My paper will focus on the “religion” of the Lost Cause in Faulkner’s work. I don’t mean to limit my paper to just the pulpit but to expand it the mytho-religious doctrine that demonstrated the collective consciousness (and imagination) of white Christians in the post-War South. However, even as this is a religion “baptized in blood,” as Charles Reagan Wilson says, it extended to all facets of Southern life. While I have not read all of Faulkner’s prose, I will limit my range to four of his novels (see below). Through these and other sources, I will detail how white preachers were the germ spreading this delusion and how the myth of the Lost Cause became synonymous, even symbiotic, with religion.

Faulkner, William. Absalom, Absalom! : the Corrected Text. Vintage international edition., Vintage International / Vintage Books, 1990.
Rosa Coldfield is the unofficial poet of the county and the Lost Cause. Through her words, which we never read but having read other Lost Cause poetry in my research, can only assume, is doggerel. Though my paper will focus more on the “religious” factors contributing to Lost Cause ideology, Rosa and her words are examples of the stubborn delusion that lingered (and lingers) throughout the Deep South. This will contribute to my point that this doctrine was largely founded in religion, but like any doctrine it is not contained by its edifice.

Faulkner, William. Light in August : the Corrected Text. Vintage international edition., Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., 1990.
This will be my principal Faulkner text. I will focus, as much as my word limit will allow, on how Gail Hightower completely abandoned anything resembling scripture, how he was not “called” to minister in Jefferson but rather how he chose Jefferson to live out (and outside of) his life through his grandfather’s heroic efforts in the War. I’ll also address how Hightower “killed” the church through this obsession.

Faulkner, William. The Sound and the Fury : the Corrected Text. 1st Vintage International ed., Vintage Books, 1990.
Space permitting, I’d like to discuss how this same religion is capable of the contrary of the Lost Cause, that Reverend Shegog can speak about deliverance and “unburdenin” from his pulpit while white preachers can shout the same words from the same book with a completely different ethos.

Faulkner, William. The Unvanquished : the Corrected Text. First Vintage International edition., Vintage Books, 1991.
There are a few points I’d like to flesh out here. One is Reverend Fortinbride, who sits in a sort of polarity to Reverend Hightower. Fortinbride was in the War, and he hardly speaks about the war. Hightower was a grandson to the War, and he can’t stop talking about it. Another point is Drusilla and “the highest destiny of a Southern woman—to be the bride-widow of a lost cause.” As Faulkner points out in the book, “the women had never surrendered.” This ties into Rosa Coldfiled in Absalom, Absalom!  and her “epic” Lost Cause poems as well. Women played a vital role in Lost Cause ideology, as “the highest destiny” demonstrates, but Louisa’s letter in this novel gets at the heart of how solemn and venerated this idea was: “But when I think of my husband who laid down his life to protect a heritage of courageous men and spotless women looking down from heaven upon a daughter who had deliberately cast away that for which he died, and when I think of my half orphan son who will one day ask of me why his martyred father’s sacrifice was not enough to preserve his sister’s good name—” This letter is marked with Christian jargon. Words like “spotless” and “martyred” demonstrate just how linked this ideology was to religion. 

Gorra, Michael Edward. The Saddest Words : William Faulkner’s Civil War. First edition., Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W. W. Norton & Company, 2020.
For my paper, this book is a primary source for the historical, racial, social, and political elements of the South both during and following the Civil War, particularly the myth of the Lost Cause—what Gorra calls “the busy work of memory.” Gorra brilliantly and with great detail lays out the mindset of Southerners as they justify the reasons for the War and how, as Robert Penn Warren said, “in the moment of death, the Confederacy entered upon its immortality.” This book will be a launchpad for more focused points on Faulkner’s work, particularly The Unvanquished and Light in August.

Howe, Irving. “The Southern Myth and William Faulkner.” American Quarterly, vol. 3, no. 4, 1951, pp. 357–62. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3031466. Accessed 18 Apr. 2023.
This source demonstrates what Faulkner does with the Southern myth and collective consciousness in the post-War South. After their defeat, the South was unable, or unwilling, to participate in the growth of the new country. So, since they couldn’t look to the future, they looked to the past and told themselves the old stories with that Southern love of grandeur that apotheosized its soldiers and its cause. Howe says that “The Southern myth, like any other myth, is less an attempt at historical description than a voicing of the collective imagination, perhaps of the collective will.”

Kazin, Alfred. “William Faulkner and Religion: Determinism, Compassion, and the God of Defeat.” Faulkner and Religion, University Press of Mississippi, 2006, p. 3–.
This will be a secondary source to both Wilson texts and will further demonstrate the religious climate Faulkner grew up in and was surrounded by. It also lays out the stakes for Southern Christian religions and how they differed from those in the North. “Race, slavery, poverty, and violence in which the sense of sin and redemption, far from being pale, abstract words distantly heard only on Sunday, were issues of life and death, meaning real sin and redemption were truly needed, that burned in Southern hearts and made human existence seem fraught…with the most terrible possible consequences.”

Matthews, John T. William Faulkner Seeing through the South. Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.
Throughout my paper, I’ll repeatedly come back to Matthews to ground the more mytho-historical and doctrinal elements of the South and the Lost Cause in Faulkner’s prose.

