Author Archives: Christopher Taruc

Annotated Bibliography

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My keyword search has changed slightly to “William Faulkner” and “masculine female” and “woman/women” and “gender.” By using the Boolean search on Google Scholar as well as the library databases both at Hunter College (https://library.hunter.cuny.edu/) and CUNY Graduate Center (https://library.gc.cuny.edu/), I was able to sift through a considerable amount of sources. It was nice to find out that as Hunter students, we have access to physically visit and study at Mina Rees Library at CUNY Graduate Center. I was able to peruse the stacks at CUNY Graduate Center to find a section of a good amount of Faulkner’s written works right above the shelves of companion scholarly works. 

Faulkner was prolific both in output and artistry within the decade of 1929 – 39. It was during that time that he cranked out and published four of the five novels surveyed in our class. As Faulkner was developing his writerly chops during this time, I find it interesting (coincidental? deliberate?) how he seemingly—on a recurring basis—employs the “instrument” of a strong/“masculine” female to disrupt the status quo of Yoknapatawpha. With a narrative timeframe spanning from ante-/postbellum times (The Unvanquished) to a specific narrative taking place in 1910 (The Sound and the Fury) through to a contemporary work written at the same time during the throes of Jim Crow laws (Light in August), Faulkner utilizes a wide temporal playing field. Perhaps the vastness of the fictive grounds are necessary for him to delve into his commentary on the emergence of a female who isn’t wholly reliant on male…who disrupts the patriarchal hegemonic order…gender politics…the future of masculinity on an existential level and how it affects one’s identity. I am interested to find out what I may glean from the following sources to complement my close reading of the three aforementioned works by Faulkner: 

Faulkner, William. Light in August: The Corrected Text. Vintage International, 1985. 

Joanna Burden is a character deserving of a closer reading. After all, her death is the linchpin which links the storylines of Lena Grove with that of Joe Christmas. Notice how the implied collective narrative voice of “the town” eschews Joanna by the wayside after the spectacle of her severed head and body are removed. The swapping of gender identities between Joanna and Joe Christmas, as well as the moment before she dies when she is the one wielding the gun are just a few of the moments that come to mind that I want to explore further. 

—. The Sound and the Fury: The Corrected Text. Vintage International, 1984. 

Caddy Compson is not masculine in the same sense as how Drusilla Hawk and Joanna Burden are referred to in their respective narratives. However, Caddy is a masculine female whom I believe is the most “ballsy” of the Compson offspring. I am interested in a close reading of Quentin’s section as there is a significant scene between him and Dalton Ames (and a gun) that ties back to Caddy by association…and I am intrigued especially by Caddy’s relational dynamics with Quentin based on his perspective/narrative disclosure. 

—. The Unvanquished: The Corrected Text. Vintage International, 1986. 

This is the primary source that started it all for me. I wrote my blog post on my fascination with Drusilla Hawk. Now that we are nearing the end of our semester, I am delighted to find a somewhat recurring Faulknerian pattern where a perceived masculine female character such as Drusilla is somehow entangled with a male counterpart (Bayard Sartoris) who is confronted by an existential moment questioning his masculinity. 

Halberstam, Jack. Female Masculinity: Twentieth anniversary edition with a new preface. Durham: Duke University Press, 2018.

This book is a great companion piece to do a queer/feminist reading of at least two gender-bending characters whom have caught my interest: Drusilla Hawk and Joanna Burden…and, to a lesser extent, Bobbie Allen (of Light in August). Based on Halberstam, the concept of female masculinity “describes multiple modes of identification and gender assignation, is capacious enough to contain many of these historical variations without stabilizing and foreclosing on their meanings” (xii). This is a great counterargument to the patriarchal/compulsory heterosexual/heteronormative mindset privileged to the various narrators and/or male characters in each of my primary sources. 

Kartiganer, Donald M., and Ann J. Abadie, editors. Faulkner and Gender: Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha 1994. Jackson: University of Mississippi P, 1996. 

