“Forever Behind Us”: The Complex Social Matrix of the Upper South, Memory, Positive Transgression, and the Construction of Personal Identity in Peter Taylor’s A Summons to

Memphis and “The Old Forest”

F. Joseph M. GoldkampWashington University in Saint Louis

English Literature 400: Independent ResearchFinal Senior Paper

May 8, 2006

The notion that the American South has produced and inspired many writers in the

twentieth century hardly falls into the category of original thought. Typically, Southern authors

mine the peculiar legacy of the American South for setting, theme, and aesthetics; indeed, these

authors employ the material provided by the South to construct literary worlds through which

various issues are made manifest. Some texts examine issues of race and some examine life in

the backwaters of the rural South, but regardless of setting or subject, one issue which prevails

throughout Southern texts is that of identity; that is, the texts deal with both cultural and personal

questions of Southern identity. Peter Taylor, an author in the twentieth-century Southern

tradition, exemplifies this literary search for identity in his work; indeed, critic David Robinson

refers to Taylor’s texts as “dramas of Southern identity” (World of Relations 167). Taylor

certainly seeks to define the cultural and personal identities which comprise the South; however,

Taylor eschews the typical rural setting and culture of the genre in that he constructs textual

worlds in an urban, sophisticated context. Taylor’s South, therefore, differs considerably from

the setting utilized by his Agrarian mentors, and though the search for identity remains central to

his texts, most of the subject matter also diverges from that of his forebears and contemporaries:

instead of imagining a Faulknerian world built upon the ruined foundation of plantation society

in the Deep South, Taylor writes of the prosperous cities of Tennessee. His employment of these

wealthier, more modern locales allows Taylor’s fiction to delve into the world of the upper-

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middle class and its unique rituals, traditions, and traditions. These cities, by their very nature,

may initially appear as more dynamic and progressive than the small towns of other Southern

texts; however, Taylor’s work deals with the old, established families with these urban contexts,

and the importance of family roots and history are paramount to one’s place within the social

hierarchies of these cities. Many of the characters whom Taylor places in these settings live

comfortable and even privileged lives, complete with private educations, staffed residences, and

country club memberships. Taylor portrays this lifestyle convincingly, as his own childhood

paralleled that of his literary settings, and the realism of these settings dispels the conventional

notion of upper-middle class bliss. In what are perhaps Taylor’s most critically acclaimed works

—the novel A Summons to Memphis and the short story “The Old Forest”—the author constructs

this detailed world and subsequently shatters any myth of idyll through the experiences of his

characters. Inasmuch as the two texts present in great detail the existence of the urban elite of

the Upper South as socially rigid and bound by tradition, the characters feel an impetus to

transgress against the expectations placed upon them by their social class; through their various

acts of positive transgression, the characters develop individual identities possessing maturity,

meaning, and independent agency while achieving an understanding of their place in the society

into which they were born.

For the many readers who lack familiarity with the context in which Taylor’s characters

function, the texts may appear rather esoteric in subject matter and setting; therefore, both texts

contain a great deal of descriptive material within the body of the narrative. According to Ann

Beattie, this “endlessly informative narrative” technique serves “to enable context to provide a

necessary perspective on the characters’ actions” (107, 105) as the reader navigates through the

rarified atmosphere of the urban Upper South, an notion that stands in marked contrast to the

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popular conception of the South as a primarily rural, agrarian environment. The somewhat

ambiguous spatial boundaries of the Upper South perhaps explain its limited usage as a regional

descriptor; although there is no consensus on what defines this region, a loose, working

geographical definition would probably include the states of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri.

Within these uncertain boundaries, however, Taylor consistently employs a few select places as

settings: “his location is the Upper South of Tennessee, the towns of Nashville and Memphis and

sometimes on up to St. Louis and sometimes backward glancing to Thornton, the imaginary rural

place from which black and white characters came to the city” (Hardwick 20). Each of these

places retains a unique identity within the larger realm of the Upper South and, as such, exerts

specific influences on the characters that reside—or have historical roots—in one or more of

these locations. The events of “The Old Forest” take place almost entirely within the boundaries

of Memphis, but the text of A Summons to Memphis explores the distinct identities of Memphis,

Nashville, and the small town of Thornton in order to express the effects of each place on the

characters in the novel. The texts probe even more extensively into what Elizabeth Hardwick

terms “the location within the location,” which she defines further as the importance the texts

place upon “the particular streets and what residence on them may indicate, the sections of town,

and who lives on what street, in what kind of house, and what street they may move along to or

move up or down to…It is also the magic of street names quite equal to the glow or lack of it in

the family name” (20-21).

