For my research paper, I’m writing about several of Faulkner’s female characters who appear in The Unvanquished, The Sound and the Fury and Light in August, and how they invert the traditional image of a woman. Faulkner’s women brush up against Romanticism and this image of the South being this pristine mystical place. When it comes to gender, sexuality, marriage, and miscegenation; Faulkner’s women reveal societal ironies and weird juxtapositions about Southern society. The development of characters like Drusilla Hawk, Caddy Compson, and Joanna Burden are indeed products of the ever-changing early  20th century and the cultural and social upheavals at display in this time period. Through an analysis of Faulkner’s life and the women he surrounds himself with, we can chart how Faulkner’s women demystify traditional notions about the South.

Sensibar, Judith L. Faulkner and Love: The Women Who Shaped His Art, a Biography. Yale University Press, 2009.

This book by Judith Sensibar offers a great understanding of the three women in his life that helped the writer blossom into the artist he would become. My focus on the book will be mostly aimed at his wife Estelle Oldham and how she influenced several characters in his fictional work. She was a writer in her own right and she worked alongside Faulkner throughout the development of his work. The additional biographical information relating to the early 20th century and the social milieu at the time will also be important when discussing how Faulkner demystifies this period.

Trefzer, Annette, and Ann J. Abadie. Faulkner’s Sexualities: Dana Andrews. University Press of Mississippi, 2010.

This book by Trefzer offers an interesting discussion on the status of sex and sexuality in Faulkner’s work. The relationship between the cultural and material condition of sex in the early 20th century is also an important question the book poses. In terms of what I’ll be using for my paper, my reading of the chapter All Mixed Up: Female Sexuality and Race will expand upon my knowledge of the interplay between race and sexuality in Faulkner’s work. My analysis of Caddy Compson will especially be reliant on this source. The discussion about virginity and menstruation throughout the chapter will reveal a lot of ironies about southern society when it comes to ideas about purity.

Klancar, Natasa Intihar. “Faulkner’s Southern Belle: Myth or Reality?” Acta Neophilologica, vol. 44, no. 1-2, 2011, pp. 47–57, https://doi.org/10.4312/an.44.1-2.47-57.

Klancar’s article address the traditional image of the Southern Belle in Faulkner’s work and their seemingly fall from innocence after failing Southern societal expectations. The crux of my argument is how Faulkner’s women brush up against these stereotypes, and the ultimate irony is that the women who seemingly fall from grace are more free than their contemporaries.

Clarke, Deborah. “Gender, Race, and Language in Light in August.” American Literature, vol. 61, no. 3, 1989, pp. 398–413, https://doi.org/10.2307/2926827.

This source will further expand my knowledge of the sexual and racial dynamic of Light in August. As Clarke argues the uneasy relationship between the sexes in the book mirror the uneasy relations when it comes to race. I’m using this source in my paper so I can argue about Joanna Burden’s relationship with Joe Christmas and how that relationship mirrored southern politics about miscegenation.

Roberts, Diane. “A Precarious Pedestal: The Confederate Woman in Faulkner’s Unvanquished.” Journal of American Studies, vol. 26, no. 2, 1992, pp. 233–46, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021875800030772.

This article addresses the image of the “Confederate Woman” in William Faulkner’s Unvanquished. I will be using this source throughout my analysis of Drusilla Hawk and how she inverts aspects of gender and femininity in her society. She embodies many truly “masculine traits” compared to Bayard Sartoris who is expected by the other men to seek revenge after granny’s death. The irony that Drusilla defends the staunch Southern way of life when’s she biggest nonconforming character in the book, is an irony I will endeavor to highlight in my paper.

For my final project, I am writing a traditional research paper that tackles the topic of female sexuality in The Unvanquished, The Sound and the Fury and Light in August. Throughout the semester, we have seen the sexual identities of Faulkner’s female characters and the rigid constraints they face beneath the backdrop of the Southern plantocracy system. In particular, the characters of Drusilla Hawk, Caddy Compson, and Joanna Burden invert the traditional image of a Southern lady. Their sexual expression undermines traditional notions of virginity, gender, marriage, miscegenation, and the dying image of the Southern way of life. In my midterm project, I placed a special emphasis on Faulkner’s wife Estelle Oldham, and the ways in which she contributed to his work. In returning to Judith L. Sensibar’s Faulkner and Love: The Women Who Shaped His Art, I seek to further research the traditional values that permeated Faulkner’s life and how the cultural and sexual upheaval of the 20th century shaped the development of these female characters.

Possible Sources:

Sensibar. (2009). Faulkner and Love: The Women Who Shaped His Art, a Biography. Yale University Press.

