By Susan HuettemanAgee's autobiographical novel was unfinished at the time of his death in 1955, but he was actively writing and his sketches open the book as a prologue, followed by twenty Chapters divided into
three parts. Agee's unfinished and unedited manuscripts are inserted into related chapters and are identified by italics, intensifying the poetic style of his prose.
His novel was compiled and published in 1957 by
his childhood friend David McDowell, founder of McDowell-Obolensky Publishers in 1957. It was reissued by Grossett and Dunlap in 1967 and Bantam Books in 1969, and finally by Vintage International, a Division of Random
House, Inc., 1998 (v.1).
The typescript with revisions, fragments, notes and 1948 corrections may be found in the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center (HR) of the University of Texas, which houses
Agee's complete works and correspondence. The collection includes mimeographed typewritten scripts of All The Way Home, adaptations of the 1960 novel by playwright Tad Mosel and screenwriter Philip Reisman Jr.
for the Paramount Pictures release in 1963.
It is important to note that in A Death in the Family Agee combines both real and fictitious names—which can be very confusing while studying Agee's life
and works. In the novel, his father's real name "Jay" is used, but the Agee last name becomes "Follet." His mother's real name "Laura" is changed to "Mary" and his sister's
real name, "Emma," is changed to "Catherine." His mother's real family's name, "Tyler," becomes "Lynch." What is even more interesting is that Agee uses his own middle name, "Rufus," for both
A Death in the Family and The Morning Watch. Real names and places are described in Companion B: "Agee's Life and Times."
Prologue
~The place he felt "at home"~ (AR 155)
Knoxville: Summer 1915
sets the nostalgic tone of the novel and intense detail of Agee's perceptions--a poetic guide to the late Victorian images Knoxville and the home of his parents and maternal grandfather.
Written at Anna
Maria Island, FL and cut to a fifth of its original size. It contains the lyrics set to music by Samuel Barber and premiered by soprano Eleanor Steber. Agee missed the premiere performance; he was in the hospital at the
time with appendicitis. While the prologue establishes 1915 as the year and summer as the season for A Death in the Family, it was actually May 16, 1916 that Jay Agee died. (DM 98)
Although Agee's work is a
novel, as are most of his works, it is essentially autobiographical. The description of Rufus' encounter with his great-great-grandmother in LaFollette, TN and the priest's visit to Knoxville, however, are fiction.
While retelling scenes and depicting people from his life, Agee basically fictionalizes names. The departure, however, is the use of his childhood name "Rufus" and his father's nickname, "Jay."
Part One
The easy tone of the prologue continues in Jay's open relationship with his son--a mutual trust and contentment. Jay took Rufus into a man's world, seeing risqué Charlie Chaplin
movies and being with his son as he drank in the bar before sharing for the final time the wonder of the Knoxville night.
Jay and Rufus walked into the middle of a western. In the early days motion pictures ran
continuously and patrons could enter and leave at will or stay for another round. Westerns were standard and double features were commonly shown, preceded by a comedic short feature or a live Vaudeville skit.
[For more information, go to Being There: Companion B: Fleeting Images-Motion Pictures (Moving Pictures, Movies)]
As was common during the turn of the century, Rufus' mother
followed the Victorian practice of a mannered politeness in personal relationships and maintaining social discreteness. Agee contrasts his mother's disapproval of rude and risqué movies against the man-to-man
relationship it provided Jay and his son. That Jay took Rufus to a Chaplin movie was significant--Agee and Chaplin became close friends in life. Further, the movie is in direct contrast to the sheltered life his mother
preferred. After her husband's death she enrolled her son in the protective environment of the monastic St. Andrews School School. Rufus was alternately strongly influenced by the Anglo-Catholic doctrine and creatively
rebellious against its restrictions on the students, the basis for his first autobiographical novel The Morning Watch.
After seeing the movie, Jay says to Rufus "...reckon I'll hoist me a
couple," establishing Jay's disregard of Prohibition. In early times Knoxville had many bars. Beer was a staple in the diet of many of the immigrants and home brews continued to be common in rural mountain areas.
