Visionary and Incomplete

This chapter uses biographical and historical information, informed by standpoint theory, to analyze six texts: Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” and “That Evening Sun”; Wright’s “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow” and “Long Black Song”; Welty’s “Livvie” and “Moon Lake.” Comparative analysis highlights striking contrasts as well as similarities in the lives and creative works of the three Mississippi modernists. Writing from distinct subject positions, these writers imagined distinct cultural landscapes that are both visionary and incomplete, accurately assessing some of their characters’ experiences and overlooking or misunderstanding others. If any writer’s characters had been portrayed by the other writers, their circumstances and possible responses would have been different. By reading these texts alongside each other, paying attention to what each writer has omitted or misunderstood, readers can assemble a composite vision that yields a fuller, more truthful portrait of twentieth-century Mississippi.