Dewey Dell

       I think Dewey Dell is my favorite character in As I Lay Dying. I mean Cash is definitely more likable and Vardaman is funnier and crazier, but Dewey Dell got my attention from the beginning because she actually had a plot line and something urgent happening in her life. At the beginning of the novel, I was rather confused and not particularly interested in any of the other characters. Cash was just sawing away, Anse was philosophizing about roads, Jewel was playing with horses, Vardaman was being crazy and thinking about fish, and Darl just never connected with me at all because he narrated other people's stories and didn't talk about himself. I didn't even pick up on what happened to Dewey Dell at first, but once she started to tell you more about it, it quickly became the more troubling and intriguing story line than transporting the body of a dead woman we hadn't met (at the beginning). Because Anse was depicted as so clueless and lazy and out of it, I pitied him a little bit, but I couldn't really grasp his grief for Addie; there was always a little bit of humor in it. While Dewey Dell's narrative style is much harder to follow, it's difficult to call it funny because of the serious predicament she is in. I think part of Dewey Dell's craziness comes from having this secret that she can't tell anyone, and its physical and emotional weight is mixing her up and keeping her tied down and lost within her own feelings. The reader doesn't really get actual narration out of her, they get glimpses into her head and see her confusion and fear about what to do, and the way she becomes aware of nature and birth and life, such as the cow she seems to bond with in the barn.

       To me, Dewey Dell never came across as plain stupid in the book. She's scared, she's panicked, she's lost, but I don't think Faulkner means for her to be stupid because he makes her story tragic enough that we can't laugh at it. She obviously doesn't know a lot of things and has not been educated well, even in the functions of her own body. Perhaps "powerless to alter her fate" is true of her, but I have trouble viewing her as quite so utterly incompetent and naive. I think she knows what's happening and she knows roughly what she has to do to fix it. She knows she can't tell anyone because at this time that would not have gone down well, and she also questions a few times whether they'd kill Lafe, which it doesn't really sound like she wants. But she does tell the people she needs to tell: the shop keepers, and even though she doesn't quite have the vocabulary to articulate her problem, they figure it out. I don't think she knew exactly what sort of fix they were going to give her, because it's a little unclear if she knew it was illegal or not, and she fell for MacGowan's mention of an "operation." So she clearly isn't the brightest. But I don't know, there's something about Dewey Dell that makes me not want to think that. I mean it doesn't seem like Addie is the sort of mother who would have explained much to Dewey Dell, especially not about love, and I can't ever imagine having to talk to any male member of the Bundren family about anything female-related, they're all kind of gross and creepy (except maybe Cash). While she doesn't really have a choice, I think she is quite determined and courageous to be trying this out alone and clueless. She thinks up a way to bring along her Sunday clothes and $10 that seems to fool everyone but Darl for most of the trip. The end of As I Lay Dying has left me a little unsatisfied because we have no idea what's going to happen to her! Is she going to find Lafe again? Is she going to have to tell her family? Will the new Mrs. Bundren be someone she can share her secret with? I'm not entirely sure what our conclusion was about Faulkner's portrayal of women, because while the women weren't particularly positive, the men certainly weren't either, but I think it's true that with Dewey Dell the reader is supposed to feel bad for her, not judge her too much for her lack of worldly knowledge, and understand that the life of a country woman at this time, especially in the Bundren family, would have been tough.