On the 20th century, unfortunately

As an English major, over twenty years ago, I did not read much American literature.  So, in the past year, I went on a campaign to study, on my own, 20th century American literature.  I started with Invisible Man (by Ralph Ellison), which had recently been dramatized by the Huntington Theatre Company at Boston University.  I moved back in time to Main Street (by Sinclair Lewis) and The Jungle (by Upton Sinclair), and I moved forward to The Sun Also Rises (by Ernest Hemingway).  These early 20th century American novels, not to my surprise, featured severely disillusioned individuals struggling to breathe free despite the broken promise of the United States of America.  Then I leapt from Ernest Hemingway, in 1926, to William Styron, in 1951.

The issue is no longer the same.  Styron's Lie Down in Darkness chronicles the collapse--nay, the dramatic implosion--of a family in Virginia.  The Loftis family begins soundly but soon sickens, literally.  Helen takes refuge in Nembutal and cigarettes.  Her husband, Milton, drinks continually and joylessly.  Their elder daughter, Maudie, is physically crippled, while their younger daughter, Peyton is spiritually--well, more on her later.  The interactions among Helen, Milton, and Peyton tend toward the theatrical, often theatrically furious.  For instance, Helen whirls to face Milton in outrage that he has given their daughter, Peyton, one drink of whiskey at her 16th birthday party; shortly before, Peyton confides frankly to Milton that "I just don't love [Helen]...I just don't think I love her."  (85)

The awfulness of the Loftis family reaches a climax at Peyton's wedding, described in pp. 260-305.  At first, all is proceeding OK.  Then, Peyton pushes her father away angrily, exclaiming, "Don't smother me, Daddy!  You're crazy!"  (286)  Helen becomes "so distraught as to be on the verge of some striking biological change" (292).  Milton develops the "face of someone on the verge of apoplexy" (304).  None of this promises future happy times for bride and groom, but least promising is the bride's own attitude to her marriage, as observed by the minister, Carey Carr--

 ...her "I will" had seemed less an avowal than a confession, like the tired words of some sad, errant nun.  (291)

The marriage does not last.  Peyton quickly exasperates and outrages her husband, a New York Jew named Harry Miller, who ultimately turns away from her.  While, at the end, Peyton goes in search of Harry, her mind keeps reverting to memories of her mother telling her things like "you mustn't mustn't can't you be proper.  God punishes improper children."  (366)  Has Peyton internalized her mother's judgments?  Has she become her mother?  An inquiring mind will never know, because Peyton commits suicide.  At Peyton's funeral, Milton nearly kills Helen.  Darkness, lying down or not, seems to characterize all three.

More specifically, despair characterizes their lives.  At one point, after tending to Maudie, Helen considers taking an overdose of Nembutal.  Milton experiences his marriage as "brutal and agonizing" but he is unable to act, "like a bug wriggling upside-down on the floor." (155)  Long before she commits suicide, Peyton is dangerously fixated on her mother and father.  While she physically leaves them behind in Virginia--to live with her husband Harry in New York--emotionally, she cannot let them go.  She never moves past the confounding legacies of her parents, as if they are an impenetrable wall.

The word "despair" or a word like it is omnipresent in the novel.  Consider these phrases:

"a predicament, overwhelming and hopeless, such as this one, couldn't be helped by piety, or prayers..."  (105)
"a sort of hopeful despair on his round, friendly face, but with more despair than hope" (144)
"past the frozen reach of ice the bay was as black as dusk, as despair..."  (171)

Two of them are from the point of view of the minister, Carey, who is supposed to provide transcendent hope.

Not only has the family collapsed, but religion has collapsed.  Although religion is paramount for most of the characters in the novel, it is rarely effective or redeeming.  Christmas Day at the Loftises is not a festive celebration of the birth of Christ but rather is "Pure hell." (163)--and the hell lasts.  As for Maudie--if she places faith in another being, that faith is not in Christ but in a wild man named Bennie who performs tricks for her (220-223).  Meanwhile, the minister fails to convince Helen that there is a God--"...he had not saved her, he had not taught her faith enough to endure disaster." (239)  In her stream-of-consciousness narrative at the end, Peyton seems to have an exaggerated sense of her sinfulness, which leads her to, as she puts it, "lie down in darkness."

The one character in the book who receives any joy from religion is Ella Swan, housekeeper and cook for the Loftises.  She looks up to an itinerant preacher named Daddy Faith, whose invigorating words lead her to proclaim, "You, Daddy!  Yes, Jesus, you loves us!" (397) and, a little later, "Yes, Jesus!  I seen him!  Yeah!  Yeah!"  (400)  Ella's cries of faith in God conclude the novel, which has been characterized by faithlessness.

Her cries of faith, however, feel too little, too late.  If the Loftises are any indication, the South is already in full self-destruct mode.