With Prohibition a jug of Moonshine was never traded in daylight. Wine and beer stills were built in home cellars, sometimes blowing up to the surprise of temperate neighbors.
Like most women of her time, Rufus' mother observed "Temperance,"
while her husband frequented bars that were fronted as markets or restaurants or "speakeasies" located at the side of a roadway far from any town. It may seem curious that Rufus accompanied his father's visit to the market bar. In early times, however, it was not uncommon for children to be sent on errands to the bar, carrying home beer in their little pails, or to the general store to buy cigarettes for their parents.
Walking home, Rufus and his father were immersed in the beauty of North Knoxville where for two centuries Agees had lived. Throughout his works Agee marvels at the mystery of the stars, the black night
sky, the blue-misted Great Smoky Mountains, and brilliance of the sunset. He treasured the images of the approaching night--its creatures and sounds. Natural beauty was an intense call, constantly reappearing in his
writing; the intensity of this love was at the core of his discontent with urban living.
[For more information, go to Being There: Companion B: East Tennessee and Knoxville-Streets]
Chapter 2
As Rufus and his sister lay sleeping deep in the warm night, his parents were awakened by a telephone call that would alter their lives. When they heard the ringing, they could identify the
call was for them by a combination of long and short rings. Their line was "a party line" shared with three to four people. Needless to say, a secret was not easy to keep in those days, exacerbating the
mannered conversations of Late Victorian times. Not every family had a telephone. In 1880, when the first telephone was set in Knoxville, there were only thirty subscribers. The telephone was considered a luxury item
and, until 1928, two instruments—an earpiece and a mouthpiece--were needed to talk.
Jay's preparation for his trip to his father's home in LaFollette--the real name of his parent's home--provides insight into early
century clothing, home interiors and accessories, and sanitary practices.
Less than one in five homes had running water. While many rural homes relied on deep wells for drinking water and cisterns for
washing, Knoxville had fresh water springs and rivers available to them. There were many springs along the creeks, but with its accessibility came businesses and railroads. In 1854, cisterns were dug for use in putting
out fires, later replaced by a water system drawn from the river. Town-supplied water,
albeit muddy, could be purchased for private use. "Uncle Dick" Payne sold clean drinking water by the bucket from his two-wheeled cart drawn by a donkey. He was a beloved African American; a street on Reservoir Hill is named for him.
For more information, go to Being There: Companion B: East Tennessee and Knoxville-Victorian]
Chapter 2-3
Jay's route to the river is a travelogue of old Knoxville,
providing insights into the coexistence of motorized and horse-drawn transportation. The automobile and the gas powered engine of the early 20th
century gave society comfort, freedom, and access to distances in a relatively short time. There was considerable social status attached to having an auto. Until enclosed cars were designed, drivers and their passengers wore driving coats, hats, and goggles to protect their eyes from the dusty dirt roads. Horses were known to out distance an auto and continued to pull buggies and streetcars; thus the auto was called a "horseless carriage."
Jay's river crossing on a flat boat to reach the mountain country was a common practice in East Tennessee. The Tennessee River flows along the base of the city of Knoxville, only a few blocks from Market
Square and Gay Street where Aunt Hannah and Rufus shopped. Early Knoxville streets were identified by numbered creeks that flowed to the river, such as First Creek, Second Creek, and Third Creek.
[For more information, go to Being There: Companion B: East Tennessee and Knoxville-Geo-Tennessee and Streets]
Chapters 4-5
establish family relationships and perceptions about religion. Little is written about the Agee family. It is known that Rufus' mother, Laura Tyler (Mary in the novel), defied her father's objection to her marriage to Jay Agee. With the assistance of her twin brother, she went to Panama where Jay was employed by the U. S. Post Office. They were married in Panama. Within two years they returned to Knoxville where Jay worked for his father-in-law, Joel Tyler (Lynch in the novel).
