Quickening+(LIA)

The Oxford English Dictionary defines the earliest verb form of “quicken” as “to come or to bring to life” (“quicken,” v.1). Well and good, but there are also two other usages of “quicken” that could also readily apply to the Faulknerian oeuvre: one, as the verb’s fourth, maternal, definition, “to reach the stage of pregnancy when movements of the fetus are perceptible;” and two, the verb’s sixth sense, a temporal hastening, as in to “accelerate, speed up” or “make faster or quicker” (OED “quicken,” v.4; “quicken,” v.6). Like Faulkner’s writing, the concept of “quickening” becomes multifaceted, particularly in his novel, //Light in August//.

Taken at its most base—the concept of ‘creation’, or ‘bringing to life’—“quickening” coincides with the more pronounced theme of pregnancy. Childbirth is, of course, central, as //Light in// August begins with Lena Grove’s journey to find the father of her child, Lucas Burch, and actual moments of “quickening” can be found within the early text. Lena’s eating of sardines and crackers while on her way toward Jefferson causes a reaction, and, in a visceral moment of narration, we’re privy to one of Lena’s gestational peculiarities disrupting the narrative:

“she stops, not abruptly, yet with utter completeness, her jaw stilled in midchewing, a bitten cracker in her hand her face lowered a little and her eyes blank, as if she were listening to something very far away or so near as to be insider her. Her face has drained of color, of its full, hearty blood, and she sits quite still, hearing and feeling the implacable and immemorial earth, but without fear or alarm. ‘It’s twins at least’, she says to herself, without lip movement, without sound. Then the spasm passes. She eats again. The wagon has not stopped; time has not stopped. The wagon crests the final hill and they see smoke.” (Faulkner 29)

The ‘spasm’ alluded to, is clearly the child within Lena’s womb performing the act of “quickening”—in fact, it’s so strong that it causes her to believe she’s carrying “twins at least.” But the scene also points to another usage of “quickening,” as the narrator notes that time itself has not suspended, as the “wagon [had] not stopped; time [had] not stopped.” This ties in well with the novel’s denouement, as Lena remarks how “a body does get around” (or in this case, ‘bodies’, if we include Lena’s child) (507). For Faulkner, someone whose “principal subject” is the “Southern society[‘s]…arrogance toward the inevitable movement of time,” the brisk connotation of “quickening,” combined with both the physical and relativistic “quickening” of the body aboard the moving wagon, and the act of fetal “quickening” within Lena, not only do the Lena and her child represent an anomalistic anathema, but as a physical act of progressive “movement” against the Southern aversion toward time (West 5).

“Quickening,” in the sense of fetal movement, can be stretched to its metaphorical conclusion that within everyone there is a chiasmic bifurcation between the ‘self’, and the ‘perceived self’—with the ‘perceived self’ intermittently expressing its influence on the ‘self’ in moments of ambiguous domination of the somatic actions of the character. Laura Doyle explains this in her work “The Body against Itself in Faulkner’s Phenomenology of Race:” using [|Du Bois]’ concept of the “[|double-consciousness]” in the southern black American, she emphasizes the “identification of self with a social designation works as successfully as it does because of the way the calling intrudes into and usurps the chiasmatic bodily self-relation” (Doyle 344). Joe Christmas’ character is essentially built off of this ethos; Christmas’ peregrinating and recalcitrant nature derives itself from the racially charged melancholia and corporeal impotence toward the cerebral ambiguity of origin—another aspect of “coming alive,” or the outgrowth of “quickening.” This is why Christmas remains servile to what he believes to be catalyst to his existence. “//Something is going to happen//,” he twice muses, “//Something is going to happen to me//,” and the interjection into his thought process, like the tremor of Lenas’ childs “quickening,” signals a momentum of external motive—one could even link this ‘external motive’ with the process of writing itself; characters are guided by a motive created by the writer’s “quickening” of character and plot.

–Michael Monahan

Works Cited:

Doyle, Laura. “The Body Against Itself in Faulkner’s Phenomenlogy of Race.” //American Literature// Vol. 73 No. 2, (June, 2001), p.339-361. Muse.jhu.edu. Oct. 31, 2013.

"quicken, v.1". OED Online. September 2013. Oxford University Press. 4 November 2013 .

West, Ray B. Jr. “Faulkner’s ‘Light in August’: A View of Tragedy.” //Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature//. Vol. 1, No. 1. (Winter, 1960), p. 5 – 12..org. Oct. 28, 2013.