I am interested in a few of the essays within this collection; namely, Patricia Yeager’s “Faulkner’s ‘Greek Amphora Priestess’: Verbena and Violence in The Unvanquished,” as well as Deborah Clarke’s “Gender, War, and Cross-Dressing in The Unvanquished.” I am becoming interested in exploring the dynamics of a character like Drusilla Hawk with her narrator counterpart, Bayard Sartoris, both on an observational/narrative level as well as the recurring Faulknerian motif of the phallic gun. Do Drusilla’s perceived masculine attributes pose some sort of threat to Bayard’s masculinity? 

Trefzer, Annette, and Ann J. Abadie, editors. Faulkner’s Sexualities: Dana Andrews. E-book, Jackson: U of Mississippi P, 2010. 

In addition to the article written by Jaime Harker (“‘And You Too, Sister, Sister?…”): that Jeff provided in our supplementary readings dropbox folder, I am interested to see what Kristin Fujie’s critical take is on Caddy Compson’s sexuality. It is also because of this source that I was able to find an additional article written by Harker, “Queer Faulkner: Whores, Queers, and the Transgressive South” that I feel will be useful. 

“He was telling a story.” Ending “Absalom, Absalom!”

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I’m not going to lie. Up until this very last reading assignment, I was having a really hard time agreeing with Jeff’s prefatory remark that Absalom, Absalom! is one of Faulkner’s masterpieces. I was thrown for a loop and finding myself frustrated by the dense, difficult prose, the excessive—what seemed to be to me, at least—tangential asides, and the absence of a narrative voice to anchor and tell the story. I am more than pleased—astounded—by how the novel comes together and ends. 

Having gained the position of hindsight, I certainly appreciate Faulkner’s artistic choices in the formal development of the mythic rise and fall of Thomas Sutpen told by the various narrators; and, Julian Murphet’s reading of Absalom, Absalom! provides the analog of film and cinema to translate my involvement as a reader/audience member, much like the position Quentin and Shreve inhabit towards the end of the novel. 

It is most likely no accident that Faulkner starts the storytelling of Absalom, Absalom! through the account of Miss Rosa Coldfield. The intertextual nod to Charles Dickens by creating a Faulknerian Miss Havisham replete with having her embody and live up to her last name does not go unnoticed. However, there is a closed-off, narrow sense within the immediate containment of Rosa’s first-person narrative, as well as being inside of the stifling space of the Coldfield house which is positioned 12 miles away from the novel’s center of gravity, Sutpen’s Hundred. Perhaps it is the one-sidedness of Rosa that attributes to this narrowness? Or, could it be Quentin Compson’s role merely as passive listener? Perhaps it’s a little bit of both…

The stagnant quality of being in the doldrums with Rosa Coldfield gives way to a little bit of an opening when Jason Compson, Quentin’s father, takes the narrative reins and proceeds to fill in the gaps of her version. Rather than storytelling via direct experience, though, Jason is able to flesh out Rosa’s initial skeletal story of Thomas Sutpen with an element Rosa lacks: testimony transmitted to him by his father, Quentin’s grandfather. Still, Quentin’s involvement is that of being the one who listens and receives the information. Much like Rosa, Jason is also divulging, editing, and coloring his narrative based on his subject position and the biases attached to it. 

Absalom, Absalom! becomes a home-run when the reader leaves the landscape of Mississippi and figuratively cuts to the space of the Harvard dormitory where Quentin and his Canadian dorm mate, Shreve McCannon engage in consolidating all of the accumulated narrative fragments and endeavor to “play” by reconstructing the story as co-creators. Because Rosa Coldfield and Jason Compson are immersed in the immediacy of Jefferson as a space and their relation to Thomas Sutpen as a figure, their respective accounts also possess a limited, myopic quality. Taking from Quentin’s thought of the “ripples” of storytelling (210), my mind’s eye as the reader envisions concentric circles distinguishing the various narratives provided by Rosa, Jason, Quentin via Jason via Grandfather/Colonel Compson, etc. Much like a film director zooming out the camera away from the closeness of the Jefferson landscape, the setting of Chapters 7 and 8 allows for a distancing in order to engage in the dialogical synthesizing of information by Quentin and Shreve. True, much of the gaps filled by Shreve and Quentin may be pure imaginative speculation, but, I appreciate the sense of wonder and the drive to want to make sense of the fragments motivating their act of storytelling together. 