Watson, Jay. “William Faulkner’s Civil Wars.” The Southern Quarterly, vol. 51, no. 1/2, 2013, p. 41–.
Through this text, I’ll explore how Faulkner dramatizes the War, particularly through the Sartorises in Flags in the Dust (Sartoris) and The Unvanquished and through Gail Highttower Light in August. Watson really gets at the “immediacy” of the war in Faulkner’s work and in the lives of post-War Southerners. I’ll touch on the sentimentality Faulkner seems to express for the South’s Civil War ideology (Flags in the Dust), his modernization of it (The Unvanquished), and his repudiation of it (Light in August).

Wilson, Charles Reagan. Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865-1920. University of Georgia Press, 2009.
This is my primary text on the nature of Southern Christianity before, during, and after the Civil War. Through this text, I will show not only the inherent delusion and racism of the doctrine of the Lost Cause but will show how Faulkner portrays this from the pulpit and how such a doctrine runs rampant like gossip or a fine sermon. As Wilson says, “Religion is at the heart of this dream and the history of the attitude known as the Lost Cause was the story of the use of the past as the basis for a Southern religious-moral identity as a chosen people… [The Lost Cause] was therefore the story of the linking of two profound human forces, religion and history.” I’ll demonstrate this through several instances and characters in Faulkner’s work, but what most concerns my current research are Doc Hines spewing his white supremacist “sermons” and Gail Hightower’s delusional romanticism from the pulpit.

Wilson, Charles Reagan. “William Faulkner and the Southern Religious Culture.” Faulkner and Religion, University Press of Mississippi, 2006, p. 21–.
This text takes the larger historical and doctrinal points Wilson makes in his book and grounds them in Faulkner’s work. Wilson covers a lot in this text but one point I will focus on is the apparent Calvinism in the Lost Cause doctrine—most importantly, the idea of predestination and the Elect. Southerners saw themselves as a chosen people, equating themselves with the children of Israel in the Old Testament, under the tyranny of the North. Wilson discusses the oral nature of the South. This will converge with my paper, as part of my point is that the Lost Cause doctrine was spread throughout the South through preachers and Sunday sermons.

My paper will focus on transgressive bodies in Light in August, The Unvanquished, Absalom, Absalom! and how bodies are classed, raced, and gendered as a means to reveal their sociopolitical standing in greater society. I want to explore how Faulkner uses depictions of transgressive bodies in his work to make larger points about Southern culture, patriarchy, sexuality, sexism, and racism. As to not overwhelm myself, I have decided to organize my paper by sub-topic rather than character. I have relied on the Hunter College Library website to point me to useful sources to assist me in answering how Faulkner uses depictions of transgressive bodies to make larger points about Southern (and frankly, broader American) culture writ large. 

Clarke, Deborah. Robbing The Mother : Women in Faulkner, University Press of Mississippi, 1992. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/huntercollege-ebooks/detail.action?docID=866930.

Clarke analyzes female characters use their bodies in creative ways to realize the possibilities of her own power within the narrow confines of Southern society.

Doyle, Laura. “Project Muse.” The Body against Itself in Faulkner’s Phenomenology of Race, vol. 73, no. 2, June 2001. 339-364 , https://doi.org/10.1163/_afco_asc_000f

Doyle provides a fascinating analysis on how Lena Grove, Gail Hightower, Joe Christmas and Joanna Burden’s bodies function as phantoms that simultaneously promise and withhold the unity of the body—and the nation.

Faulkner, William. Absalom, Absalom!: The Corrected Text. Vintage International, 1986.

This is my primary source for all material regarding Faulkner’s depictions the transgressive bodies of Clydie, Charles Bon and Miss. Rosa.

Faulkner, William. Light in August. Vintage International, 1932.

This is my primary source for all material regarding Faulkner’s depictions the transgressive bodies of Lena Grove, Gail Hightower, Joe Christmas and Joanna Burden.

Faulkner, William. The Unvanquished the Corrected Text. Vintage International, 1991.

This is my primary source for all material regarding Faulkner’s depictions the transgressive body of Drusilla Hawke.

Forter, Greg. Gender, Race, and Mourning in American Modernism, Cambridge University Press, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/huntercollege-ebooks/detail.action?docID=691960.

Forter examines the physical manifestations of trauma in the bodies characters in Light in August and Absalom Absalom! thus depicting how racism, patriarchy, gender, heteronormativity and classism physically alter and traumatize their victims and beneficiaries to the greatest extent possible.

Roberts, Diane. “A Precarious Pedestal: The Confederate Woman in Faulkner’s ‘Unvanquished.’” Journal of American Studies, vol. 26, no. 2, 1992, pp. 233–46. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27555647

Roberts provides a very interesting analysis on how, through transgression, Drusilla Hawke’s body is no longer a body but a contested zone, an object of contention for nearly all the townspeople and the Sartoris family.

Watson, Jay. Reading for the Body : The Recalcitrant Materiality of Southern Fiction, 1893-1985, University of Georgia Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/huntercollege-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3039122

Watson supplements my paper by explaining how bodies in Light in August represent the cultural context of the early twentieth-century Deep South, a world where blood was the most dangerous thing.

