The Queen

When I first read the title of the story, “There Was a Queen”, I expected the story to be about some sort of royalty or some how tied into the royal family. I was sort of surprised upon finishing the story that the family, the only three remaining Sartoris’ and their three servants, were about as far from royalty as you can get. I wondered how Faulkner derived this title and as I went through the story again I began to see the Queen imagery that surrounds Virginia Du Pre, the elderly, disabled aunt who spends her days in her wheelchair looking out her window.
Elnora is the character who holds “Miss Jenny”, as she calls her, to the status of a queen. The first inclination Faulkner gives to this is the capitalization of the word “Her” and “She” when ever Elnora is talking about Miss Jenny. Elnora is telling her children, Isom and Saddie, the story behind Miss Jenny and every time she refers to Miss Jenny the pronoun is capitalized. “With the Yankees done killed Her paw and Her husband and burned the Cal-lina house over Her and Her mammy’s head, and She come all the way to Missippi by Herself, to the only kin She had left.” These pronouns, which grammatically speaking should not be capitalized, are done so as a means of showing respect. Generally, when speaking of a queen and referring to her as “Her Majesty” the title is capitalized not only as a way to show respect but also as a way to acknowledge her authority. Elnora is doing precisely this. The words are capitalized to show Elnora’s respect for Miss Jenny as well as to acknowledge the authority and superiority Miss Jenny has over her.
Furthermore, Elnora always holds Miss Jenny to such a high caliber. She considers Miss Jenny to be superior to everyone else “because Miss Jenny quality…and that’s something you don’t know nothing about, because you born too late to see any of it except her”, as she explains to her son Isom. Elnora explains that Miss Jenny doesn’t complain about Narcissa because unlike the others, Miss Jenny has class and is above griping. The admiration Elnora has for Miss Jenny is much like that of which a subject would have for his or her queen.
Also, the way Miss Jenny sits at the window in her chair overlooking the yard seems as though she is keeping watch of her kingdom. She keeps a close eye on Narcissa and Bory as they walk out into the woods and then return soaking wet from sitting in the creek. She questions the servants about Narcissa’s reasoning behind her midday adventure with Bory much like a queen would keep check on her subjects. Miss Jenny is a lot like a queen type figure in that she is all-knowing so to speak. She knows exactly where everyone is in the house at all times, such as when she tracked Narcissa through the house after she returned from her afternoon dip in the creek, listening to her footsteps as she moved about the house.
There were several other instances in which I saw Miss Jenny depicted as a queen figure, these are just a few. I thought it was rather interesting that after going back through the story and searching for the meaning of the title it was so clear why the story was titled “There Was a Queen” and I was surprised I didn’t pick up on it the first time.