Hardwick’s observation regarding the high importance of a seemingly insignificant detail

—a street name—demonstrates the complexity and centrality of place within the narrative

structure of the texts. The emphasis placed on spatial locations from the general level of the city

to the extremely specific level of a street name or even a house signifies the importance of

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physical place to the self-definition of characters in the text. Nat, the protagonist and narrator of

“The Old Forest,” repeatedly expresses the importance of geographic location to members of the

country club set in the Memphis of his childhood and young adulthood. As Nat explains, the

origin of one’s family defines their social standing in Memphis; while contrasting the differences

between the young women of polite society, specifically his fiancée, Caroline Braxley, and his

sometime companion, a woman from outside the country club culture by the name of Lee Ann

Deehart, Nat informs the reader of the centrality of ancestral roots in making this distinction:

One thing those girls did know that they were heirs to was the old, country

manners and the insistence on old, country connections. The evidence of this that

comes to mind is the fact that they often spoke of girls like Lee Ann as “city

girls,” by which they meant that such girls usually didn’t have the old family

connections back in the country on the cotton farms in West Tennessee, in

Mississippi, in Arkansas, or back in Nashville or in Jonesboro or in Virginia. (OF

50)

In this case, a spatial location over which an individual has no control determines social standing

from birth; likewise, family roots provide both a means of self-definition and a sense of self-

worth for the young society women of Memphis. Nat’s family and the Braxleys, of course, have

roots in rural Tennessee that extend back several generations; Lee Ann, on the other hand, is of

uncertain ancestry. Lee Ann finds no meaning in her ancestry, and Nat admits that “during the

very period I am writing about it is likely the majority of people in Memphis felt that way” (OF

49). For families like Nat’s, however, ancestral roots serve to identify them as members of

Memphis’ ruling class; likewise, the emphasis on the circumstances of one’s birth demonstrates

the rigidity and exclusivity of Nat’s social class.

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Spatial setting plays an even more significant role in A Summons to Memphis, where

differences in not only the location of one’s ancestral roots but also one’s current location serve

to define one’s place within the social hierarchy. Phillip Carver, another first-person narrator

and protagonist, reminisces about his family’s history and social standing in Tennessee from the

perspective of a New Yorker; that is, as he describes the events of the novel, he does so at a

significant remove from the Upper South both culturally and geographically. Spatial

displacement plays a key role in the formation of personal identity within this text; indeed, the

Carver family’s movement throughout the state of Tennessee—from the family homestead in

Thornton and then to Nashville and finally Memphis—propels the narrative. Each change in

location signifies a major event in the development of the members of the Carver family. The

old family estate at Thornton serves not only as a reminder of the family’s legitimate

membership in the upper echelons of both Memphis and Nashville society, but also as the

birthplace for several generations of Carvers, a fact to which Phillip alludes in his description of

the estate:

Father himself was born up there in an old hip-roofed brick house. (It was the

house in which I myself was also born. Father had insisted upon Mother’s

coming out from Nashville to Thornton for each lying-in, so that all of his

children would be born in that house. Or perhaps Grandfather had insisted upon

it.) (Summons 139-140)

This anecdote expresses, of course, the importance of a family’s ancestral home to their place in

society, but the peculiar Carver birth tradition takes this notion further in that one’s own personal

identity as a member of the family is contingent upon their birth at the family estate. While this

instills the Carvers from birth with a sense of their own family’s prominence in society, they also

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take great pride in their identification as Upper Southerners. Phillip explains that the family’s

forced move to Memphis was conducted “quietly and without fanfare, in the best Upper South

manner” and that “There was nothing Deep South about our family—an important distinction in

our minds” (Summons 4). Phillip often portrays Memphis in a less than favorable light,

particularly in comparison to the Nashville of his early childhood; aside from Georgie, Phillip’s

older brother, the family never entirely shifts from the Nashville lifestyle to that of Memphis. As

Phillip says, “We were not after all a genuine Memphis family. We had lived in Memphis only

thirty years” (Summons 5). George Carver, the family patriarch, attempts to create his own

miniature Nashville within Memphis; unlike his wife, who “was willing to forget Nashville” and

attempt to adapt to her new surroundings, George “wished to live Nashville in Memphis”

(Summons 27).

