There Was a Queen

"She had not wondered where they were going, nor why, as a white woman would have wondered. But she was half-black, and she just watched the white woman..."

Faulkner inserts this line in There Was a Queen to either a) make a point regarding historical notions of the assumed capabilities of women or b) explicitly mark how untrue such beliefs of these women were. Elnora, a black servant portrayed in this short story, is anything but non-judgmental. She does claim on page 729 that “…it’s her business where she going,” in reference to Narcissa. “Same as it is her business how come she went off to Memphis, leaving Miss Jenny setting yonder in her chair without nobody buy niggers to look after her.” This statement questions indirectly Narcissa’s purpose to visit Memphis, although Elnora conceals this by claiming it’s not her business. Elnora does not like Narcissa and thinks that the family is better off without her since she will never be a Sartoris and doesn’t contribute much to the care of her dead husband’s great-aunt.

The concept of roles, beyond that of color roles (as in a white woman should behave like this or a black woman can’t think like this), permeates into the family. Caring for an older relative, even the great-aunt of your deceased husband, is preferred over leaving them with another care-taker (especially from that of another race). It is used to measure the worth and integrity of the younger relative. Yet, in this story, Narcissa sought after her own integrity. She was hiding from letters in the past that would dishonor her integrity today. Narcissa felt that she would be vulnerable to every man whose eyes read the words in the letters. She tried to protect her name and was not so much invested in protecting the name of her husband’s family, thus abandoning her role at home. In doing so, she was judged harshly by Elnora, a woman who also suffers from many doubts of her capacity. The truth of one’s capacity or role in a situation is hardly truthful from an outside perspective. Historical notions of women and their roles were often threatened by the reality of the situation.