Mary Fortune is the bastard child of two polar and competing drives: the desire for material progress and modernization and the tendency to stagnate in tradition and principle. Mary Fortune mediates these two drives; she is neither all Fortune or all Pitts, although old man Fortune "liked to think of her as being thoroughly of his clay (528)."Fortune refuses to acknowledge the impurity of influence which has come to shape Mary Fortune's own belief system; he sees in her only a semblance of himself, and thus denies her complexity.
Fortune sees the no inherent value in the world and its inhabitants; he assigns value to objects or persons according to their potential utility: "He didn't have any use for her mother, his third or fourth daughter (he could never remember which), though she considered that she took care of him (526)."Mary Fortune "was the only member of the family he had any respect for (526)"; this is only because he sees in her a tool for his own use: he has fashioned out of Mary Fortune his own legacy. He is protective of her because he sees her as the only guarantor of progress upon whom he can rely:"'I said don't walk so close to the edge,' he called; 'you fall off there and you won't live to see the day this place gets built up (529).'"
Old man Fortune scoffs his son-in-law Pitts' willingness to "let a cow pasture or a mule lot or a row of beans interfere with progress (528)." Fortune values innovation and progress: "He was not one of these old people who fight improvement [...] He wanted to see a paved highway in front of his house with plenty of new-model cars on it (527)." He assumes that Mary Fortune's fascination with the machines milling about the Fortune property denotes a similar dedication to material progress to which he himself is affixed; he projects his own ideology upon Mary Fortune: "The people like you and me with their heads on their shoulders can't stop the marcher time for a cow (528)." When he decides to sell "the lawn," however, he is confronted with Pitts' undeniable influence on Mary Fortune when she is not as delighted by the potential for progress as he had expected. Mary Fortune is now, like the rest of the Pitts, a barrier to Fortune progress; she wishes to maintain "the lawn" for the sake of having a place to play, being able to see the woods across the road, and having a spot for Pitts' cattle to graze, reasons inconceivable to old man Fortune as he sees no inherent value in them. When he looks at the woods, he sees just that, "not a mountain, not a waterfall, not any kind of planted bush or flower, just woods (538)."
Old man Fortune is jolted from complacency as he confronts the perversion of his only potential legacy; he awakes one morning to discover that she has come to "[prefer] the sight of the woods (539)" to him. He flails to regain her loyalty, but every offer he puts forth is refused: "'I ain't got nothing to do in no ten-cent store,' she said. 'I don't want no quarter of yours (540).'" He has lost all power to influence Mary Fortune with the sway of material goods and thus lost the ability to control his legacy; disempowered and enraged, he destroys he own desecrated image.
I liked your thoughts on the dichotomy between Mr. Fortune representing Southern acceptance into modernity and Mary Fortune being the remaining root into Old Southerndom. It was interesting to me to view their relationship change drastically at the drop of a quarter so to speak. Although I agree with you in that Mary is some sort of controller of the destiny of Mr. Fortune's progressive legacy, I feel as though she isn't simply the retainer of the past. She readily accepts change, and the selling of thier land to foreign entities. That is, up until a point. To me, Mary is the identifier of the piece of straw that changes the pile to a mound-the demanding barrier that is impossible to see. She draws the line of when progress becomes complete change, and legacy of progress becomes the destruction of legacy. She feels as though the selling of the yard will be the piece of straw that changes everything indefinitely. And thus, she becomes a Pitts.
ReplyDelete-Does Mary's death by brain bashing tell something about the action needed for this type of legacy destroying change?
-Adam