Indeed, George projects his desire onto his family, partially disabling them from pursuing

a new life in Memphis society; at the same time, he forces his children to sever ties in Nashville,

an action exemplified in his maneuverings to ensure that his daughter Betsy’s engagement to

Wyant Brawley ends. Although George makes the decision to move his family away from

Nashville, he obviously wishes to continue his life there and thus harbors a great deal of

resentment towards his betrayer, Lewis Shackleford, for the creation of the circumstances which

make the move necessary. The Carver family’s relocation to Memphis, then, can be understood

in terms of exile and displacement: the family must relocate in order to survive, and George, as

the head of the household, attempts to set up a sort of Nashville-in-exile. Because the family is

never allowed to adjust and adapt to a Memphian context, they still cannot refer to Memphis as

home, even after a span of several decades.

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As demonstrated above, the geographic placement of the characters within these two

texts plays a key role in their respective developments. Hearkening back to Beatty’s apt

identification of a defining element of Taylor’s prose style, the author’s reliance on encyclopedic

description of setting and place goes far beyond the regional. The carefully constructed world in

which the texts exist comprises several elements in addition to geography including particular

institutions—both social and otherwise—and also the well-defined social protocols of upper-

middle class Memphis and Nashville in the 1930s that seem so alien to readers in the 2000s. The

elaborately wrought portrayal of these main ingredients in Taylor’s mixture, combined with the

physical essence of the Upper South, creates an intricate social matrix within the spatial setting

of both texts. Every small detail takes on, for both narrators in the respective texts, seemingly

infinite importance as both gaze back upon their childhood and young adulthood. The

institutions and mores of the time and place in which Nat and Phillip spent their formative years

enable both characters to formulate identities and gain perspective on their respective pasts.

One particular social institution that figures prominently in “The Old Forest” is the

country club. While such places still serve an important function to certain segments of upper-

middle class society, any current significance ascribed to country club membership in regards to

establishing class identity pales in comparison to the situation in the Memphis of the 1930s.

Indeed, Nat makes frequent mention of the Memphis Country Club and his family’s membership

there during the timeframe of his reminiscence. As Nat explains at the beginning of his

narrative, he always refers to the club as “the MCC,” a casual truncation suggesting intimate

knowledge of the nooks and crannies of the clubhouse and the conditions of the fairways on the

golf course (OF 32). Apparently, the social life of his parents and his peers centers on the many

events offered at the club; furthermore, the club plays host to many celebrations of special

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occasions, including Nat’s “engagement to be married…announced at an MCC party” (OF 33).

In addition to the engagement party, the vast majority of the social events preceding the wedding

day of Nat and Caroline revolve around the club, as Nat informs the reader that he and his

fiancée “went to a dinner that one of my aunts gave for us at the Memphis Country Club” (OF

70) in addition to several formal events hosted by the families at their private residences. The

purpose of country club membership, therefore, in Nat’s high society existence, extends far

beyond golf, swimming, tennis, and Sunday brunch: the MCC serves as a para-church for the

families in Nat’s social group because it is the location of so many momentous events.

Not all of Memphis holds the MCC in such high esteem, however, as only the

Establishment families attain membership in this exclusive organization. Perhaps some of those

excluded from the MCC circle feel jealous and oppressed, but such feelings certainly do not

affect the demimondames. In fact, these young women openly express feelings of liberation

simply because they are not members, and their comments about the club are often full of

derision and mockery. Nat recalls the vehement dislike these women have for the MCC as he

remembers that they “would, in fact, very frequently and very frankly say to us that the MCC

(…) was the last place they wanted to be taken” (OF 32). He further relates a specific incident:

There was one girl in particular, not so smart as some of the others perhaps and

certainly less restrained in the humor she sometimes poked at the world we boys

lived in, an outspoken girl, who was the most vociferous of all in her disdain for

the Country Club. I remember one night, in one of those beer gardens that

became popular in Memphis in the late thirties, when this girl suddenly

announced to a group of us, “I haven’t lost anything at the MCC. That’s

something you boys can bet your daddy’s bottom dollar on.” (OF 32)

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This demonstrates in a rather comical fashion the absolute loathing felt by the demimondames

for the MCC. Instead of stemming from some deeply rooted class insecurity, the young women

understand, in a way that Nat and his friends cannot, the social strictures and arcane etiquette by

which members of such a club must abide. Nat has no frame of reference due to the paucity of

authentic experience he has as a product of the country club culture. Not surprisingly, the young

men of Nat’s ilk take no issue with the demimondames refusal to attend events at the club,

“because it was the last place most of us would have wished to take them” (OF 33). The

snobbery inherent in their collective sentiment exemplifies the qualities of the MCC that their

non-elite female friends look upon with disgust.