Faulkner’s Female Outcasts

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Drusilla Hawk in The Unvanquished. 

Caddy Compson in The Sound and the Fury.

Joanna Burden…and Bobbie Allen in Light in August. 

I found all of these female-presented characters intriguing when I made their acquaintance within the respective narratives. Taking from the recent review of Deborah Clarke’s book, Robbing the Mother, I believe that all of the aforementioned female-presented characters “have bodies which often prove uncontainable by a phallogocentric society” (Clarke 5). I am interested in exploring how the “disruptive presence” (Clarke 6) of these characters goes against the grain in disrupting and/or destabilizing the “dominant heterosexual frame” (Gender Trouble xi)—a frame upheld by various gatekeepers: either the male-presenting characters, the male-presenting third-person, “objective” narrative voice(s), or, Faulkner-as-author, himself. It is possible to suppose that Faulkner could very well have written his wayward Southern ladies as the stand-by-your-man archetypal woman…but, we have seen how that turns out for characters such as Mrs. Hightower, Mrs. McEachern, Caroline Compson, (Aunt) Louisa Hawk, etc. How does Faulkner construct these female-presented characters in and around the dynamics of that dominant heterosexual frame? 

Taking from Jeff’s suggestion to a previous student’s interest in researching female-presented characters who may be perceived as more “masculine” than male characters, I will definitely be referring to Jack Halberstam’s Female Masculinity. I hope this will shed light and direct a reading of Drusilla’s cross-dressing, as well as the gender-bending of attributes found in Joanna Burden and (a possible transgender) in Bobbie Allen. I am also finding a return to Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble as a supportive source. My interest in Caddy Compson has more to do with her disruptive presence that is “uncontainable” in and around the aspect of the frame illustrated by dynamics of speech acts enacted within the direct access, first-person narratives of her three brothers. Faulkner and Gender has a few chapters that are of interest.

The Intrigue of Joe Christmas

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After the mental gymnastics of [happily] getting through The Sound and the Fury, Faulkner reverts to a more recognizable and conventional narrative structure—for the most part—for Light in August. Chapter headings are numerical and ascend sequentially as the panorama of the narrative unfolds. The reader can identify the exposition introducing the various characters—whom, as a common denominator, are all non-Jefferson natives/outsiders—by the respective chapters. The point of entry is in media res—at the speed equivalent of a drawl—alongside Lena Grove in chapter 1; the third-person narrator then enlists Byron Bunch, a character within the story to be the eyes and ears in describing the arrival of Joe Christmas in chapter 2; chapter 3 is set aside to give the particulars of “exminister”, Gail Hightower and the cause(s) of “his disgrace” (48)…It isn’t until chapter 6 that the narrator takes a detour and deep dives into a flashback of Joe Christmas’s traumatic childhood as an orphan and upbringing as a foster child. 

Though the attention has been redirected, Lena will obviously still have to figure into the story as the foundation is still being laid out and there are questions to be answered: will Lena and Lucas Burch a/k/a the scumbag, Joe Brown reunite? Will Lena be made an “honest woman” by either Burch/Brown? or Byron Bunch? With that said, I like that Faulkner has created a co-protagonist in Joe Christmas and branches off to give Joe some air time. 

Something I find unsettling from the reading are two instances when Joe Christmas’s racial ambiguity is used against him with intent to deflect blame of the respective accuser’s personal transgressions and/or using it as a trump card of sorts. The idea of the accusation of Christmas being black came about as I was reading through Matthews’s chapter, “Come Up: From Red Necks to Riches”. Matthews uses the following example from Faulkner’s 1931 short story, “Dry September”: “Minnie triggers a tried-and-true imaginative mechanism when she cries rape. The modern South predicated racial segregation on the fear that emancipated black men posed a sexual threat to white women, and that new regulations had to replace the protections of slave codes” (Matthews, page 156, emphasis added). Similar to the stereotype of the black man as a “black beast rapist” from the example above, there are two moments when Joe is accused of being black—with all the weight of its associated stereotypes—, again, in an effort to take the scent off the accuser. The first occasion happens when Joe is only five years old, and his accuser is Miss Atkins, the young [and horny] dietician who works at the orphanage. The second occurrence is when Joe Brown rats out Christmas in an effort to regain his stake to the claim for the $1,000 reward in catching Joanna Burden’s killer. 

