Ive kept this terrible secret about my gay great uncle for decades until now
Of all the readings of fiction my high school English teachers assigned to me, the one that has stuck in my mind, haunting me over the past 60+ years, is A Rose for Emily by the great Southern writer William Faulkner. The short story takes place in Faulkners fictional town of Jefferson, Mississippi, in the correspondingly fictional county of Yoknapatawpha.Faulkner uses the technique of telling the story in the third person through an anonymous narrator, which increases the tension and mystery surrounding the events portrayed. Related A gay immigrant led the country to victory in the American Revolution The story begins with the narrator recalling Emily Griersons death as many of the towns residents attended her funeral in her once refined and grand home, which had fallen into disrepair. While alive, Emily had not permitted any of these folks to enter the house for the past decades, except her servant Tobe. What secret was she concealing thought many in the town?This home represents the passage of time, from the grandeur and refinement of Southern owning class ante- and post-bellum times (during which Emily spent her privileged childhood) to a new and modern era that seemed to leave her in its wake. Dive deeper every day Join our newsletter for thought-provoking commentary that goes beyond the surface of LGBTQ+ issues Subscribe to our Newsletter today The action reverts to a flashback scene, 30 years before at the death of her father, who was a deeply controlling man who drove off many of Emilys suitors, considering them not good enough and below the familys social status. Around this time, one of these suitors, whom the towns residents believed Emily was to marry, suddenly abandoned her and was never seen again in Jefferson. Following her fathers death, Emily fell into a deep depression and suffered a long illness.Jeffersons officials contracted workers to repave the sidewalks in their attempts to uplift and modernize the appearance of the town. A northerner, Homer Barron, was hired to supervise the project. Homer, a very outgoing and friendly person, soon became a popular figure among the towns residents. He captured Emilys heart, and he and Emily were often seen together on buggy rides on Sunday afternoons. Rumors and resentments soon followed from townsfolk that Emily was abandoning her family pride by getting involved with a man, a northerner no less, beneath her class and social station. Also, residents pitied Emily and believed that Homer was improperly courting her.Suspicion arose as Homer often frequented the local Elks Club in the company of younger men. The narrator implied that Homer may be either a homosexual or a confirmed bachelor, especially when Homer proclaimed that he was not a marrying man.Though my dear, great-uncle William died many years ago now, I still think fondly but with a sense of pain each time I think of him.Homers character represents the outsider in a world not of his making. As a northerner, he arrived to change this inward-looking and genteel town into a more modern and industrialized space, and by so doing, he inadvertently challenged long-engrained traditional values and beliefs.Emily too is an outsider of sorts. Even though she has resided in the town all her life, she seldom interacted with her neighbors, and became a recluse. Following her fathers death, she restricted anyone from the town from entering her home and, by remaining hidden, also prevented anyone from understanding her.As her affair with Homer continued, her reputation suffered even more. She went to the drug store and requested a bottle of arsenic. When the package arrived at her home, on the label was written For rats. The townspeople feared that Emily intended to kill herself with the poison, especially since it seemed that her possible marriage had become increasingly unlikely. Homer was seen during this time at the Griersons home for the final time, and he was never seen again. People assumed he had returned to the North.Years passed, and Emily grew heavier in body and spirit, and her hair turned gray. Except for her servant, who continued to go in and out, her door remained closed to the townsfolk for the most part. She eventually shut off the top floor of her house, and little was heard of her until her death at the age of 74.Some of the townswomen, two elders, and two of her cousins attended a service over Emilys body, which was laid out in the parlor. After some time had passed, the townspeople unsealed the upstairs room that had remained locked for 40 years. They were shocked to find the room frozen in time. Articles for an intended wedding, including a mans suit, were neatly laid out. They then saw Homer Barrons severely decayed body stretched out upon the bed.One of the horrified onlookers perceived an indentation of a head pushed into the pillow beside Homers body with a long strand of Emilys gray hair on the pillow, suggesting that Emily had long laid with the corpse for decades.FaulknerviewedEmily as a tragic figure, and he honored her in the storys title with a symbolic rose, which represented love. Her father was a tyrannical and selfish man who refused to allow Emily to date. She ultimately lost her wealth and lifestyle, her once youthful beauty, and the possibility of love and family.The author is quoted as saying, (The title) was an allegorical title; the meaning was, here was a woman who had a tragedy, an irrevocable tragedy and nothing could be done about it, and I pitied her, and this was a saluteto a woman you would hand a rose. A look into the Southern Gothics haunted housesWilliam Faulkners A Rose for Emily is a prime example of the U.S.-American literature genre that has come to be known as Southern gothic. Unlike its European gothic counterpart, which often includes imagery of dark and haunted ancient castles, Southern gothic is similar in that it often portrays characters who are severely flawed, disturbed, or eccentric and who reside in decaying or dilapidated settings, in grotesque situations often stemming from poverty, isolation, criminality, or violence.The settings are explicitly Southern. Some of the characters suffer from mental or emotional illness entering into madness. They continually seek what they perceive as an idealized past, the lost pride of an increasingly devastated Southern aristocracy, heightened and persistent racial hostilities,anda fixation with the grotesque, and a tension between realistic and supernatural elements.These Southern gothic writers construct fantastical and frightening scenarios in which characters possess mysterious secrets. These writers were interested in exposing extreme, antisocial behaviors as reactions and resistance against a rigid system of social and sexual conduct. Faulkners Emily engages in grotesque actions, and