Tyler was a prosperous businessman and his children enjoyed being leisure class artists. Tyler's influence clearly carried through to his grandson, for Agee resisted being attentive to deadlines and
despised maintaining a work schedule. That Agee portrays his Aunt Paula (Aunt Hannah in the novel) as the least dysfunctional relative is not surprising; it was she that he knew the best and she taught him piano. In his
poem "Dedication" Agee hails the Tyler family, but there is no evidence that he maintained a relationship with either the Tylers or Agees as an adult. (CP)
Although Jay Agee's father and brother were
professional men, Jay did not finish elementary school, but instead worked to support his brother's education. Agee makes a distinct comparison by painting his father's family as mountain people, while his mother's
family is depicted as one of sophistication and successful. The Agee's were of French Huguenots. While the Huguenots were traditionally a Calvinistic group, the Agees were Unitarians and considered by the Tylers as
non-Christian. The Tylers were Anglo-Catholic (Church of England) and upon her husband's death, Laura Agee became obsessively religious. At Jay's funeral, held in Knoxville at St. John's Church, the Priests observed the
non-Christian liturgy in the Book of Common Prayer.
[For more information, go to Being There: Companion B: James Agee's Life and Times-Family and Funeral]
Chapter 6
When Jay visits his family in LaFollette, his brother Ralph's sibling rivalry is evident and his one-up-man-ship has not been outgrown--Ralph drove a Chalmers! The Chalmers was better known as a racecar and later as a
farm implement. It was more expensive than the Model T Ford Jay drove. But then Ralph was an undertaker and Jay was only working for his wife's father. Both men had a weakness for alcohol. Ralph's womanizing and
insobriety are indicative of Agee's wrestle with his own destructive demons.
[For more information, go to Being There: Companion B: James Agee's Life and Times-Family
Companion B: East Tennessee and Knoxville]
Chapter 7
In a departure from the story line, Aunt Hannah, his maternal grandfather's sister, provides young Rufus access to the outside world and
elementary attempts to effect his own will. Caps were popular at the time and worn by working men and boys well into 1940s, forerunners of the billed caps today. Rufus believes that wearing a big boy's cap will prove he
is not a sissy.
Thus, in A Death in the Family,
Agee continues to work out this important challenge from childhood by introducing Aunt Hannah as a non-parental catalyst for change and growth. Aunt Hannah permits Rufus to have a big boy's cap. Unfamiliar with making his own decisions, Rufus experiences both pleasure and an undercurrent of sneaky delight--he would impress the neighborhood boys, but would his parents approve? It was the beginning of a life-long dilemma: seeking the thrill of living on the edge, while desperately seeking approval.
Agee wrote of peer pressure in The Morning Watch--his first novel set at St. Andrews School when he was twelve. There he was called a "mamma's boy" and sought his peers'
acceptance by breaking rules, facing fear, and being uncharacteristically cruel to nature's creatures. Not being part of the group and his embarrassment of his childhood incontinence are themes that recur again and
again in Agee's writings. As a young adult he continued to be confused by personal relationships, which he later exacerbated by three marriages and numerous liaisons.
[For more information, go to Being
There: Companion B: East Tennessee and Knoxville-Victorian Clothing]
The conclusion of Part One is an italicized liturgy of childhood, reminiscent of Anglican responses. "I hear my father, I need never
fear. I hear my mother, I shall never be lonely, or want for love."(76) Agee personifies a darkness that taunted him in his adult life and "He cried out again more fiercely for his father."(79). His
father understood that he was "afeared," but mannerisms of the time dictated hiding emotions, and his father admonished, "...you're getting too big to cry." (82)
The tenacious style is reminiscent of his poem "Dedication" in Permit me Voyage in which Agee identifies family members and a superfluous a listing of dead and famous people, including his
reputed maternal ancestor Walt Whitman and his idol Abraham Lincoln. He praises them for their search for truth and identifies their strengths. He praises all who love God, language, art, professions, and nations, and
those who fear truth, evil, and good, and the one's who distinguish the difference. To the church he prays for free choice.
