual dedication is shown through her close connection to the local church and her habit of kneeling and praying after committing a religious wrongdoing. But, despite her apparent moral and religious fortitude, Granny displays an intimate relationship with sin in the novel. The most frequent and obvious sins she commits are those of lying and stealing. These acts are part and parcel of her mule trading business. The Bible makes it clear that such actions constitute sin. Not only are they proscribed in the Eighth and Ninth Commandments, but the book of Leviticus concisely conveys the Bible’s injunction against the very acts that constitute her mule business. It reads, “You shall not steal; you shall not deal falsely; you shall not lie to one another” (//English Standard Version//, Lev. 19:11). While Granny does commit the sins outlined above, she does so while maintaining her moral convictions. The following analysis responds to critics such as Peter Sharpe who claim that Granny’s acts of sin reveal her moral decline by demonstrating how Granny’s Confederate-based war ideology allows her to reconcile her actions with her religious understanding. This essay also points to a divide between her moral and religious convictions in order to make the case that Granny participates in sin in order to uphold her moral duties.

// The Unvanquished // indicates that Sin is ushered into Granny’s life with the entrance of the Union officers on the hunt for the boys who shot the “United States horse” (U 30). Granny lies to the officers claiming, "There are no children in this house nor on this place. There is no one here at all except my servant and myself and the people in the quarters" (U 28-29). In his article "Bonds that shackle: memory, violence, and freedom in //The Unvanquished//" John Sharpe registers the significance of this event as he writes, “the first casualty of his [Bayard’s] war, as it must be in every war, is ‘truth.’” In this way, sin and war together enter the lives of the civilians. This conclusion is supported by the fact that Granny’s understanding of sin is closely tied to her wartime loyalties. The textual moment in which she confesses and justifies her sins in the empty church with the boys indicates that Granny sees things through a regionalist lens. She claims, “I have sinned. I have stolen and I have borne false witness against my neighbor, though that neighbor was an enemy of my country…I sinned…for children who had given their fathers, for wives who had given their husbands, for old people who had given their sons, to a holy cause” (U 147). Referring to this quote, Sharpe contends, “Doubtless Faulkner wants us to see the duplicitous nature of her moral convictions; the perpetuation of human bondage could not be called, except by proslavery antebellum sophistry, a ‘holy cause’” (Sharpe). While I would agree that, to the modern reader, this phrase might cast suspicion on Granny’s morals, I also believe that the term “holy cause” demonstrates something more profound in Granny’s thinking and convictions. She is trapped in a Confederate ideology that conceives of the world in terms of North versus South. Her rationalizations are guided by this ideology. Seeing the world through a strictly Southern lens which considers Northern aggression a threat to traditional values and ways of life makes it possible to understand the war as a “holy cause.” Furthermore, it does not take any intricate sophistry for this phrase to appear consistent with religious thought. Many Christians, by viewing blacks as sub-human beasts of burden, are able to consider slavery compatible with religious principles. They would point out that the bible does not explicitly condemn slavery but instead demands fair treatment of slaves on the part of slaveholders (Eph. 6:9, Col. 4:1). The fact that Millard refers to the war as a “holy cause” reveals her entrenchment in Southern thought and values that register no conflict between religious principles and way of life. Furthermore, her reference to “my country” illustrates Granny’s strong identification with her region. And, the fact that she sees the “neighbor,” presumably the North, as an “enemy” of her country, further shows that she is entrenched in a partisan worldview.

Rosa Millard’s Confederate-based perspective enables her to justify occurrences that might ordinarily be considered sinful. For example, she does not consider her acquisition of 110 Union issued mules as theft. The work makes this clear when, upon returning home with the mules, she orders Ringo and Bayard to kneel and pray. Ringo objects stating, "Hit was the paper that lied; hit wasn't us." To this, Granny replies, "The paper said a hundred and ten. We have a hundred and twenty-two…Kneel down"(U 118). Clearly, Granny accepts the legitimacy of the Union Army’s paper even though she originally lost only two mules. Sharpe understands Granny’s justification of such events as evidence of the “duplicitous nature of her moral convictions.” More specifically, the way she attributes the horses and silver handed to her by the Union to “the hand of God” (U 112) is evidence of “opportunistic hermeneutics on Granny’s part” (Sharpe). The term “opportunistic” bears a negative connotation indicating that Granny is being crafty when she links her fortuitous mule acquisition to God’s work. However, this character’s explanation of such fortune could also be considered an indication of her entrenchment in a narrow ideology that aligns the Southern nation’s battle for glory with God and good, hence the term “holy cause.” Granny might genuinely believe that the mules and silver are products of God’s active will. This theological understanding, which sees God as actively participating in earthly affairs, seems to be typical of her religious community. In explaining the local preacher’s terse orations, the narrator claims, “I reckon there is a time when even preachers quit believing that God is going to change His plan and give victory where there is nothing left to hang victory on" (U 136). The terms “change” and “give” ascribe active participatory qualities to God; they figure God as directly involved in specific events. The quote above suggests that preachers and laymen at one time have conceived of God as capable of expressing active will. This is the type of theological conceptualization that Granny employs when she recognizes God’s involvement in the first mule transaction.