This tension between the demimondames and the scions of Memphis high society does

not prevent the social—and sometimes sexual—interaction between the two groups. The young

men, however, seem oblivious to any possible mockery from their female counterparts, and

continue to spend a considerable amount of time with them at various nightspots throughout the

city. These watering holes are of a decidedly different variety than the men’s locker room bar at

the racquet club, and, accordingly, offer a strong contrast to the posh trappings of upper-middle

class life. With alcohol present as a social lubricant, Nat and his cronies come to enjoy spending

time at these run-down establishments. Indeed, Nat postulates that the demimondames “met and

got to know each other in roadhouses” (OF 58), and thus, he views these bars as a natural place

for interaction with members of the opposite sex who live beyond his class boundaries. These

locations allow Nat and his peers to feel rebellious and hip, even though one might “as a matter

of fact, frequently see girls like Caroline at such places” (OF 65). Despite the apparent shadiness

of these establishments, Nat realizes that the roadhouses are, in fact, rather innocuous by nature.

He and his friends may feel as though they cross a boundary into dangerous territory whenever

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they enter one of these watering holes, but “The fact may be that neither the roadhouses nor the

town joints were quite as tough as they seemed. Or they weren’t as tough as for the demimonde

girls, anyway” (OF 65). The local taverns, therefore, produce thrills for the young men of

Memphis polite society despite the relatively harmless reality of the actual roadhouse

environment.

While the institution of the local dive bar allows for a sense of rebellion to be shared

among the young members of the Memphis Establishment, such feelings are strictly illusory as

the frequenting of the taverns with both the demimondames and the society girls falls within the

limits of acceptable behavior within the limitations of the social protocols set by the traditions of

polite society. As long as the habit of going to these places does not extend into actual adult life,

patronage serves as nothing more than a pleasant youthful diversion. Indeed, no actual courtship

occurs within these bars; rather, such rituals are reserved for that most peculiar ritual of Southern

high society: the debutante ball. The primacy of the debutante season in securing a spouse is

quite clear in both “The Old Forest” and A Summons to Memphis. Like country clubs, the

presentation of a young woman to one’s social group still holds some cachet for certain members

of the upper-middle class in the South, but the employment of debutante balls and the social

season surrounding the actual event as a means to find an acceptable husband or wife has fallen

in popularity among that group. This is most certainly not the case in the 1930s, however, as

both Nat and Phillip frequently allude to the importance of a young woman’s debut in the Upper

South of the texts. Nat describes the power of the debutante culture over methods of courtship

by presenting a tenable situation:

At the end of a brilliant debutante season, sometimes the most eligible bachelor of

those on the list would still remain uncommitted, or even secretly committed to

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someone who had never seen the inside of the Memphis Country Club. This kind

of thing, girls like Caroline Braxley understood, was not to be tolerated—not if

the power of moral woman included the power to divine the nature of any man’s

commitment and the power to test the strength and nature of another kind of

woman’s power. (OF 49)

Therefore, any male divergence from the set method of securing a spouse, or even a serious love

interest, provokes the wrath of young women who, through their education as debutantes, hold

fast to a notion of entitlement to those young men of their social status. This is not so much the

fault of the debutantes themselves; rather, this sense of possession extends from the

indoctrination of social superiority so central to the concept of the debutante system itself.

The debutantes described in “The Old Forest” exemplify the successful power of the

social institution itself to dictate who marries whom and so forth, but the portrayal of the ritual in

A Summons to Memphis demonstrates the damage the system can inflict even on female

members of the correct social set. Phillip Carver has two older sisters, Josephine and Betsy,

who, having been presented in Nashville prior to the Carver family’s forced exodus westward to

Memphis, cannot undergo the process again in their new city. Phillip explains the rationale

behind this proscription:

I suppose the reasoning was that otherwise some girl who had not found romance

and marriage after a year of being “out” in Nashville might move on to Memphis

the next year and New Orleans the next and possibly Louisville the next and after

that even St. Louis and Washington, and so on as long as her matronly aunts and

cousins lasted in those other cities and were willing to present her there. A girl

could go on and on until her luck changed and at last she was chosen by some

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eligible young man. Clearly, as in any other game, this would make the process

of debutantism even more ridiculous than otherwise. (Summons 18)

Betsy and Josephine, therefore, are most unfortunate in that they had been removed from

Nashville not long after their debuts in that city because there cannot be another chance for them

to meet suitors as eligible in Memphis. That said, Betsy had been courted actively by a young

man by the name of Wyant Brawley during and after the season of her debut in Nashville;

however, this relationship could not progress to the logical conclusion of an engagement and

marriage due to extenuating circumstances which will be discussed later. Likewise, Josephine

meets and develops a keen interest in one Clarkson Manning, a native son of Memphis. Once

again, a problem arises because Clarkson is “a little bit too Mississippi Delta in his manners,” a

fact that does not endear him to his love interest’s father, George Carver (Summons 42-43).