Contrasting the intensity is a diversion of folk songs that Jay sang to Rufus. Then, Agee
digs deeper, searching to make sense of the loss of his father. "... and it hit you hard enough, that little while it lasted, to break your heart." (87)
He also remembers his mother with an
unusual tenderness, although she is often portrayed as serious and without a sense of humor. (222) Rufus loved her and needed her, particularly after his father's death. She wanted him to be strong and kept him apart
from being overshadowed in a world of women. After St. Andrews School, his stepfather enrolled him in Phillips Exeter Academy. In her inexperience, his mother thought both were protective environments. It is a
misconception Agee explored in his fable, "A Mother's Tale."(CPR 221-242)
Agee explores the themes of growing up and the lure of the unknown as the cow tells her calf about "the train
that takes them away."
The calf wants to go on the train, but the mother urges him to stay where it is safe and predictable. Patience in pain was proof of worth—an edict certainly drawn from the times, but also a prominent
theme of monastic training.
While standing with the herd the calf was struck with a strange thought: "...the one ahead was his father, and that the one behind was the son he had never
begotten." He was suddenly aware that he was " a creature separate and different from any other, who had never been before, and would never be again." His mother warned of a calf that went on the
train. He escaped the slaughter, returning to the herd to warn them of man. But no one believed him. His warning words were: "Break down fences...Tell everybody, everywhere." (SP, 221-240)
Sheltering children from reality and segregating diversity are recurring themes in Agee's work and in the early 20th century vignette at the conclusion of Part One in A Death in the Family.
[For more information, go to Being There: Resources- Creekmore, Deaderick, and Civil War video and Time Line-East Tennessee-Civil War and Cherokee Nation]
Part Two
Chapters 8-10.
Agee provides an intimate look at Late Victorian relationships. He establishes the ways in which people accept the inevitable, particularly death. His sensitive treatment of the progression from
realization to acceptance is textbook. With artistry Agee paints a portrait of a family in conflict and in grief. His grandfather's sadness for his mother's grief is mixed with his unresolved disapproval of Jay:
"...all her intelligence, hardly even born, came to nothing in the marriage..."(129).
It was over her father's objections that Laura Tyler convinced her brother to go with her to Panama, where she eloped
with Jay Agee. He was a mere postal worker with a fourth grade education and from a French Huguenot mountain family--not even considered Christian by Tyler-Anglican standards. "...it was the whole stinking morass
of churchiness that really separated them..."(129)
Agee develops a poignant scene between Mary and her father, where pain was to be endured and accepted without reaction--a recurring and
self-inflicting Agee theme. Her father tells her not crawl into a hole and hide. Then, overcome with a father's protective love, he promises that when financial difficulties face her, he would be there for her.
"We'll work that out." (142).
It would be unthinkable for a Tyler daughter to work; that was reserved for poor families. He was a successful businessman, providing the financial cushion for his son's
painting and his daughter's piano. Laura had no particular artistic skills, except attempts at writing poetry. It only confirmed her parents' belief that she had thrown away her life with her marriage to Jay. Now they
could help her regain stability and status.
Laura Tyler and her children did endure the loss of Jay, and it was with the financial assistance of her father. Living on "family charity" was not comfortable for
Laura, but it was the motivation to move to St. Andrews School with her children. Yet, it was to the Tyler home that Laura, Rufus, and Emma returned each summer. It was the images of summer evenings, lying on quilts (7)
on his grandfather's lawn, that stayed with Agee all of his life. It was his essence.
[For more information, go to Being There: Companion B: James Agee's Life and Times
Resources: Agee's Life and Work-Biography]
Chapter 11
LaFollette, where the Agees lived, was a small town about forty miles from Knoxville. Jay's brother Frank (fiction name Ralph) was drunk and
probably Jay as well. Jay was driving a five-passenger Ford Model T car. S. H. Tinsley heard the crash on Clinton Pike. Doctors Wm. Chocrane and Wm. Delpeuch were summoned. Tinsley called Laura at 10:00pm. The Tylers
immediately came to Laura's home. (JA 13-17)
Agee recounts the manner in which his father died, sculpting impression of the "cut on the chin. One little bruise on his lower lip." (157). It was an
image that repeatedly haunted him, restated in Chapter 12 (180) and Chapter 18 (282). He used the image in The Morning Watch.
