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Along with the main display and the suite of
visualization tools, Digital Yoknapatawpha also offers users
a rich repository of curated archival materials
that allows students, teachers, and scholars to
think about Faulkner’s creative process and consider different interpretations of the texts.
If there are relevant archival materials for a text,
a Manuscript link will show up on the bottom
left of the map display controls.
The link takes users to digital copies of archival materials
provided by the University of Virginia’s Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library.
Clicking on the image of the individual pages,
brings up a zoomed in page along with a transcription of the manuscript or typescript.
The materials also include a commentary to elucidate how these particular items
are relevant to the story.
With regard to “A Rose for Emily,” the early manuscript pages
reveal some crucial differences between Faulkner’s initial draft and the final published version.
In his earlier versions, there is actually an extended conversation
between Emily and Tobe. This conversation is
the only time we ever get a glimpse of Tobe’s inner life.
Among other things, he admits that he’s known all along what is locked in
the room upstairs. Furthermore, it's revealed that
he would inherit the house from Emily when she died, whereupon he had a plan
to sell it and move to Chicago. Now, at the end
of Emily’s life, he is abandoning his plan to be rich,
and aims to live in the poorhouse.
It is unclear why the cryptic passage did not make it
into the final version, but like so much of the story it is haunting in the way
it draws attention to the fraught intersections of class, gender,
and race in the Jim Crow South. One has to wonder
how it is that Tobe could feel compelled to live in the eerie house for so
long, only to realize he wants no part of it.
For Emily’s part, the passage shows a sense of self-awareness
that appears missing from the final story, and its omission in the
final version perhaps underscores Emily’s lack of agency.
These are some of the questions that come to mind when studying this passage.
Many other stories also have manuscript pages attached
to them, and they can be accessed directly by clicking on the indexes
tab and clicking on Manuscripts.
Of course, these pages only represent a fraction of the
archival material available, but these curated pages are a great
starting point for thinking about how Faulkner shaped and re-shaped
his fiction over the course of his career.