Furthermore, Clarkson’s family has blood ties to Lewis Shackleford, the betrayer of George

Carver and the primary reason for the family’s difficult flight to Memphis (Summons 43).

Josephine and Betsy suffer deeply because of the inability to meet and develop

relationships with potential husbands in Memphis. While this is in some ways a byproduct of the

rule against debuting more than once, there are other aspects of their social context that exercise

control over their destinies as young society women. Perhaps the most influential social

institution presented in A Summons to Memphis is the family itself: instances of its undeniable

influence upon the development of the characters’ identities appear throughout the narrative. Of

course, family ties arguably exert their power over every human being; however, the manner in

which this authority exercises its control over the Carvers seems almost like the method used by

religious cults. All actions and decisions reflect upon the reputation of the family, and in the

context of this textual representation of the Upper South, others’ perception of reality looms

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large for the Carver family, and for George in particular. Indeed, the move to Memphis results

from George’s need to protect his family’s honor and, furthermore, his own honor as a lawyer.

Although the affront to his family comes from Lewis Shackleford’s unethical business practices

and not from himself in any way, George’s decision to relocate his family functions as the

central event in the text which profoundly shapes the identity of not only George but also his

wife and four children. According to Phillip, his mother’s persona shifts considerably indeed:

“Five or six years later, in Memphis, it was sometimes hard to think of her as the same woman. I

don’t know if the trauma of the move changed her or whether the move from Nashville to

Memphis merely happened to coincide with alterations in her mood and character” (Summons

49).

Indeed, the imperative to make a Nashville out of Memphis originates in the family’s

struggle to assert what they view as a distinct and superior identity within what they believe to be

an inferior location and culture. This hearkens back to the emphasis placed by George on the

specific birthplace of his children, a practice that not only secures the family’s social status

through its signification of an ancestral home but also keeps alive a family tradition close to his

heart and central to the notion of what it is to be a Carver. It should be noted, then, that the

centrality of tradition to the family originates, for better or worse, in George’s affinity for the

past. As a strong father/husband figure, his will cannot be compromised to the wishes of any

other family member. Unsurprisingly, this is entirely consonant with the nature of the Upper

South portrayed in the text in that it reflects the power of the patriarchy in the 1930s. This

father-knows-best attitude is reinforced by Mrs. Carver in a lecture to her children directly before

the move to Memphis:

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Mother reminded us of the ugly and near-ruinous ordeal that Father had just been

through with Lewis Shackleford and told us that we must not in any way resent

the imminent move to Memphis and that we must not, above all, allow Father to

feel that we were grieving about leaving Nashville or brooding about the changes

to come in our lives. (Summons 19)

Therefore, any criticism of George is strictly forbidden regardless of the circumstances. Simply

put, the father’s word serves as law in the world of this text, and his decisions, reinforced by the

social structure through the mother, thereby impact the formation of the identities of his

offspring.

Taylor expends a great deal of narrative energy and page space on not only enumerating

but detailing the elements he uses to construct a socio-temporal space in which his characters act.

How, then, does the context created by the author affect the characters? Inasmuch as the

societies expressed textually in “The Old Forest” and A Summons to Memphis consist of specific

and significant social institutions and protocols, the human products of these highly ordered and

strictly regimented environments feel a great deal of pressure to conform while at the same time

experiencing a desire for independence. Indeed, within the strictures of both Nat and Phillip’s

lives, the requirements of rituals, rules, and traditions combine to exert a crushing force upon the

characters. In order to attain the ability to be one’s self, each character must formulate a way to

function successfully; however, each must overcome the negative effects of existence within a

repressive social order that affects each individual character differently.