"Death: Dead, the word prevailed; and before him, still beyond all stillness, he saw as freshly as six years before his father's prostrate head and, though the efforts to hide it, the mortal blue dent in the impatient chin."(MW 28).
While sources list Jay's death as May 16, 1916, Bergreen sets the date as May 18th. This is the date listed by
Agee Films Web site and the David Madden
chronologies. They indicate that his brother Frank called Jay on May 17th regarding his father's illness and on early May 18th Jay crossed the river to LaFollette. (DM; AF:JA 12-17) While May 18
th may be more accurate, May 16th appears in many sources, creating "coincidence" and, as with most fictional history, "a better story."
[For more information, go to Being There: Resources: Agee's Life and Work-Novels]
Chapter 12
This chapter provides a departure into the paranormal world, where the spirit of Jay Agee
seems to return for one last moment with his children. His wife Mary speaks to his presence, freeing his spirit to continue its journey with God. Ghosts and spirits were a popular phase of leisurely Late Victorian life,
just as education, the visual and performing arts, and literary groups flourished. It was a time of economic prosperity and well-being. Civil War Reconstruction was fading into memory while industrialization was
escalating. Society had the time and means to explore the possibilities of their mind and imaginations. There was leisure time to pay calls on friends and to sit on the porch, talking casually (6).
Rufus
"...stayed out on the porch with the men." (206) The compassionate scene is filled with images of the moment: the changing sky and haze on the mountain. Porches under the vast sky were important parts of
Agee's own identity. In his monumental field study of the poverty of Alabama tenant farmers, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, he slept on the shanty porches at night under the stars.
Agee's behavior in Alabama has
a direct link to his childhood. When the tenant family left their home, Agee moved from room to room, examining drawers examining intimate personal items. He clearly knew he was prying "intimately into the lives of
an undefended and appallingly damaged group of human beings....living in this world, innocent of such twistings as these taking place over their heads." (FM,5,10)
As a child he had been alone in his maternal
grandfather's home and to escape the "suffocations of midsummer city." He roamed from room to room "examining into every secrecy." He read, played the piano, stared in the mirror, and rifled drawers,
closets, and boxed to find "odor of fabrics, pelts, jewels, switches of hair." That feeling returned to him in Alabama as he observed the intimate daily life of the tenant farmers and their families:
"silent and undefended in the sun." (FM 120-121) Agee invaded the privacy of the tenant house just as he had his grandfather's house, and he was on the porch when they returned. (165).
Everything in Alabama
seemed to awaken Knoxville images. Once again Agee lay on the front porch looking at the sky. The sky withheld herself. (FM 18-19) "This has been happening for a long while; its beginning was before the stars...no
one knows where it will end." He is "witness" and respectful of the labor of the universe. (FM 119)
Early in his life Agee was sensitive to people in need; his grandmother Tyler sheltered abused women
in her home. In Alabama he saw the land as a ritual of human need--an "obligation and inevitability" that words can only "describe." (FM 197-210) His search had begun "...to try to
recognize the wonder of one's own existence, to know beauty, to defend one's self, to assist others..." (FM 270)
Alabama became more than a field study for a magazine assignment. It intensified Agee's
catharsis, rekindling raw memories of unresolved family relationships. "My father, my grandfather, my poor damned tragic, not unusually tragic, bitched family...that only want to live in kindness and decency, you
never live an inch without involvement and hurting people...who in Jesus name am I." (FM 339) Then, as he would do in "Dedication," he followed with introits of his images of tenant life. (CP 8-23)
~In every child who is born, under no matter what circumstances, and of
no matter what parents, the potentiality of the human race is born again
(and also) our terrific responsibility towards human life.~ (FM25)
[For more information, go to Being There: Resources-Agee's Life and Work-Novels and Prose]
Chapter 13
The visit to the LaFollette family, described in Chapter 13 is an important
painting of East Tennessee mountain life with its rustic log cabins. The poignant moment between Rufus and his great-great grandmother connects generation to generation:
~She drew him closer and looked at him almost glaring, she was so filled
with grave intensity...she looked at him even more keenly and incredulously...