her descent into necrophilic madness underscores her failed rebellion against a society undergoing foundational changes. My Southern Gothic familys descent into madness | Shutterstock(Trigger warning: extreme violence)Like Emily Griersons father raised in the antebellum South, so too my paternal great-grandfather, Barnet Michalovsky, was a deeply flawed, angry, and controlling man. Though he was raised poor and never ascended to the heights of wealth as was once evident in the Grierson family, my great-grandfather and his entire family were perennial outsiders living as one of only a very few Jewish families in his Tennessee town at the turn of the 19thinto the 20thcentury.In an attempt to downplay his Jewish background, my great-grandfather officially changed his name to Barney Mogy, and he did not practice his religious traditions. Like Homer Barron in Faulkners story, Barney was a laborer of some sort, with the difference being that Barneywasa marrying man. He married a young Jewish woman, coincidentally named Rose Wallerstein. And within the next two decades, they produced 11 children, the fifth being my grandmother, Dorothy, who went by the nickname of Dottie, born in 1900.Many years later, when I turned 15 years old, my parents, Howard and Blanche Blumenfeld, told me of a family incident that would forever change my life. It concerned my great uncle William (Bill) Mogy, the fourth of eleven children who was two years older than my grandmother.As the saying goes, Were only as sick as our secrets, which means that a secret kept in the dark grows and expands to become more harmful to ourselves.According to my father, he knew that Bill was a very intelligent, kind, and caring person. I asked my father to tell me about Bill and about my grandmother Dorothys other family members since Dorothy didnt like to talk about her life in Tennessee or about her childhood and youth.Though my fathers sister, my aunt Bea, constructed a nice family tree outline, and I had heard some personal family testimony in the past, I wanted to know more.Since we were on the topic of great uncle Bill, I asked my father to tell me something else about him, like did he ever marry?You havent heard the story yet?, my father quipped with a curious expression on his face. When I asked, What story? he revealed a not-so-hidden family secret.Around 1913, when William was about my age at the time (15), his father my paternal great-grandfather, Barney asked William, while the family was at the dinner table, to join him in his bedroom for a talk after dinner. Though apprehensive and unsure what to expect, he answered, of course, he would go with his father.Walking behind his father into the bedroom after eating dessert, William shut the door upon being instructed to do so by his father. Barney sat on the bed and ordered William to come closer to him.William, you must do exactly as I say, he commanded. William, take down your pants.Startled, William responded, What? Why? Barney shouted this time, I said, take down your pants!At this point William obeyed. As he did this, Barney pulled a sharpened kitchen knife from beneath a bed pillow, moved closer to William grabbing his testicles, and in quick action, chopped them off.William shouted in agony and extreme pain, and he fainted as his body went into shock. Hearing his screams, Williams siblings and mother ran into the room and applied cloth bandages to prevent him from bleeding to death. Barney refused to allow the family to take William for professional medical treatment, and he ordered them not to reveal to anyone what he had done. The family made a pact to their father and husband to protect this horrendous and terrifying secret.His father, like that of Emily, was a tyrannical and selfish man who refused to allow William to love and to express himself authentically.William somehow physically survived the traumatic injury. My father told me that William lived all his life in shame. He was never involved in an intimate romantic relationship, and he always lived alone. Though he maintained friendships, and he acquired a good education, a cloud of depression and melancholy forever hung over him.Startled and in shock, I asked my father, Why did Barney do this? How could anyone do this to anyone, let alone their own son?My father responded: Well, Barney suspected William of being a homosexual, and he didnt want him to be. So he castrated him. I had feelings for other males ever since I was six or seven years old, but I knew up to this time at the dinner table when I was 15 not to tell anyone. This information about great uncle William pushed me even deeper into silence. Since that time, I have always felt that something more than a familial link connected me with William. But his trauma had relentlessly crossed from his body to that of his siblings and mother, and across generations to me.When my parents, sister, and I lived in New York City during the end of the 1940s through the middle 1950s, we sometimes spent one month with my grandparents, Eddy and Dorothy, in their tiny cottage in the San Fernando Valley in southern California. In his declining years after his wife Rose had died, great-grandfather Barney lived with his daughter Dorothy and my grandfather.My parents did not know the exact reason, but whenever Barney entered the room where I was present, I immediately turned and walked away. My mother later told me that I instinctively felt the anger and meanness that exuded from Barneys body. My fathers father (my grandfather) was the perennial outsider. Born Abraham Blumenfeld, he unofficially changed his name when he moved to Los Angeles in the late 19-teens to enter the film industry as an actor. Though many Jews were then involved in the industry, antisemitism was ripe. Hoping to blend in somewhat, he told possible employers that his name was Eddy Fields.Though my dear, great-uncle William died many years ago now, I still think fondly but with a sense of pain each time I think of him. I know that we remain attached through time and space by a familial history and a history of oppression, and sense of identity. In his life, William served as a reluctant pioneer in the struggle for respect and equality.As the saying goes, Were only as sick as our secrets, which means that a secret kept in the dark grows and expands to become more harmful to ourselves. Once we expose it to the light, we can release it and its power is lost. I rarely tell this family secret, but I now release it to be consumed and lessened by the sunshine and by the kind hearts of all who know it.Oh, by the way, here is just one more: Another of my grandmother Dorothys siblings, a sister, served later in life as a madam for high-priced call girls, but thats a story for another day.Subscribe to theLGBTQ Nation newsletterand be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.
