The (M)other as Monster: Modern Curious Cases of Naturals and Their (Birth) Stories
The (M)other as Monster: Modern Curious Cases of Naturals and Their (Birth) Stories

Summary/Abstract: I have selected here two American short stories of the Roaring Twenties: a) “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, first published in his volume Tales of the Jazz Age (1922); b) “Miss Zilphia Gant” by William Faulkner, first submitted for & rejected from publication around mid-December 1928; eventually published in a literary magazine, as late as June 1932. Highlighted here are the particular differences between the consecrated versions and their shadow-like modern doubles, i.e. between the celebrated 2008 American film and the 1922 (hardly ever mentioned so far) original story by Fitzgerald – on the one hand; as well as those between the Faulknerian stories “A Rose for Emily” (1930) and “Miss Zilphia Gant” (1928 / 1932) – on the other hand. (Failed) motherhood/mothering breeds monsters, being one itself. Benjamin Button is – if not a close (fictive) relative, at least someone whose name sounds much like that of (natural) Benjy Compson in Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury (1929). (Monstrous?) Otherness counterpoints the (natural?) self. (Human) Age: is it a thing of nature? Miss Zilphia Gant is a somewhat earlier version of Faulkner’s Miss Emily Grierson. But then she is also related to Addie Bundren, in her monstrously failed motherhood/mothering. Further on, to some Macondo (m)others – definitely others than Ursula Buendia, the only true Mother of a clan doomed to One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967). Still further on, to Sethe, the desperate (m)other of Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987). Such are the influences of William Faulkner’s fiction – whether famous or barely known. As the world of (M)Other Nature is quite a small place. Apparently.

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