and with sudden love [Rufus] kissed her again.~ (217)
[For more information, go to Being There: Companion B: East Tennessee and Knoxville,
Companion B: Agee's Life and Times-Family, Resources: East Tennessee and Knoxville]
The return trip home on the L&N (Louisville and Nashville Railroad) is a delightful moment on an early 20th
century train, with a bonus view of the Great Smoky Mountains whose "...liftings of gray blue opened out like a fan and filled the whole country ahead..."(219). Because rivers were only navigable when the water was high, railway
development was the obvious long distance transportation choice. South Carolina had corn and cotton to trade and Knoxville had hogs, beef, poultry and livestock. It took fifty years for Knoxville to achieve a
rail system and with it the workers changed the face of Knoxville, creating neighborhoods of a "mixed sort, fairly solidly lower middle class" in homes built at the turn of the century.(3)
[For more information, go to Companion B: Agee's Life and Times: Transportation
Companion B: East Tennessee and Knoxville Time Line: East Tennessee and Railroads]
Part Three
Chapter 14
Agee was devoted to music and it was generally believed that musical forms, such as sonata form and theme and variations, could be found in his writing--although there is no evidence of
specific intent. Using the supposition that the death of his father is the main theme, then Agee creates a succession of reactions (variations) as each person learns of his accident--his mother, his father's family, his
mother's family, the children and on through servants to neighbors to school children. Aunt Hannah was initially supportive Rufus, helping him purchase the cap. Now, under the pressure of "taking over" for her
niece, she snaps at the counterpoint of his innocent exuberance (228). As the children are told of the death of their father, the scene intensifies against the sounds of the streetcar's "iron cry," (228) a
recurring motif from prologue: "A streetcar raising its iron moan..."(6)
The detachment of Rufus' six-year old logic continues as a strong counterpoint against the sobriety of his mother's
mourning. He secretly watches his mother's liturgy of the Rosary, knowing full well that "She'd be mad if she knew." (229)
~...words, emotion, characters, situations (have) discernible symmetry and a very definite musical quality"... introducing characters like a symphony... characters introduced quietly moving them into
counterpoint."~ (FF 45)
[For more information, go to Resources: Agee's Life and Work-Letters to Father Flye]
As the adults are immobilized by Jay's death and prepare for the funeral
and a period of mourning, Rufus assumes the responsibility for dressing his sister, providing an excellent description of period clothing and mannerisms.
It was not uncommon for five-year old boys to wear tunics and
dresses--a practice that continued until World War II. Young boys wore knee-cut trousers, while older boys wore knickers that fastened just below the knee and were covered with high socks. Small boys covered their long
hair, Dutch style or long curls, with a hat with a wide brim. Rufus chose a soft cap, similar to men of the working class. Small children wore high shoes that covered the ankle. Older boys wore oxford type shoes with
leather soles and girls wore buckle style. Shoes were always white, brown, or black.
Under garments, such as Catherine wore, were functional and usually one-piece with a button front and button back flap. Buttoning
the back flap was difficult and required help. Even when two-piece underwear became popular, it was without elastic and was buttoned around the waist, requiring assistance. This practice continued into the 1940s.
[For more information, go to Being There: Companion B: Agee's Life and Times-Artistic Periods; Late Victorian Clothing and Social Mannerisms, Resources: Victorian]
Chapter 15
This chapter briefly introduces little Catherine's inability to grasp the abstraction of death. Over a breakfast of Post Toastie's cereal, called "Elija's manna" by C. W. Post, Aunt Hannah attempts to simplify
an explanation of death. Children, as well as women, were generally protected from the harsh realities of life by the heads of their households. Her explanation is juxtaposed over the children's simplicity--a
visualization of things they knew that died. Is this a child's logic or the basic way that Jim Agee viewed life and death?