Yaeger, Patricia. Dirt and Desire : Reconstructing Southern Women’s Writing, 1930-1990, University of Chicago Press, 2000. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/huntercollege-ebooks/detail.action?docID=432317

Yaeger explains how the bodies of many of the characters depicted in Light in August, The Unvanquished, Absalom, Absalom! reveal a preoccupation with the monstrous and the grotesque as well as with the peculiar points of contact between black and white, such as the daily trauma of underpaid labor and the operations of racial and gender politics in the unnoticed yet all-too-familiar everyday.

Throughout my process of researching articles for my final project, I looked for secondary sources and literary criticism on how marriage is perceived in Faulkner’s South. However, in my search for sources, I did have a bit of trouble looking for specific titles that completely zeroed in on my topic. As a result of this, I expanded my horizons in order to think about other elements that fit under the umbrella of marriage in order to enhance my search. I attempted to perceive marriage from a historical approach, rather than remain within the confines of Faulkner’s world. More specifically, I relied on JSTOR and the Zotero bibliography to look for interesting articles, along with attempting to channel some of the works that we have read in class that could possibly bolster my process in glossing my chosen term for a long Yoknapedia entry. I also found some interesting smaller pieces of work that Faulkner has completed about marriage as a sort of expansion of my primary sources, but I am unsure if this will be efficient enough for my final project. As a basis for my research, I primarily utilized the library databases that offered free access through Hunter College, in which I typed in the key words: “Faulkner and marriage” “Southern marriage” “Caddy Compson” and “Drusilla Hawk.” For my research on the Absalom Absalom! portion of my Yoknapedia entry, I was able to find a journal article that was listed in the Zotero bibliography that best fit my topic. 

Dunleavy, Linda. “Marriage and the Invisibility of Women in Absalom, Absalom!” Women’s Studies, vol. 22, Sept. 1993, pp. 455–65. EBSCOhost, proxy.wexler.hunter.cuny.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=qth&AN=9312012432&site=ehost-live.

Dunleavy engages in a close reading of the three main female characters of Absalom, Absalom! in order to argue that their romantic relationships (and tentative marriages) with Sutpen signify social markers for them in the South. Through the characters of Rosa, Ellen, and Judith, this article demonstrates how Sutpen’s views on marriage (and his hopes to build a male-dominated familial line) devalue women’s sexuality, hence causing them to remain within the shadows of Southern society. However, these women’s various attempts to defy the traditional gender role of becoming domestic caretakers ends up becoming a valuable aid in their development of sexual independence. Many of the claims that Dunleavy makes in her article will be a valuable supplement to the Absalom, Absalom! portion of my Yoknapedia entry, as her work expands upon the ongoing conversation of the social and economic transactions that were present amongst marriages in Faulkner’s South. 

Faulkner, William. Absalom, Absalom!. 1st ed., New York, Vintage Books, 1990.

As my first primary source that I will be referencing in my project, Absalom, Absalom! discusses Ellen, Judith, and Rosa’s marriages in immense detail. Through a comparative close reading of these relationships, this source will help build a foundation for the portion of my entry about the social and economic effects of Southern marriage. 

—. The Sound and the Fury. 1st ed., New York, Vintage Books, 1990.

Apart from the other two novels that I will be utilizing as primary sources, The Sound and the Fury approaches the idea of marriage from a devastating psychological perspective. More specifically, the novel provides a fruitful amount of evidence for a close reading and literary analysis of Caddy’s marriage and wedding day through the eyes of Benjy (who is diagnosed with cerebral palsy, in which he possesses difficulties in speech development as per our class discussions of the novel). Through Benjy’s expressionless retelling of this particular event, Faulkner evidently illustrates a fictional representation of a Southern marriage through the realistic lens of the psychological effects that occur to his characters during its aftermath. 

—. The Unvanquished. 1st ed., New York, Vintage Books, 1991.

For the portion of my entry about Drusilla Hawk, I will primarily focus on the ways in which Faulkner envisions her throughout the second half of the novel. More specifically, the focus on my analysis of her sudden marriage to John Sartoris will illuminate the idea of how Southern marriage can eventually signify one’s “saving grace.” In other words, through analyzing passages from the chapter titled “An Odor of Verbena,” I hope to decipher the unbreakable link between a woman’s desire to obtain sexual purity and Southern marriage traditions, as I briefly stated in my proposal for my project. 

Simmons, Christina. “Women’s Power in Sex Radical Challenges to Marriage in the Early-Twentieth-Century United States.” Feminist Studies, vol. 29, no. 1, 2003, 168–98. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3178485.

Unlike most of the articles that I researched, Simmons goes into detail about the scholarship that surrounds male and female sexuality as it was perceived in the early twentieth century. More specifically, she argues that scholars perceived sexuality as more than its mere physical functions for both men and women. Instead, these writers attempted to widen the discourse in terms of how sexuality can be utilized to develop one’s own unique set of values in terms of marriage, romantic relationships, and more. Although many of her claims that she makes are unrelated to the overarching topic of my Yoknapedia post, this article will be utilized as a launching point for the historical context that I will open up my post with. 

