Faulkner

"There Was a Queen" has a style that's easy to connect with As I Lay Dying, another work by William Faulkner that I read during high school. The trademark that I remember from As I Lay Dying was the way the narrator changed from chapter to chapter and eventually went around to all of the novel's characters, so that the reader could see the interpretation of each firsthand. Because of this, the change in the focus of the narrator from Elnora to elderly Virginia in chapter three is immediately noticeable and sticks out in my head from the story. Of course, it's not exactly the same kind of change. "There Was a Queen" isn't first person narration, it just tends to describe and follow one specific character at a time. For most of the story, except for chapter three and the beginning of chapter four, that person is Elnora. The section at the beginning of chapter four focuses on Narcissa for about a page before switching back to Elnora.

At first glance, it's hard to notice exactly how Faulkner is following one character in particular. The amount of dialogue seems to be comparable between Elnora and the other characters. However, he keeps jumping back to what Elnora is doing after each section of dialogue, almost as if her nonverbal movements and expressions are the last word of each conversation. All of these sentences occur immediately after an ending line of dialogue in the story: "Elnora turned now." "Elnora didn't answer." "Elnora grunted." "Elnora looked at Saddie." The dialogue is framed by these kinds of comments on what Elnora is doing. Even though the story isn't being told by Elnora (for the first, second, and fourth chapters), it's being told from her point of view.

So, when the third chapter comes around and suddenly Faulkner's focus is on Virginia, it's somewhat surprising because of how attached and devoted his narration seemed to be on Elnora. "There Was a Queen" was written in 1933, three years after As I Lay Dying was published, but the remnants of the kind of flexibility of that novel with the narrator clearly stayed with Faulkner as part of his permanent style. I can definitely notice it in this short story.