I found it a little heartbreaking how there is a total failure of communication and lack of understanding between young Joe and his white adult caretakers at the orphanage starting with Miss Atkins. Her guilt in thinking she has been caught by young Joe in the act of having sex with a colleague (and that Joe will tell somebody) and inability to communicate with Joe leads her in a failed attempt to try to bribe him; which then leads her to retaliate and seek an ally in the janitor at the orphanage who—Miss Atkins thinks—is eyeing Christmas so vigilantly because the janitor can see the blackness in him which Joe is too young to comprehend how one’s race can even be something to disguise. Miss Atkins is finally able to find somewhat of an ally in the matron of the orphanage and reveals to her that Joe is allegedly black (pages 132 – 33). The accusation, the mere crying black is all that is needed for a course of action to be taken. In order to prevent a scandal of an all-white orphanage housing a black boy, the matron decides that Joe needs to be “placed” with an adopted family immediately.  

Something in the narrator’s description of Joe Brown with his appearance and mannerisms gives off the idea that he is a sleazy guy…much like Ab Snopes in The Unvanquished. Apparently, it did not take our co-protagonist, Lena a long time to figure out that Joe Brown and Lucas Burch are very likely one and the same person. His involvement in implicating Joe Christmas is just as deleterious—if not more—than Miss Atkins. Seizing an opportunity of self-interest to claim the monetary reward, Brown cooperates without hesitation. What he fails to realize though is how his story to the marshal has holes that do not corroborate with that of another eye witness. In a last ditch effort to regain ground, Brown blurts out: “That’s right,”…“Go on. Accuse me. Accuse the white man that’s trying to help you with what he knows. Accuse the white man and let the n— go free. Accuse the white and let the n— run” (97). There is a moment of utter disbelief felt by all in the room before the marshal tells Brown of the gravity of his accusation: “You better be careful what you are saying, if it is a white man you are talking about,”…”I don’t care if he is a murderer or not” (98). Much like Minnie’s unfounded rape cry in “Dry September”, the marshal has a similar “imaginative mechanism” hardwired into equating male blackness with that of a “black beast rapist”. According to the marshal, it is worse for Joe Christmas to be a black man than to be a murderer who is white.

“She was already beaten”: Drusilla

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I learned from “The Digital Yoknapatawpha Project,” an online Wikipedia-like resource edited by students at University of Virginia that the “Skirmish at Sartoris” chapter was originally titled “Drusilla” by Faulkner. I understand the decision to go with “Skirmish…”, yet I feel that “Drusilla” is a more apt and appropriate title considering how she features prominently, especially towards the end of the narrative.  

I do not know why, but for some reason the unnamed narrator-protagonist in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” comes to mind as I witness Drusilla’s unraveling—via Bayard Sartoris’s myopic narrative scope/vantage point—during the last two chapters of The Unvanquished. Could the association have been made when there is mention of the “yellow” boards of Granny’s coffin? Or Drusilla’s dreaded “yellow” ball gown? Or is it because of the recurring use of repurposed window shades and wall paper? Is it entirely coincidental that both Drusilla and the unnamed narrator have a patriarchal figure/husband named John, as well as a female chaperone named Jenny/Jennie? I suppose these two female-presented characters warrant comparison because of how the confines within their respective narratives constrict them to the point of madness with no other recourse but to become “hysterical” women. As tempting as it would be to go down that rabbit hole, I will stay on task and explore the “heritage” of the South that weighs down on Drusilla.