Nat, in his capacity as a narrator undergoing the process of retrospection, illuminates the

consequences of his upbringing through his retelling of the events surrounding Lee Ann

Deehart’s disappearance. He realizes that the assumptions and attitudes he previously held in his

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late adolescence led directly to the fallout from the automobile accident and, through his

perspective as an adult at a temporal remove from the events, seeks to understand the rationale

behind his actions and thoughts. The older Nat typically portrays his younger self as rather silly

and vacuous in order to provide a contrast that informs the reader that he has, in fact, not only

learned from his experiences but also grown to maturity through them. Regardless of any good

gained from his youthful activities, he plays the wealthy fool in his own story, a role that is not

entirely of his own choosing. During the search for the missing Lee Ann, Nat assists the police,

his father, and the other older men of the Memphis Establishment. While this may initially seem

as though Nat is only taking responsibility for his part in the car crash, he reveals the true

motivation behind the older males’ enthusiastic participation in the “still entirely unofficial”

investigation (OF 66):

That day, when I rode about town with my father and the two other men in our

car, I came as near as I ever had or ever would to receiving a satisfactory

explanation of the phenomenon. They were a generation of American men who

were perhaps the last to grow up in a world where women were absolutely

subjected and under the absolute protection of men. (OF 67)

Even in a possibly tragic situation, the men of high society seek to protect and consolidate their

control over women and, by doing so, reinforce the primacy of the patriarchy of which they are

the ruling body. It is not selflessness but a combination of selfishness and fear that propels these

men forward on their search for Lee Ann: they want to save face in the case that something befell

Lee Ann in the forest because Nat embodies the human product of their society.

The response of the demimondames to the search for Lee Ann is less than positive.

Driven by their intelligent realization of the motivation behind the search, they seek to protect

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Lee Ann through a well-constructed web of deception and a coordinated effort to hide her from

those who consider themselves the authorities. Taking on a guise of feminine deference to the

older members of the Establishment and the police, they save their spiteful comments for Nat,

which they express via a series of telephone calls. In one such instance of contact, an

unidentified voice informs Nat that “Lee Ann’s had about as much as she can take of all of this.

She was depressed as it was when she called you in the first place. Why else do you think she

would call you, Nat? She was desperate for some comic relief” (OF 69). The frustration evident

in this communication demonstrates the harmful effects of the reigning upper-middle class

culture upon those who purposely avoid participation in it. Nat may not be responsible for the

actions of his elders, but he provides a convenient, naive scapegoat on whom the young women

of the Memphis demimonde heap scorn.

Nat is, in his own words, a “silly society boy” in the eyes of Lee Ann and her peers and,

therefore, an easy target for their anger at the male power structure of which he is a junior

member. What, then, of the young women who are the children of the upper-middle class? They

too suffer in the context of the world their fathers control; in fact, they bear the brunt of

oppression more intensely than their counterparts outside of the debutante set. Caroline Braxley,

Nat’s fiancée, feels the heavy burden of being “a woman in a man’s world” (OF 88). Her power

to live as an individual is limited by not only her gender but also her social status. Society

expects much more from her than it does from her counterparts outside the boundaries of the

upper-middle class. Nat does not realize the pressure under which Caroline must function as a

society woman, and is stunned by her reaction to the essence of female liberation embodied in

Lee Ann and her compatriots. During the car drive that occupies the penultimate scene of the

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narrative, Nat inquires as to whether Caroline’s monologue implies that she might enjoy the

freedom to disappear like Lee Ann:

“You would like to be able to do that? I interrupted. It seemed so unlike her role

as I understood it. “Anybody would, wouldn’t they?” she said, not looking at me

but at the endless stretch of concrete that lay straight ahead. “Men have always

been able to do it,” she said. (OF 85)

Caroline’s sentiment expresses a genuine hunger for liberty despite her place in the upper

echelons of Memphis society and subsequently negates any conception of her as a self-absorbed

and ignorant rich girl; likewise, Nat’s incredulous response to her statement shows the effects of

the social structure on his view of women’s place in the world.

A Summons to Memphis also demonstrates the less than positive action of the power

structure upon its characters. Although “The Old Forest” challenges the limits of the short story

form as a result of its length, this other work constitutes a proper novel in which more

information can be related in greater detail. Taylor takes full advantage of this added space and

delves deeper into the psychological aftereffects of life as a member of the Carver family. As

previously stated, the family’s relocation to Memphis provides the impetus for crisis within the

family unit and the individual. Insofar as the move results from difficult circumstances beyond

the family’s control, a hesitancy to leave Nashville is unsurprising. George, of course, decides

that the event must occur, and numerous ill effects upon his family and himself arise in its wake.

