"Going To Jackson": the Lunatic Asylum in Faulkner and Welty (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: "Going To Jackson": the Lunatic Asylum in Faulkner and Welty
Author: J.M. Gleason
Abstract: ABSTRACT OF “GOING TO JACKSON: the Mississippi State Hospital in Faulkner and Welty” Since opening its doors in Jackson in 1855, the Mississippi State Hospital has played a powerful role in the public imagination as reflected in The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930), The Ponder Heart (1953) and several of Welty’s short stories. As a variation on the southern gothic mansion, the “lunatic asylum” in Faulkner and Welty mocks and mirrors institutions—plantation house, hotel, bank, church, courthouse, the Old Ladies Home, and prison. In sending their protagonists by train to Jackson, the authors question definitions of sanity, the role of the exiled artist, and race relations of the post-bellum south. More particularly, we see how the fate of Welty’s Uncle Daniel Ponder is in part a reply to Faulkner’s Benjy Compson and Darl Bundren. Amid scenes of humor, violence, and sexuality, the historical State Hospital is transformed into a potent symbol of social change and individual conscience. AUTHOR BIO Michael Gleason has been introducing Millsaps undergrads to Homer, Virgil, and Beowulf since 1994. He has published on the Latin of Bede and Alcuin and (with Anne MacMaster) the imagery of the bat in Homer and Joyce, the Circes of Joyce and Welty, and Native Americans in Hawthorne and Faulkner.
Date: 07/21/21
Conference Name: 47th Annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference at the University of Mississippi on June 21, 2021, “Faulkner, Wright, Welty: A Mississippi Confluence”

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