Wagner, Linda W. “Language and Act: Caddy Compson.” The Southern Literary Journal, vol. 14, no. 2, 1982, pp. 49–61. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20077677.

Wagner illustrates that the character of Caddy (the female protagonist in The Sound and the Fury) signifies the physical voice that Benjy desires in order to navigate the world around him. Benjy’s emotional, yet also heartbreaking response to Caddy’s marriage further emphasizes his dealings with the loss of this voice. Through her reading of the character, Wagner comes to the conclusion that Caddy’s decision to get married (along with some of the other familial choices she makes) signifies her desire to escape from the tumultuous Compson family, leading her to be crucified at the hands of her mother, father, Jason, and Quentin. In a sense, this article contrasts with some of the claims that Dunleavy makes in her article, as marriage in this context is perceived as a tragedy in the eyes of another. 

Watson, James G. “Faulkner’s ‘What Is the Matter With Marriage.’” The Faulkner Journal, vol.5, no. 2, 1990, pp. 69–72. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24907682.

This article highlights one of Faulkner’s essays titled “What Is the Matter With Marriage.” Utilizing his relationship with Estelle as inspiration, he deciphers that in order for marriages to be a success, there needs to be less of a focus on the physical attraction that men and women experience between one another. Instead, marriage is a loving commitment, in which two people are able to get to know each other (e.g., their interests, flaws, physical and emotional qualities) in order to find common ground on how to make their relationship long-lasting. For my Yoknapedia entry, passages from this essay (along with claims from the Simmons piece) will be quoted to emphasize Faulkner’s views on marriage on the surface level, along with providing an insightful introduction into how Faulkner emulates these views onto his female characters. 

Note: I will also be reviewing and analyzing some of the claims that Patricia Yaeger makes in her essay titled “Faulkner’s ‘Greek Amphora Priestess’: Verbena and Violence in The Unvanquished,” which is a part of a collection of essays titled Faulkner and Gender. Since I will be receiving a hard copy of the essay from Professor Allred before or after class on Tuesday, I did not have time to include this title in my bibliography.

The topic of my paper will focus on depictions of male homoeroticism and male homosocial bonding in the works of William Faulkner, particularly in Absalom, Absalom!, The Sound and the Fury, and Light in August. Through a focused analysis of the dynamics and relationships that exist between Thomas Sutpen and the enslaved men, Charles Bon and Henry Sutpen, and Quentin Compson and Shreve McCannon/MacKenzie, I will explore the ways in which intimacy between men is portrayed and the connection that it has to both upholding traditional power structures and the potential it has to dismantle traditional power structures. As seen through the fear, anger, and violence exhibited through characters like Jason Compson and Percy Grimm – who uphold normative sexuality in order to maintain white patriarchal power in the South – I will argue that Faulkner suggests that male homosocial bonding has the ability to undermine clearly defined and enforced boundaries around class, gender, and race.

Through a combination of keywords and search phrases like “homoeroticism,” “queer,” and “transgressive” alongside “Faulkner,” I located the majority of my sources – both physical books and online journal articles –  through CUNY One Search. I also searched specifically in key publications including The Faulkner Journal, The Mississippi Quarterly, American Literature, and Modern Fiction Studies. 

Primary Source: Absalom, Absalom!

The majority of my paper will focus on the characters and dynamics portrayed in AA, in particular, the dynamics between Henry Sutpen and Charles Bon and Quentin Compson and Shreve McCannon. The homoerotic language and behavior not only exists within these pairs, but also between all four of them. Quentin’s character serves as both a connection to the past and the limitations of Southern societal constraints and the possibility of breaking free of those bonds through exploration, imagination, and storytelling. 

Primary Source: The Sound and the Fury

In many respects, Jason Compson IV is a representative of the diminished plantocracy class, and thus is an individual desperate to hold on to existing structures that provide him with power and agency including his race, class, and gender. His “fury” and focus on the destabilizing man with the red tie suggests a homoeroticism that threatens Jason’s control. This novel also provides important context regarding Quentin’s desire for both Caddy and Dalton Ames which mirrors the love triangle in Absalom, Absalom! 

Primary Source: Light in August

This novel depicts the threat that “queer” behavior poses for men like the sheriff and Percy Grimm in their inability to imagine relationships and dynamics outside of those legally sanctioned and socially promoted. This is particularly true when analyzing the dynamics (or even just societal perception) between men like Joe Christmas and Lucas Burch, and Gail Hightower and Joe Christmas. 

Source #1: Harker, Jaime. “Queer Faulkner: Whores, Queers, and the Transgressive South.” The New Cambridge Companion to William Faulkner. Edited by John T. Matthews. Cambridge University Press, 2015, pp. 107-118

In this chapter, Harker presents an overview of the recent scholarship that has been published looking at Faulkner’s novels through a queer critical lens. Harker’s writing analyzes the homoeroticism present throughout Faulkner’s writing and the impact that transgressive gender and sexuality have on destabilizing alliances and power structures. 