Phillip wonders if “it wasn’t the move but only my father’s insistence that the family should be

moved intact” (Summons 21) that incurs harm upon the individuals after listing the existential

trauma inflicted by the move: for his sisters, “it would ultimately have the effect of freezing them

in the roles of eternal young ladies” because of his meddling in their romantic business; for his

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brother Georgie, “it meant his early death in the War;” for himself, “it meant something not

altogether unlike [his brother’s rush to war];” and for his mother “it meant a total alteration of

her role within our family and at the same time a kind of personal liberation for which she was

not prepared and of which she did not know how to make an advantage” (Summons 20-21).

This catalogue of woes concisely itemizes the damage inflicted by George’s stipulation

that the entire family be moved, all at once, to Memphis. In response to the havoc wrought on

the family by their uprooting, George institutes what Christopher Metress calls “the established

Carver pattern of silence” (205). By avoiding communication, Georges expects that the family’s

issues will eventually disappear, or at least subside in their severity to a low and somewhat

tolerable level. The cumulative result of this policy of silence consists primarily of the

aforementioned rather tragic list of consequences and speaks to the ineffectiveness of

implementing the byproduct of the notion that unspoken issues will, in time, fade away. George

learns of this fact too late to make a significant difference in his life or his family: he dies not

long after his daughters, who have developed into manipulative and bitter old matrons, move

back into his home with the ultimate goal of exercising control over him.

George’s reconciliation with Lewis Shackleford also transpires after the point of any real

significance, as the latter passes away immediately before the former had intended to pay him a

visit in Nashville. This anticlimactic event brings sadness and shock to George when his

daughters bring him the bad news: “‘I don’t believe it!’ Father declared belligerently” (Summons

198). Interestingly, the reporting of Shackleford’s death brings a sense of pleasure to George’s

two daughters, who perceive the impossibility of their father visiting Shackleford as a tally in

their favor in what amounts to “just another inning” (Summons 199). Josephine and Betsy

therefore complete their transformation into angry old women by the end of the narrative. Phillip

Goldkamp 19

provides some seemingly contradictory insight, however, into the nature of his siblings in

adulthood after witnessing their delight in successfully inhibiting their father’s remarriage:

Suddenly my sisters no longer seemed a mystery to me. I understood much of

their past conduct as never before. They were still, while actually in their mid-

fifties, two little teenaged girls dressed up and playing roles. It was their way of

not facing or accepting the facts of their adult life. They could not forget the old

injuries. They wished to keep them alive. They were frozen forever in their roles

as injured adolescents. (Summons 146)

Through this realization, Phillip becomes cognizant of the underlying cause of his sisters’

animosity towards their father. Because they remain in a constant state of willful immaturity,

they are unable to develop the skills necessary to function as healthy individuals. Fortunately,

Phillip observes this and gleans important lessons from his sisters’ behavior, and he realizes that

he must take another path in order to make peace with his family’s past and grow as an

individual. He utilizes what can be termed positive transgression to achieve his goals. For

example, he breaks the family tradition of silence by engaging in substantive telephone

conversations with his father on a weekly basis after Shackelford’s death and Phillip’s return to

New York City. Phillip enjoys these conversations thoroughly, and finds the experiences both

fulfilling and “a tremendous satisfaction” (Summons 207). Furthermore, he, with the help of his

girlfriend Holly Kaplan, comes to understand that “our old people must be not merely forgiven in

all of their injustices and unconscious cruelties in their roles as parents but that any selfishness

on their part had actually been required of them if they were to remain whole human beings and

not become merely guardian robots of the young” (Summons 194). Phillip accepts this idea

because it allows him to become a person with a more fulfilling life. He learns to raise painful

Goldkamp 20

memories from the depths of his consciousness so that he can experience what he identifies as “a

certain oblivion” (Summons 146). The thoughts and feelings must be aired in a way so that one

may make peace with the past and let go of old resentments in order to grow towards an

authentic adulthood.

Nat and Caroline also engage in varieties of positive transgression in their search for both

freedom to act as individuals and a healthy understanding of the past. Nat’s process of

introspective retrospection in the narrative, while not as exhaustive as Phillip’s, expresses the

possibility of a meaningful engagement with the past, even if that past is painful to remember;

indeed, Nat’s past consists of incidents of great pain and memories of growing up under the rules

of a repressive social order, but, as David M. Robinson notes, “the acceptance of even a

restrictive past is necessary and can be a progressive and affirming step” towards a fulfilling and

mature life (“Engaging” 192). Nat overcomes what for most might be insurmountable tragedy in

order to analyze what he considers the life-defining incident involving Lee Ann Deehart and the

titular forest. After outlining the various horrible events which transpired in the decades

following the accident—including the death of two of his children in an accident—he says that

he “might hardly be able to recall that earlier episode” (OF 42). He can, however, because the

forces of growth applied by the incident before his marriage to Caroline enable him to eventually

understand his youthful folly and lack of understanding about the world outside his social milieu.