I find Drusilla to be a fascinating, enigmatic character. I am far from well-versed, but I would be curious to encounter and engage in a queer and/or feminist reading of Drusilla. Interest is definitely piqued by the following cryptic statement from Bayard: “[Aunt Louisa] had expected the worst ever since Drusilla had deliberately tried to unsex herself by refusing to feel any natural grief at the death in battle not only of her affianced husband but of her own father” (189, emphasis added). What do we think Bayard means when he uses “unsex”? Within the same excerpt, Bayard’s use of “natural” also catches my attention. “Natural” grief to whom? By whom? Lastly, the discordant description of “affianced husband” comes across as slightly silly. Unless a minister and a witness(es) are involved, an affianced husband is still only a fiancé. No need to give Gavin Breckbridge the ball-and-chain status of husband just yet. 

At the start of the “Skirmish at Sartoris” chapter, Bayard flashes back to a tableau which appears—for all intents and purposes—to be a showdown: a battle of the sexes. However, at center stage drawing in these opposing forces is John Sartoris…and Drusilla. Not forgetting that Drusilla ran away from her life in Alabama to spend a period of time riding with Colonel Sartoris and his regiment as an unsexed, disguised soldier (how else would she have been permitted to remain within the homosocial space of the Confederate military?), it would make sense that Drusilla also inhabited “a world ordered completely by men’s doings, even when it is danger and fighting, you don’t want to quit that world: maybe the danger and the fighting are the reasons, because men have been pacifists for every reason under the sun except to avoid danger and fighting” (188). Drusilla wholeheartedly integrates this “world” and its mentality into her being. The tragicomic attempts by Drusilla’s mother to “beat” Drusilla—a mission that is accomplished eventually—are relentless. That is why I interpret the male and female figures within the aforementioned tableau as agents having an intervention of sorts to “beat” and coerce Drusilla back into her sphere as the Southern belle, the “spotless” woman whose “highest destiny”…is “to be the bride-widow of a lost cause” (191). It is unfathomable to all present—Bayard included—to consider what Drusilla wants outside of what is expected of her as a Southern woman. Other than “unsex”, Bayard cannot even articulate with language the possibility of Drusilla inhabiting a sphere that is not altogether male nor female. What is really impactful is to witness as a reader what lengths Southern women (represented by Aunt Louisa, Mrs. Habersham and Mrs. Compson) take to uphold the limited role of their sex. As the reader sees, the prioritization of the optics of how Southern womanhood ought to be presented rivals that of Southern manhood. The ball gown Drusilla is forced to wear by her mother (and later by her husband, John Sartoris) becomes a symbolic straitjacket to “beat” and “whip” her into the dutiful, submissive Southern woman. 

In the optional reading of Professor Allred’s paper, something in the following mention of Drusilla had me wonder: “[t]he plot confronts the prospect of an abstract, race-dissolving citizenship with brutal economy, having John Sartoris and Drusilla Hawk take an unannounced detour on the way to their wedding to murder the Federal officials overseeing the polls. This depiction of masculine sovereignty asserting itself through extralegal violence in the service of what Sartoris calls, without a hint of irony, “law and order,” is unsurprising to the point of cliché” (Allred, 15, emphasis added). What is the reader to make of Drusilla’s involvement in the murder of the voting officials? True, she did not wield “masculine sovereignty” and pull the trigger on either pistol during either of the fatal shots…but, she accompanied John Sartoris into the homosocial space of the makeshift voting area within the hotel as his accomplice. Drusilla’s involvement is further complicated when she does in fact take on the role of “bride-widow of a lost cause” upon John Sartoris’s death, and bequeaths the derringer pistols to her stepson/fourth cousin, Bayard, further along in the narrative. After John nonchalantly sweeps the matter of his arbitrary “law and order” under the rug, I do not quite know how to make out the meaning of Drusilla becoming the appointed “voting commissioner” by John, nor the implications of the voting box being in her hands. 

Growing Pains in “The Unvanquished”

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The initial impression of Bayard Sartoris—upon making his acquaintance as the first-person narrator-character guiding the reader through the events he recounts in The Unvanquished—is that he is a bit peculiar…but because of his peculiarity, he is also intriguing. It does not take long for the reader to grasp that Bayard is an adult narrating the story of his coming of age—a time which is all the more significant because his passage into “manhood” coincides alongside the unfolding of the American Civil War. 