[For more information, go to Being There: Companion B: Victorian-Food]
In Chapter 16 Rufus improvises the news of his father's death on strangers and neighborhood peers, exploring the limits of his newly found independence. Agee provides details of the family routine and
mannerisms, children's toys, and the interiors and exteriors of an early 20th
century home. Mannerisms of the times unfold, but the cruelty of peers that Rufus experienced is common to all centuries. As Rufus's confidence grows, he leaves the security of the front porch and moves bravely beyond his home and into the alley. An alley separated the back yards of homes and was where his father's car was parked. The crunch under Rufus's feet reveals the common practice of lining driveways and alleys with cinders. These "clinkers" were burned coal remnants used to heat the homes.
While cultivated flower gardens were popular during the Victorian era, most families of that period maintained vegetable gardens and canned for winter storage in an outdoor cold cellar or the basement's cold closet.
Handymen and house servants attended to the basic needs of families in the upper economic brackets, as was the case of Rufus' maternal grandparents. It was not uncommon to keep a small pen of chickens, thus the barn
stored garden and maintenance tools. Autos were parked in backyard barns and later garages—both accessible through the alley. (243)
Because Knoxville was a progressive and industrial city, people had many
transportation choices in the early part of the century: streetcars, horse drawn carriages, and automobiles. The first streetcar operated by Knoxville Street Railway went to "any street or alley in the
city." (AC 1-2; CN 14; ST 1-2)
[For more information, go to Being There: Companion B: Agee's Life and Times-Transportation]
Chapters 17-18
are exemplary of Late Victorian mourning, the wake, and in Chapter 19
the ritual of an Anglican funeral is examined. Jay's funeral was Saturday May 20, 1916. Fr. W. C. Robinson, a minister, came from Chattanooga, TN. He wore a tall silk hat, a Victorian practice for special occasions.
Victorians immersed themselves in bereavement, drawing curtains and stopping the movement of clocks.
Mourning lasted two full years and was in two stages. Women in mourning wore dull black crepe for one
year, then black silk for half mourning for one year. Children wore black and black ribbons adorned the garments of babies. Men wore black suits and black armbands. (GH 13) Thus, Rufus could not wear his brightly
checkered new cap.
[For more information, go to Being There: Companion B: Fleeting Images]
Jay Agee was of French Huguenot heritage, a movement founded by the French Calvinists. The
Calvinist doctrine believed in thrift and hard work--a strong influence on Agee's obsessiveness as a writer. His mother's family did not recognize the Agee family religion as Christian. (MC 1-2) Jay Agee was not
Anglican, yet his burial was in the Anglo-Catholic church of his wife and her family. The Book of Common Prayer outlines liturgy for "The Burial of the Dead," including "Burial of One Who Does Not
Profess the Christian Faith,", a category they reserved for Jay Agee. (AL 1-3)
Rufus was raised in his mother's church and it was an Anglo-Catholic monastic order that administered the St. Andrews
School that he attended following his father's death. Agee often utilized a liturgical listing-style in his prose and poetry.
[For more information, go to Being There: Companion B: Fleeting Images-Funeral]
While the final chapter of A Death in the Family
is pious and sober, there is an unexpected recapitulation. Rufus once again views the Great Smoky Mountains, just as he did with his father that fatal night. But this time he is with his Uncle Andrew--the realist, the one who is the artist "living at home." (7)
Unfolding before Rufus are the remains of the Civil War bunker Fort Sanders and beyond are the mountains of his father's roots. The return to the blue-hued mountains captures the essence of Agee. He never lost his
love of rural East Tennessee. He only found inner peace in nature's beauty. His uncle's pent-up anger creates a sharp contrast and reflects Agee's own inner turmoil: that happiness cannot exist when distrust and
resentment is suppressed. Agee's story ends--unresolved as in his own life.
[For more information, go to Being There: Resources: East Tennessee and Knoxville, Resources: Video-Civil War, Time Line:
Knoxville]
Susan Huetteman is a retired teacher in Rhode Island.