He and Caroline eventually join forces as husband and wife to commit perhaps the ultimate act

of positive transgression: leaving the comfort and familiarity of their upper-middle class

Memphis world. Although the death of his father creates the financial circumstances necessary

for this move, Nat ultimately credits Caroline for the facilitation of the “great break in my life in

Goldkamp 21

my late thirties” in which he returns to the university to complete training to be a college

professor:

Though it clearly meant we must live on a somewhat more modest scale and live

among people of a sort she was not used to, and even meant leaving Memphis

forever behind us, the firmness with which she supported my decision, and the

look in her eyes whenever I spoke of feeling I must make the change, seemed to

say to me that she would dedicate her pride of power to the power of freedom I

sought. (OF 89)

Caroline therefore exercises her “power of a woman in a man’s world” (OF 88) in order to attain

independence and happiness for her husband and, by extension, herself. James Curry Robison

argues that Caroline is the “heroine of the old older” and that, because of the union of she and

Nat, the rules of high society “prevail” (93). It is true that Caroline gains her ability to act from

remaining, to some extent, inside the system; however, she bends the rules of polite society so

that she may achieve her own independent ends for the betterment of her own existence and also

that of her husband.

Granted, this concept of positive transgression appears to suffer from an internal

contradiction, and one could certainly conclude that either Robison’s notion that the arcane

social protocols win in the end or, on the other hand, that Nat and Caroline make a clean break

with their past in Memphis. Taylor, however, employs the relationship between his characters

and their respective pasts in a manner that exposes the process by which these characters mature

and move towards a productive relationship with their histories. Contradiction plays a central

role in how characters relate to the past: one must move on from it while at the same time

accepting it as an integral part of one’s identity as an individual. For example, Nat’s experience

Goldkamp 22

with Lee Ann leads him to what Robinson claims is “a more mature self-knowledge through his

rejection of immature fantasy” (“Embracing” 187). At the core of Robinson’s assertions about

“The Old Forest” is the idea that experiencing the tension between opposing forces—Nat and the

demimondames, for instance—leads to the acquisition of the skills necessary to function as a

person with true independence, and while evidence certainly exists in both texts to support his

argument, it is rather the freedom within the spaces between embrace and rejection than the

internal conflict resulting from contradiction that allows the characters room to grow and

analyze. In the crowded environment where Taylor’s characters reside, one must find a quiet,

uncluttered space in which to think; indeed, Phillip finds such a space in the “certain oblivion”

created by the space between his unpleasant memories and his current life in New York City.

Caroline also discovers a location within the contrast between female subjection to male

authority and the liberty of the demimondames in which she can live a happy life as a woman

while at the same time exercising control over her destiny. Positive transgression, then, acts in a

similar way within the texts, as the void between acceptable behavior and transgression provides

a hospitable place where Taylor’s characters can openly examine their memories without being

consumed by them, thereby engaging in the process that finally leads to personal autonomy,

authentic adulthood, and comprehension of the lessons of one’s own history.

Goldkamp 23

Works Cited

Beatty, Ann. “Peter Taylor’s ‘The Old Forest.’” The Craft of Peter Taylor. Ed. C. Ralph

Stephens and Lynda B. Salamon. Tuscaloosa: UP of Alabama, 1995. 105-110.

Hardwick, Elizabeth. “Locations Within Locations.” The Craft of Peter Taylor. Ed. C. Ralph

Stephens and Lynda B. Salamon. Tuscaloosa: UP of Alabama, 1995. 20-26.

Metress, Christopher. “The Expenses of Silence in A Summons to Memphis.” Ed. Hubert H.

McAlexander. New York: G.K. Hall and Co., 1993. 201-215.

Robinson, David M. “Engaging the Past: Peter Taylor’s ‘The Old Forest.’” Critical Essays on

Peter Taylor. Ed. Hubert H. McAlexander. New York: G.K. Hall and Co., 1993. 180-

192.

---. World of Relations: The Achievement of Peter Taylor. Lexington, KY: UP of Kentucky,

1998.

Robison, James Curry. Peter Taylor: A Study of the Short Fiction. Boston: Twayne, 1988.

Taylor, Peter Hillsman. A Summons to Memphis. New York: Knopf, 1987.

---. “The Old Forest.” The Old Forest and Other Stories. New York: Picador, 1996. 31-89.