Ultimately, Granny does confess to the sins associated with her forgery and mule trading operation. Yet, her confession of sin does not equal a confession of moral decrepitude. Some critics register a conflict between Millard’s mule business and her moral rectitude. Academic Diane Roberts in her article “A Precarious Pedestal: The Confederate Woman in Faulkner’s ‘Unvanquished’” recognizes a male/female duality present in Millard that almost causes her a psychic split. She maintains, “There is a near-unbearable tension in //The Unvanquished// between the masculine and feminine spheres of Granny’s life. Her masculine annexation of power as the plantation master leads her to steal and lie while her role as feminine moralist forces her to condemn her own actions” (Roberts 239). Yet, Granny’s confession presents an image of a unified subject who merges both roles simultaneously and coextensively. She both owns her sinful actions and unites them with her sense of moral obligation to her people. Granny ties her morality to the mule trade stating, “I sinned first for justice…I sinned for the sake of food and clothes for Your own creatures who could not help themselves” (U 147). She reveals an awareness of her moral obligations and indicates that this is what causes her to sin. In this way, it appears that the demands of wartime place a strain on her religious and moral beliefs causing them to bifurcate. Her moral obligations and sense of duty win out and take priority over her religious convictions concerning sin. Thus, contrary to Roberts’ formulation, it seems that Granny’s moral convictions cause her to steal and lie while her religious convictions cause her to confess and accept responsibility for this behavior. In her business scheme, she subordinates her religious beliefs to her commitment to her people. Granny demonstrates this commitment to “Your [God’s] own creatures” (U 147) by providing them with a service—access to food and clothing—that God does not offer. In an unsexed God-like capacity, she doles out mules and money to the people of the hills and holds them accountable for their use of the loans by looking at the account book “to see whether they had lied or not” (U 138). Here, in her unified role as sinner and savior, Granny becomes the keeper of sin. Critic John Lowe reads signs of moral decline in this act. In his article titled "'The Unvanquished': Faulkner's Nietzschean skirmish with the Civil War," he maintains, “Her obsession with endurance and charity, however, leads to the corruption of greed and power” (Lowe). While she does exercise a great deal of power ensuring that the hill people faithfully utilize her loans, it can scarcely be said that she demonstrates greed, unless she desires to prosper social status-wise from the mule operation; but, this is not indicated in the text. The reason why she does not exhibit greed is because greed involves some sort of selfish motive. According to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, “greed” is defined as “a selfish and excessive desire for more of something (as money) than is needed” (“Greed”). Millard’s participation in the mule business is not driven by selfishness if one is to believe her claim that “What I gained, I shared with them” (U 147) and the narrator’s assertion—countering Ab Snope’s claims about Granny’s profits—that Granny’s tin can “didn’t have any six thousand dollars in it. It didn’t have a thousand dollars in it” (U 124). Rather than participating in the mule trade for personal benefit, Granny makes sacrifices for it. As demonstrated above, one great sacrifice is her compromise of religious values for her moral values. Granny would likely argue that the sins she owns were committed in the service of a greater good. Moreover, her wartime mentality obscures the fact that a sin is a sin and causes her to prioritize her duty to her people over religious conviction.

In conclusion, by providing textual evidence of Rosa Millard’s Confederate-based ideology, this essay seeks to show how that worldview is responsible for this character’s ostensible moral corruption. It does so in an effort to counter the arguments of critics who question Granny’s moral vision. It also registers a divide between her religious and moral convictions in order to demonstrate how she reconciles sin and moral duty.

Works Cited // The Bible //. English Standard Version. The Zondervan Corporation, 2017. BibleGateway.com

Faulkner, William. //The Unvanquished.// New York, NY: Vintage International, 1990.

“Greed.” Def. 1. //Merriam-Webster.com//. Merriam-Webster Dictionaries, 2017. Web 26 Feb. 2017.

Lowe, John. "'The Unvanquished': Faulkner's Nietzschean skirmish with the Civil War." //The Mississippi Quarterly//, 46.3 1993, p. 407+. Literature Resource Center, go.galegroup.com.proxy.wexler.hunter.cuny.edu/ps/i.do?p=LitRC&sw=w&u=cuny_hunter&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA14696189&asid=438f218b080896c18cf2eb7215d5975e. Accessed 26 Feb. 2017.

Roberts, Diane. “A Precarious Pedestal: The Confederate Woman in Faulkner’s ‘Unvanquished.’” //Journal of American Studies//, 26.2, 1992, p. 233-246. Accessed 26 Feb. 2017.

Sharpe, Peter. "Bonds that shackle: memory, violence, and freedom in //The Unvanquished//." //The Faulkner Journal//, 20. 1-2, 2004, p. 85+. Literature Resource Center, go.galegroup.com.proxy.wexler.hunter.cuny.edu/ps/i.do?p=LitRC&sw=w&u=cuny_hunter&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA170927165&asid=43816f34157623a3efb8da02154fc3d1. Accessed 26 Feb. 2017.