Source #2: Boone, Joseph Allen. “Under the Shadow of Fascism: Oedipus, Sexual Anxiety, and the Deauthorizing Designs of Paternal Narrative.” Libidinal Currents: Sexuality and the Shaping of Modernism. The University of Chicago Press, 1998, pp. 298-322. 

Boone’s chapter focusing on Absalom, Absalom! analyzes the homoerotic behavior between the central characters and applies theoretical frameworks from Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick regarding the fine line between homosocial bonding and homoerotic behavior. This is particularly useful in recognizing the gap between homoerotic desire and homophobic violence. 

Source #3: Jones, Norman W. “Coming Out through History’s Hidden Love Letters in Absalom, Absalom.” American Literature, vol. 76, no. 2, 2004, pp. 339–66.

Jones provides an in depth analysis of the homoeroticism that exists between central characters in Absalom, Absalom! He argues that the history of illicit desire that takes place in Sutpen’s Hundred and in Jefferson more generally continues to influence and “haunt” Quentin, posing numerous ethical questions that stretch beyond sexual desire. 

Source #4: Richards, Gary. “The Artful and Crafty Ones of the French Quarter: Male Homosexuality and Faulkner’s Early Prose Writings.” Faulkner’s Sexualities. Edited by Dana Andrews, Annette Trefzer, and Ann J. Abadie. University Press of Mississippi, 2010.

Richards provides biographical information regarding the degree of comfort and frequency in which Faulkner engaged with the gay community in New Orleans (and Europe). The biographical insights into Faulkner’s lived experiences help to explain the presence and prevalence of homoeroticism in his novels. 

Source #5: Bibler, Michael. “Interracial Homoeroticism and the Loopholes of Taboo in William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!” Cotton’s Queer Relations: Same Sex Intimacy and the Literature of the Southern Plantation. University of Virginia Press, 2009. 

Bibler explores queer relationships between men of the planter class in Absalom, Absalom!, and the ways in which homosocial bonds are sanctioned by the elite, but prohibited across lines of difference like class and race. In this case, the existence of queer relations and homosocial bonds relies on the subjugation of poor whites, Black people, and women. 

Source #6: Abate, Michelle Ann. “Reading Red: The Man with the (Gay) Red Tie in Faulkner’s ‘The Sound and the Fury.’” The Mississippi Quarterly, vol. 54, no. 3, 2001, pp. 293–312.

The criticism explores the possibility that the traveling carnival man wearing the red tie in The Sound and the Fury is a homosexual. Jason’s rage can then be explained not solely on Quentin’s behavior, but on his own emasculation, repressed homoerotic desires, and an usurping of the established order by an outsider with subversive sexual behavior. 

Source #7: Polk, Noel. “How Shreve Gets into Quentin’s Pants.” Faulkner and Welty and the Southern Literary Tradition. University Press of Mississippi, 2008. pp. 22-30. 

Polk explores Shreve and Quentin’s relationship in The Sound and the Fury through a queer lens, pointing out the homoeroticism within their relationship and arguing that Quentin was struggling with his own homoerotic desires and feelings of emasculation, stressors that potentially contribute to his suicide.

Source #8: Tipton, Nathan. “Rope and Faggot: The Homoerotics of Lynching in William Faulkner’s Light in August.” The Mississippi Quarterly , Vol. 64, No. 3-4, pp. 369-392.

The criticism explores the construction of masculinity in Southern society and the extent to which it is complicated by homosocial, homoerotic, and racial complexities. Tipton argues that lynching within Light in August is connected to the erotic, and is infused with overtones of masculine anxiety and homosexual panic. Tipton connects Percy Grimm’s effeminacy to his violent castration of the masculine Joe Christmas in an attempt to prove his own manhood through reliance on his whiteness.  

Source #9: Lopez, Alfred J. “Queering Whiteness, Queering Faulkner: Hightower’s ‘Wild Bulges.’” The Faulkner Journal, vol. 22, no. 1/2, 2006, pp. 74–89.Lopez focuses on Gail Hightower’s character in Light in August to explore the relationship between whiteness and homosexuality, arguing that homosexuality “marks” individuals by distancing them from heteronormative whiteness and aligning them with ethnic minorities, Black people, and other marginalized whites.

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. 

My long Yoknapedia entry on “mobility/motion” will focus on the ways that white women in Faulkner’s literature use movement to navigate and more specifically: resist, and/or contribute to the spatial and ideological entrapments that patriarchy creates for them. In another research project, I would connect this topic to the ways that Black women in Faulkner’s work navigate/resist patriarchy through motion/stasis, but that is not the focus of this entry (maybe someone could add it to mine in the future!). I will discuss Drusilla Hawk and Lena Grove as highly mobile challengers (and at times, enforcers, in Drusilla’s case) of patriarchy. On the other hand, I will outline Rosa Coldfield and Caroline Compson as figures of stasis who cannot seem to break patriarchy’s locks, literally and figuratively. Of course, there are complexities in each character’s case that will be analyzed. 