Trefzer, & Abadie, A. J. (2010). Faulkner’s Sexualities: Dana Andrews. University Press of Mississippi.

In William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, the Compson family has been hit with a series of tragedies that caused the former Southern aristocrats to sell portions of their land. Near the end of the novel, the family is financially struggling and the remaining members Benjy and Jason are ill-equipped and victims of a time long since passed. These two especially have been impacted by time and they are essentially tied down to this former plantation land. Their differing perspectives in response to time reveal an astonishing look into the Compson household and the circumstances that shaped these men.

Benjy, formerly known as Maury Compson, was born disabled and has had to be supported by his family members and servants since his infancy. He’s the embarrassment of the family and the only genuine affection he ever receives was from his sister Caddy. Benjy is a timeless person, his mind shifts back and forth from the past to the present. He receives little love in the present, he’s been castrated, whipped, and threatened to be sent to an asylum. His “time hopping” might be his only solace, his respite from his semi-abusive environment. Through this phenomenon, Benjy is transported to different moments both painful and joyful, he’s reunited with his dear sister Caddy. “Caddy held me and I could hear us all, and the darkness, and something I could smell. And then I could see the windows, where the trees were buzzing” (75). Its sensations like the smell of the trees and the gate make Benjy more unbound by his circumstances than his brother Jason.

Jason on the other hand is a man that seems physically tied to the Compson Household and “southern tradition”.  He is the third son of the Compson family and many of the opportunities he could have had in life were stripped away from him due to family tragedies. Jason has been left with the leftovers in life; he works at some meager store instead of being out in the city working stocks like the northerners. Jason thinks of the future constantly but he’s often missing opportunities that would guarantee his future. A poignant scene depicting this is when Jason is an hour late receiving a telegram that would have made him money in the Cotton Market. “That’s not my fault either. I didn’t invent it; I just bought a little of it while under the impression that the telegraph company would keep me informed as to what it was doing” (244). Jason takes no blame, and no responsibility for missing these opportunities, and it’s this dual nature between wanting to strike it rich and his role as the patriarch of the Compson estate that keeps him trapped in life.

Benjy and Jason’s opposing views of time reveal just how much your environment influences your perspective. Time plagues these men and they are intrinsically tied to the Compson estate. The Compson men are slowly decaying and they’re unable to change the course and remedy the end of the Compson family.

In the first few chapters of The Unvanquished we see the son of a confederate colonel, Bayard Sartoris, slowly emerge as his own man as he come to recognize the complexities of war, race, and Southern society. Bayard’s development throughout the story is a classic scenario you see often in other Bildungsromans, yet what makes his development interesting is the ironic  circumstances that surrounds his growth.

In the chapter Ambuscade, Bayard is playing with his negro companion Ringo on the Sartoris plantation. These two frequently play mock battles reenacting Confederate and Union battles in the war. To them, the Civil War is something off in the distance, it’s just a game. Yet with the fall of Vicksburg to the Union, southern defeat in the Civil War seems inevitable and Bayard’ way of life will fundamentally be changed. This scene is ultimately highlighted when the slave Loosh notices the map of Vicksburg the boys drew in the dirt and laughs. But Loosh just stood there laughing, looking down at Vicksburg. Then he stooped, and with his hand he slept the chips flat. “There’s your Vicksburg” (pg 3).

In final pages of the chapter Retreat, the Sartoris plantation is burned down by Yankee soldiers and the silver the family has tried to keep hidden is stolen by Loosh. Unlike the childish adventure Bayard and Ringo had after shooting a horse in the previous chapter, Bayard loses his home and possessions which has been in his family for generations. When Granny adamantly confronts Loosh on his betrayal he retorts claiming he’s free. “Let God ax John Sartoris who the man name that give me to him. Let that man that buried me in the black dark ax that of the man what dug me free” (pg 35). Loosh is advocating the reason for his betrayal on account of his desire to be free yet Granny a product of her environment can’t recognize that sentiment.This strange juxtaposition in morality that Bayard encounters in this chapter informs the kind of circumstances he’ll encounter in this Post war South.

In Riposte in Tertio, Granny has started a scam where she petitions Union soldiers to give her mules and then sells them back to the clueless Yankee soldiers. While what Granny is doing is ultimately shady, the money she makes through this scam helps the community. An ex-confederate soldier brutally kills Granny and Bayard learns a cruel lesson in his path towards adulthood. Granny’s death is the loss of innocence moment that changes Bayard. Before,  the war and the circumstances surrounding it were a game he was too young to understand. Granny’s death and his subsequent need to avenge her turns Bayard from a young boy playing in the dirt into a man.