The mysterious character of Joe Christmas was often reacting in ways that seemed sociopathic as he was dealing with and in fact increasing his alienation from society. Light in August is littered with scenes of Christmas lashing out violently especially at those who attempt to help him or nurture him. His inability to function in normal social roles seems to be at its worst when he is dealing with a woman. The corrupted bildungsroman track of his backstory is marked with scenes of him regressing after failing to achieve “normal” relations with mother figures and females. He has a strange love/hate relationship with females that stems from the infamous toothpaste scene at the orphanage. This scene exposes him to female sexuality at a shockingly young age and the confused angry reaction of the dietitian; i.e. calling him a “little nigger bastard” (LIA 122) piles on a complete negative self-relation of being black and therefore being inherently bad. Carolyn Porter highlights this moment as the point where, “for Joe, the ‘woman-smelling’ closet is tied to the word ‘nigger,’ an identification of race and sex that will finally issue in the novel’s most telling verbal invention, ‘womanshenegro’ (LIA 156)” (Porter 94). The binding of this shaming of his racial identity and a fear of women plays a major role in Christmas’s ongoing issues with maturity and his inability to thrive as a part of his contemporary society. In relation to the bildungsroman, Christmas has been denied his first chance to connect with a mother figure. The once delicate and comforting image of the dietitian has been degraded into a source of personal shame and fear of the feminine other.
The first appearance of the Faulknerian term “womanshenegro” occurs in another iconic scene of Christmas’s epic life-story. The pre-arranged tryst in which the young country boys all enter manhood in a mass exploitation of a young black girl in the woods is the site of Christmas’s first attempted sexual experience. When Christmas enters the dark shed he is overcome with the feeling of “terrible haste” and the feeling of “something in him trying to get out, like when he used to think of toothpaste” (LIA 156). He is frozen in fear and overcome “smelling the woman smelling the negro all at once; enclosed by the womanshenegro and the haste” (156). The use of the word “enclosed” in this sentence infers the self- relation Christmas feels with the black female and the sense of being trapped within that social role. Porter theorizes this scene as a racial portrayal of Narcissus(98), as Christmas “seemed to look down into a black well and at the bottom saw two glints like reflections of dead stars”(LIA 156). The invoking of this myth is interpreted by Porter as revealing “Joe’s deep identification with the black as woman, the woman as black” (98). Christmas’s experiences as having “some nigger blood” in him lead him to this state of being associated with the negative feminine and black. In a moment when he “should” be losing his virginity and gaining his white manhood, he violently attacks the negro girl who inspired this fearful relation within him.
The culmination of Christmas’s tragic tale occurs in his murder of Joanna Burden and the lynching he is ended with. His relation to Burden is strange to say the least. He seems attracted to her masculine behavior and their relationship exists successfully in the perverse hypersexual realm that involves Joanna worshipping Christmas’s racial mixture. She “whispers ‘Negro, negro, negro,’ as she makes love to Joe, seduced by the very image that haunts the southern white men who fear the black man’s sexual power(LIA 260)” (Porter 99). Her attraction to his blackness builds a sick addiction between the two because he has found a female he is able to be somewhat himself with and she has found the perfect man who does not shun her for her racial open-mindedness. They mutually “corrupt” (LIA 260) each other as she seems to be attracted to him for the wrong reasons, for the taboo of it instead of the usual virtuous relations sought by southern white women. Christmas is described as feeling as though he was “like a man being sucked down into a bottomless morass” (LIA 260) while with Joanna during this wild phase of their relationship. He is unable to escape his entanglement with her and his new role of the taboo lover and he remains “as the fatalist can always be held: by curiosity, pessimism, by sheer inertia” (LIA 260). Christmas’s ongoing relationship with Joanna culminates in the “third phase” when reaching menopause, she seems to realize the error of her ways in not bearing children and becomes regretful of her wild years with Christmas. She begins to want more traditional things like children and he fears she wants marriage also. When Joanna attempts to force him to stop “wasting his life” and accept his role as a black man, attend a Negro college and pray is when their fate is decided. In the mysteriously climactic moment where she prays for him and he refuses to join, Joanna accedes, “Then there’s just one other thing to do” (LIA280). This moment hints towards their undoing and an end to their relationship but the grisly murder that results continues the violent trend of Christmas’s bildungsroman. He has been offered redemption and a solid role in society by Joanna who wants to support him and save him now but he is unable to assimilate and must end her to in the truest form of rejection and the strongest assertion of his own independence.
These episodes of Christmas’s relationships with women merely scratch the surface of his character. Joe Christmas is one of the most interesting creations in Faulkner’s universe and his complexity seems bottomless.

Porter, Carolyn. “The Major Phase, Part 1: As I Lay Dying, Sanctuary, And Light In August.” William Faulkner: Lives and Legacies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 55-103. Print.