This topic has proven difficult to find sources on because not one source that I’ve found speaks directly to the topic of women and mobility, therefore I’ve had to read “around” a lot of sources to find information that is useful to me. I borrowed Richard Adams’s book Faulkner: Myth and Motion from the Hunter Library and it is the most direct reference to motion and movement in Faulkner’s novels that I’ve found. It provided me with some interesting tidbits about Faulkner’s meditations on movement and time as they relate to his work, as well as how characters in his novels move with or against time in their specific circumstances. Many of my sources came by way of Hunter Library OneSearch, Google Scholar, ProQuest, and JSTOR. 

Adams, Richard P. Faulkner: Myth and Motion. Princeton University Press, 1968.

Adams focuses on the term “dynamic stasis” to frame his discussion of movement/stillness imagery across many of Faulkner’s works. Adams links characters’ movements within their narratives with the larger concept of time as motion and describes the ways that characters like Lena Grove, Rosa Coldfield, Quentin Compson, and others, move or stay still during this poignant historical moment in the South. 

Carden, Mary Paniccia. “Fatherlands: Paternal Erotics of Place in Faulkner, Welty, and Morrison.” Sons and Daughters of Self-Made Men : Improvising Gender, Place, Nation in American Literature, Bucknell University Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/huntercollege-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3115890.

In this chapter, Carden teases out the idea of the “fatherland” by exploring the connections between white Southern patriarchy and geographical spaces such as the plantation and the home. This will help my Yoknapedia entry by allowing me to establish the patriarchal “habitus” embedded in the land in which white Southern women such as Lena, Drusilla, Rosa, and Caroline Compson must navigate and how they choose to move through it (or not).

Carden, Mary Paniccia. “Motherlands: Alternative Places in Cather, Smiley, and Faulkner.” Sons and Daughters of Self-Made Men : Improvising Gender, Place, Nation in American Literature, Bucknell University Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/huntercollege-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3115890.

According to Carden, the “motherland” exists in conversation with the “fatherland” in the ways that women create alternative spaces for themselves within this patriarchal framework. Carden emphasizes that the “female creativity” which is permitted in “motherlands” is contradictory because it both serves patriarchal designs and has the possibility to “unmake” them. This source will help me as I think about where and how female characters in Faulkner create their own “motherlands” within their movement through the Southern “fatherland”. 

Clarke, Deborah L. “Familiar and Fantastic: Women in ‘Absalom, Absalom!’” Faulkner Journal, vol. 2, no. 1, 1986, pp. 62–72. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24907599. Accessed 27 Apr. 2023.

Clarke’s conception of women in AA as “familiar and fantastic” helps to situate Rosa in the patriarchal geography of her story that perceives women as otherworldly and unwieldy, or snug within their role of patriarchal design. I was hoping to find a source on Rosa’s narrative authority in AA and Clarke addresses it nicely in this article. 

Faulkner, William. Absalom, Absalom!: The Corrected Text. Vintage International, 1986.

While Rosa Coldfield lived as a shut-in and silent in an old house for 43 years, the breaking of her silence to tell the story of Thomas Sutpen is significant. Rosa’s internalized misogyny and perpetual sexual frustration puts her in a state of stasis, but her refusal of Thomas Sutpen’s childbearing proposal and engagement in the female Triumvirate who takes over the happenings of Sutpen’s Hundred in Thomas Sutpen’s absence opens her up to a challenger status in some ways. 

–- . Light in August: The Corrected Text. Vintage International, 1985. 

Lena Grove’s travels and her interactions with people along the way will be the primary source of evidence from this text. Lena’s untethered attitude to the physical spaces around her while pregnant allows her to resist the spatial entrapment of the home that has become of mothers like Caroline Compson, for example. Faulkner uses Lena’s wishes of finding Lucas Burch to settle down and marry as a red herring to allow her to continue her travels forward as an independent mother. 

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

Caroline Compson lives in a stale state of stillness and self-absorption inside the Compson household, which functions as a domestic and patriarchal space. She performs the role of the antiquated white Southern matriarch while victimizing herself and others in her family due to her acceptance of Southern patriarchy. 

–- . The Unvanquished: The Corrected Text. Vintage International, 1986.

While Drusilla inverts gender expectations by dressing like a man, riding horses, and running off to fight with the Confederate army, she eventually becomes trapped in this artificial role of “wife” that her mother and the town women insist upon for her. The geography that Drusilla moves through as a woman fighting in the Civil War is significant, as her travels through the “fatherland” show that she is not as free as she thinks. 

Roberts, Diane. “A Precarious Pedestal: The Confederate Woman in Faulkner’s ‘Unvanquished.’” Journal of American Studies, vol. 26, no. 2, 1992, pp. 233–46. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27555647. Accessed 27 Apr. 2023.

Roberts analyzes the ways that Drusilla’s identity as a Confederate woman is constructed through the connections between Southern landscape and patriarchal discourses of the Civil War. 

I’ve decided to narrow my investigation of the topic of identity to Absalom, Absalom! and the various approaches to storytelling we see throughout the novel. I want to explore how narrative invention functions as a key to selfhood. Even characters who are telling other characters’ stories—and are fabricating whole swaths of biographical information—are participating in a process that is far more alive than the act of grasping at memories of a dead past.

Brooks, Peter. “Incredulous Narration: Absalom, Absalom!” Comparative
Literature, vol. 34, no. 3, 1982, pp. 247–268.

