Ideas of community in three Depression-era Southern novels: Faulkner's 'The Hamlet', Dargan's 'Call Home the Heart', and Still's 'River of Earth'

Representations of southern identity in literature and in criticism are often based upon a combination of two factors: the role of community and the Myth of the South. Myths and images of community and the place of rural whites in that community have long been the axes upon which much of Southern literature has been plotted. However, the Depression tested and sometimes flouted ideas about Southern identity that had shaped the region's sense of itself since before the Civil War. It was during the 1930s that the role of community in the rural South became even more complicated, as its definitions, limitations, and abilities were articulated, confirmed, denied, or attacked.;This dissertation examines three novels of the 1930s: James Still's River of Earth, Olive Tilford Dargan's Call Home The Heart, and William Faulkner's The Hamlet through the concept of concentric circles---family, extended family/larger community, and "outsiders"---to examine the workings and failings of community and to examine how these novels test the larger, popular, normative and conventional myths of community that prevailed at this tumultuous time in American history. Each circle is seen as a layer of community that does not cushion the innermost circle (most often the family)---but rather insulates it, inevitably to its destruction. Families or original communities are presented at first as isolated, verging upon self-sufficiency, and with the hope of future success, but then they are beset by parasitic extended families and communities, which forces them to regroup. Before long, "outsiders" attack the now labile family unit, and any hope for ephemeral success fades.;As the circles shift, they become eccentric---not sharing a center---but that is when the family power structure itself heaves and the larger communities to which they at that time belong cannot compensate, and all individuals suffer. When the family will not hold, the stress falls to the extended family or community. When that will not hold, the stress falls to opportunistic, evil, or incomprehensible outsiders, and when they attack the family, the basic, foundational community itself collapses, leaving unromantic ruin and chaos.