Within the assigned reading, Bayard’s narrative spans the end of his childhood years—beginning with him at 12 years old close to turning 13 years old—with its accompanying “child’s make-believe” (95) fantasies and naïveté, and ends with him at 15 years old. To what degree has one of the many casualties from the American Civil War—the way of life in the South—been destroyed? And, how has the disruption of the then-prevailing economic system and social order affect two particular personages from that now defunct order: namely, Bayard’s father (Colonel John Sartoris aka “Father”); and, to a greater extent, Bayard’s maternal grandmother (Rosa Millard aka “Granny”). With the progression of the war always looming in the background yet ever-present, Bayard observes at different junctures of the narrative how it reveals “little”-ness onto Father, and subsequently, onto Granny. 

The shift in how Bayard sees Father in a different light occurs at the beginning of the novel. In a moment of comparison using a flashback within a flashback, Bayard contrasts the appearance of his father from the spring only a few months back—presumably in conjunction with the start and/or early stage of the war—to the moment where he decides to start the story. Bayard notices that his father’s appearance is more bedraggled than in the spring: “…[Father’s] boots dark and dustcaked too, the skirts of his weathered gray coat shades darker than the breast and back and sleeves where the tarnished buttons and the frayed braid of his field officer’s rank glinted dully (9, my italics). This visual description suggests how the Confederate troops are doing in the war (or, at least, how Father’s regiment is doing) that then leads Bayard to hone in on Father’s stature: “Then we could see him good. I mean, Father. He was not big; it was just the things he did, that we knew he was doing, had been doing…that made him seem big to us” (9). Bayard then reiterates his observation a few sentences later: “[Father] was not big, yet somehow he looked even smaller on the horse than off of him, because Jupiter was big and when you thought of Father you thought of him as being big too” (9-10). Bayard shares his observation on the optics of positioning and perspective both in how Father appears “big” with the help of his horse, Jupiter, as well as the encounter between Granny and Father when they greet each other: “[Father] could have stood on the same level with Granny and he would have only needed to bend his head a little for her to kiss him. But he didn’t. He stopped two steps below her, with his head bared…and the fact that Granny had to stoop a little now took nothing from the illusion of height and size which he wore for us at least” (10). This newly realized sense of Father’s smallness recurs when Bayard refers to him simply as “the little man” (13). I believe the “child’s make believe” and “illusion” Bayard has of Father’s seeming grandiosity—held up until he is 12 years old, at least—are in opposition to how he now sees Father. Somehow the war nullifies a version of Father as the Southern gentleman/plantation owner/head of household/patriarch/colonel figure, and Bayard sees a version of him with prescient eyes.

Comparatively, the continual unfolding of war take its toll by taking its time with Granny. As opposed to the opening scene as well as a later scene, Father is an absentee figure to Bayard in the story. Granny, however, is the caretaker/maternal/parental figure who, pathetically, is worn down and wearied as collateral damage by the war. Granny is present throughout the chapters, but, as the war continues, Bayard observes and divulges a steady, gradual decline: “Granny was strong and thin and light as a cat…” (74) to her deterioration into “a lot of little thin dry light sticks” (154). As the narrative and the concomitant war progress, Bayard observes Granny: “looking sicker and sicker” (103), to looking “old and tired. I [Bayard] hadn’t realized how old and little she was” (108); Bayard then goes to say how Granny “looked littler than Cousin Denny” (137)…the pathos of Granny’s deterioration continues: “she looked littler than anybody I could remember, like during the four years she hadn’t got any older or weaker, but just littler and littler…” (143); and, before her ultimate demise, Bayard observes that Granny “was small between us, little; she talked quiet, not loud, not fast and not slow; her voice sounded quiet and still” (146). Coming from the generation before Colonel Sartoris who will have to reconstruct a new life and identity, Granny withers away much like the losing South she embodies. 

For the sake of remaining within the word count of the post, I limited the observations Bayard makes to Father and Granny. However, I am also intrigued by Bayard’s observations of his cousin, Drusilla; and, of course, I am very curious to see how the dynamics will shift between Bayard and Ringo, in light of how the “Riposte in Tertio” chapter ends.