This Brooks piece examines how AA subverts typical modes of narration and how truths about characters and past events can be regarded in this slippery world of storytelling. He looks at the blurred boundaries between narrator and narratee and illustrates how both are participants in the storytelling process of sense-making, which contains more information than the story itself. His discussion of the concept of “difference” as a mode of creating meaning in storytelling and personal identity can also be put in conversation with the Godden and Fowler pieces.

Fowler, Doreen. “Revising The Sound and the Fury: Absalom, Absalom! and
Faulkner’s Postmodern Turn.” In Faulkner and Postmodernism, edited by John
N. Duvall, and Ann J. Abadie, University Press of Mississippi, 2002. 

In this chapter, Fowler details Jacques Lacan’s theory of “subjectivity arising out of alienation.” The theory describes how individuals begin their lives with no sense of separation (“I” vs “you”) but then have a moment of “splitting” where they begin to define themselves as distinct from the “other.” Fowler draws parallels between this theory and Sutpen’s personal journey — and letter writing (and storytelling in general) seems to be one of the primary ways characters go about this individuating “splitting” process. This theory lends credence to the argument that letters and stories both define characters and create voids inside of them.

Godden, Richard. “Absalom, Absalom!, Haiti, and Labor History: Reading
Unreadable Revolutions.” Fictions of Labor: William Faulkner and the South’s
Long Revolution, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2007, pp. 49–
79.

This chapter speaks to the tenuous nature of identity in AA, particularly for Sutpen. The explanation of Hegel’s master-slave dialectic offers helpful context about the lack of concreteness of selfhood and its dependence on external individuals and artifacts.

Krause, David. “Reading Bon’s Letter and Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!”
     Modern Language Association, vol. 99, no. 2, Mar. 1984, pp. 225–241.

This David Krause piece dives into the many scenes of letter reading in AA and dissects the idea of text as both document and monument. Writing, speaking, and listening are all complex elements of these epistolary moments and contribute to the simultaneous fashioning and deconstruction of identity.

Lears, T.J. “True and False Things: Faulkner and the World of Goods.” In Faulkner
and Material Culture, edited by Ann J Abadie, and Joseph R Urgo, University
Press of Mississippi, 2007. 

This chapter describes how Faulkner viewed the self as well as his art as a made “thing” that is susceptible to change. This speaks to the presence of letters in AA as art, artifact, and expression of selfhood, all of which are mutable in their own ways.

Matthews, John T. “The Marriage of Speaking and Hearing in Absalom, Absalom!”
     ELH, vol. 47, no. 3, 1980, pp. 575–594.

Matthews looks at Faulkner’s characters’ individual relationships with language, and shows how Sutpen’s “innocence” reveals itself through his underdeveloped understanding of language. Sutpen’s narration of his own life is the most lifeless of them all because it strives for absolute coherence rather than engaging in a kind of invention.

The words that direct my research are ‘house’ and ‘cabin’. These words allow me to surf across the Faulkner scholarship that deconstructs the symbols in the structures and the symbolism of the roommates in those structures. It also opens up the world of research on Faulkner’s own house, Rowan Oak – giving me the ability to apply the literary analysis I will do for Faulkner’s fictionals structures to his real structure. Following Glissant, ‘miscegenation’ and (lesser so) ‘creolization’ are also research terms. I was looking for how the houses and cabins of Faulkner represent the reality of miscegenation along with the psychological denial of it. I relied on the Hunter College Library website and the numerous academic resources it sent me out to! 

Akin, Warren. “‘Blood and Raising and Background’: The Plot of ‘The Unvanquished.’” Modern Language Studies, vol. 11, no. 1, 1980, pp. 3–11. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3194162. 

Akin studies how Colonel Sartoris needs to reconstruct his mansion to keep the ‘aura’ of power that existed before the war. The plans for these constructions come when they remain in the cabins. 

Bleikasten, André. The Ink of Melancholy : Faulkner’s Novels from the Sound and the Fury to Light in August, Indiana University Press, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/huntercollege-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4746225.

Bleikasten zones in on the symbolism of the dilapidation of Big Houses. There is the fully inhabited one in The Sound and The Fury and the more sparsely inhabited one in Absalom, Absalom!. The dilapidation helps us investigate the fall of the Old South. 

Faulkner, William. Light in August. Vintage International, 1985.

The cabin on Burden’s property is a setting for living, miscegenation, and birth of a white child. The analysis of these events deepen our understanding of the social realities of the South. 

Faulkner, William. The Sound and the Fury. Vintage International, 1984.

The view from outside the Compson’s big house reveals the state of plantocratic power. 

Faulkner, William. Absalom, Absalom!. Vintage International, 1986.

The mansion on Supten’s Hundred opens itself to so many interpretations. The hands it took to build it, the hands it was left in, and its ultimate demise and the end of the novel lend itself to symbolic interpretation. 

Faulkner, William. The Unvanquished. Vintage International, 2011.  

Slave cabins became essential housing after the civil war. This leveling of the place of rest reveals the intertwined nature that white southerners fear so much. 

Glissant, Édouard. Faulkner, Mississippi. Translated by Barbara Lewis and Thomas C. Spear. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. 1996

Glissant’s travel log via literary analysis centers racial mixing in Faulkner’s literature. ‘Creolization’ and ‘Miscegenation’ are the central terms of this mixing, and I want to study those terms in relation to Faulkner’s strucutres. 

Godden, Richard. “Absalom, Absalom!, Haiti and Labor History: Reading Unreadable Revolutions.” ELH, vol. 61, no. 3, 1994, pp. 685–720. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2873340.   

Godden’s analysis applies Hegelian master slave dialectics to Absalom, Absalom!. Masters must fight themselves psychologically to not reveal their total reliance on the slave. The necessity of the slave in building their houses and masters lodging in cabins following the civil war reveal the intertwined existence (this is also represented by slavery’s role in building The White House). 

Sobelle, Stefanie E. “The Inscapability of Dwelling in Yoknapatawpha County.” The Imagery of Interior Spaces, edited by Dominique Bauer and Michael J. Kelly, Punctum Books, 2019, pp. 171–92. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv19cwdj8.11 

Sobelle compares Faulkner’s literary style to Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural style: open with many different entrance points. This is then put into contrast with the material of Faulkner’s text, where buildings and rooms can hold people and their personalities. 

William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! allegorizes the antebellum South with the unsettling story of Thomas Sutpen, a man whose rise to power through the accumulation of economic and social capital is both dependent on and haunted by the legacy of slavery—an institution that relies on racial ideologies to justify the oppression, exploitation, and dehumanization of enslaved people. Faulkner suggests that the South is also dependent on and haunted by the institution of slavery and the ideologies that sustain it. Hence, reflective of Southern history and its violent, dark, and rather “barbaric” past, Sutpen’s own cursed past emerges through his self-destructive fixation on creating a patrilineal and racially pure-blooded dynasty. In this context, the presence or “problem” of miscegenation threatens his plans for Southern glory as a powerful planter, and more importantly, endangers the white supremacist, patriarchal, capitalist ideologies that sustain plantocratic societies at large.

Given the role of plantation slavery in the South, the novel’s exploration of racism, racial difference, and racial purity is inherently connected to, and complicated by, notions of socioeconomic power and capital. For instance, Sutpen’s racial and class consciousness emerges during his time as a child working on a plantation with his father: “He had learned the difference not only between white men and black ones, but he was learning that there was a difference between white men and white men, not to be measured by lifting anvils or gouging eyes or how much whiskey you could drink then get up and walk out of the room. He had begun to discern that without being aware of it yet. He still thought that that was just a matter of where you were spawned and how; whether you were lucky or not lucky…” (158). Sutpen’s experience on the plantation is marked by a realization of the “difference” between white and black people, difference based not only on skin color but on hierarchical notions of power, as the institution of slavery ideologically necessitates. However, within this social space and its hierarchical organization, Sutpen’s realization of the difference between white men with power and white men without power—rich white men and poor white men—complicates this ongoing notion of racial difference and signifies the emergence of intraracial conflict and anxiety fueled by class inequality. If slavery is justified by white supremacist ideologies based on racial difference, then what becomes of poor white men who are also under the power of the rich white men, and subjected to inequality and dehumanization under an exploitative economic system? In order to benefit from a plantocratic system that also exploits and subjugates disadvantaged whites, Sutpen dreams of establishing himself as a powerful planter and creating a dynasty of his own based on class distinction and racial purity. However, in doing so, he reveals the ideological incoherencies at the heart of slavery as an institution, one in which inter- and intra- racial differences and hierarchies are based on socioeconomic paradigms of oppression and exploitation rather than false notions of inherent biological difference.

Hence, the theme of miscegenation emerges as a threat to white supremacist notions of racial difference and purity, ideologies that sustain plantocratic hierarchies based on socioeconomic status and power. For instance, even the speculative retelling of Henry and Bon’s fatal encounter underscores this anxiety: “So it’s the miscegenation, not the incest, which you cant bear” (249). In this rendition, Bon questions Henry’s discomfort about his racial background and obsession with racial purity by juxtaposing the intolerance of miscegenation with the permissibility of incest, and thus underscoring the hypocrisy and double standards at play. The juxtaposition of these two social taboos, miscegenation and incest, signify two forms of contamination that reveal the instability of racial purity as a concept. On the one hand, there is the threat of racial mixing, which is in many ways inevitable and inherent to human evolution and history, and on the other hand, there is the danger of incest, which not only marks a greater transgression of social and religious values but also highlights the genetic risks of inbreeding as a way to maintain pure-bloodedness. On a larger scale, this question of miscegenation and incest, the mixing of bloodlines versus the extreme purity of bloodlines, also refers to Southern society and its values at large: Is racial purity so important, that miscegenation is more troubling than incest, which is perhaps more self-destructive, transgressive, and immoral per social norms? Is the desire for a pure-blooded white society so fundamental to the plantocracy that incest becomes acceptable and even unavoidable? Sutpen’s obsession with a pure-blooded, white dynasty thus underscores the dangers of racial purity and consequently, the instability of the white supremacist, patriarchal, and capitalist values that sustain the plantocracy of the South.