More handpicked essays just for you.
Gender and roles of women in literature
The strengths and weaknesses of sigmund freud theory
Gender and roles of women in literature
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Heart's Darling: Faulkner and Womanhood
In William Faulkner's The Sound and The Fury, Caddy Compson is the anchor character because Faulkner himself is so obsessed with her that he is unable bring her down off a platform enough to write words for her. Instead, he plays out his obsession by using her brothers as different parts of himself through which to play out his fantasies and interact with her. Faulkner writes himself into the novel by creating male characters all based on aspects of his own personality. In Freud's personality theory the human personality is composed of three parts; the id, the ego and the superego. (Freud 17) By writing about Caddy from her three brothers' perspectives, Faulkner is able to use each brother as a vessel for expressing his different personal feelings about the character Caddy.
Caddy's brother Benji is mentally retarded, making him out of contact with reality. He never speaks, we only hear his basic impulsive wants, needs and feelings. Benji represents Faulkner's id. The id only knows what it wants, it doesn't know why or how or whether is it right or wrong. Benji loves Caddy more than anything but he does not have the intellectual power to say what he wants to say. Faulkner writes Benji as his id in order to indulge himself in his basic feelings of love and attachment for Caddy. Here we see her as a woman who is always there for him, promises never to leave him. Benji repeats over and over that Caddy "smells like trees." (Faulkner 6). She is organic, natural, innocent and free-spirited.
Caddy was all wet and muddy behind, and I started to cry and she came and squatted in the water.
"Hush now." she said. "I'm not going to run away." So I hushed. Caddy smelled like trees in the rain.
(Faulkner 19)
Faulkner also uses Benji as his voice to say that he doesn't want her to grow up, doesn't want her to use perfume. He wants her always to stay an innocent little girl. He wants to show that he is helpless as Caddy begins to grown up and mature and become sexual. This is the part of Faulkner that wants women to be the eternal virgin mother figure.
&nbs...
... middle of paper ...
...ation, she is his ultimate view of womanhood. He creates this woman who he builds up to perfection, only to bring her back down. By placing Caddy Compson as the anchor character of the book, Faulkner gives a voice to his own feelings about women.
Works Cited
Faulkner, William. The Sound and The Fury. Harrison Smith and Jonathan Cape, 1929. Corrected text, Vintage Books, a division of Random House,
New York: 1984.
Faulkner, William. The Sound and The Fury: The Corrected Text with Faulkner's Appendix. Norton, 1994.
Freud, Sigmund. Ego and the Id of Sigmund Freud (The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological works of Sigmund Freud Series).
Trans. Joan Riviere Ed. James Strachey. Norton, W.W. & Company Inc, New York: 1972.
Upon listening and reading William Faulkner's Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, it is immediately deduced that he provides his vast audience of the epitome of himself. William Faulkner is not someone, but everyone. His humanistic approach to writing and thought has allowed him to hide complexity within simplicity, and for this, he is memorable: his work is a true testament to the unbreakable nature of the human spirit in the face of enormous hardship and consequence; a look into the human mind that is simultaneously interesting and uninteresting. This, along with so much more, is prevalent in this speech, which perfectly conveys the responsibilities of the writers in 1949.
Faulkner, William. As I Lay Dying: The Corrected Text. Vintage International, New York, hhh1985. Print.
Padgett, John B. "MWP: William Faulkner (1897-1962)." The University of Mississippi. 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 1 Apr. 2011. .
Throughout Faulkner’s “Barn Burning” the reader acknowledges that the protagonist Sarty exhibits an intuitive sense of
Wyatt, David ed. New Essays on The Grapes of Wrath. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Lyons, Oliver, and Bill Bonnie. "An Interview with Tobias Wolff." Contemporary Literature. 31.1 (1990): 1-16. Web. 12 Feb. 2012.
Faulkner, William. Barn Burning. First Vintage International ed. N.p.: Random House, 1950. Print. The Country.
The characters in Faulkner's southern society are drawn from three social levels: the aristocrats, the townspeople, and the Negroes (Volpe 15). In "A Rose for Emily," Faulkner describes Miss Emily Grierson in flowing, descriptive sentences. Once a "slender figure in white," the last descendent of a formerly affluent aristocratic family matures into a "small, fat woman in black, with a thin gold chain descending to her waist and vanishing into her belt, leaning on an ebony cane with a tarnished gold head" (Faulkner, Literature 25-27). Despite her diminished financial status, Miss Emily exhibits her aristocratic demeanor by carrying her head high "as if she demanded more than ever the recognition of her dignity as the last Grierson" (28). In an equally descriptive manner, Faulkner paints a written portrait of Miss Minnie Cooper in "Dry September." He portrays her as a spinster "of comfortable people - not the best in Jefferson, but good enough people" and "still on the slender side of ordinary looking, with a bright faintly haggard manner and dress (Faulkner, Reader 520). Cleanth Brooks sheds considerable insight on Faulkner's view of women. He notes that Faulkner's women are "the source and sustainer of virtue and also a prime source of evil. She can be ...
Faulkner’s language depicts the inherent discrepancies in the value placed on the roles of Caroline and Dilsey. The formal tone of the narrators in addressing Caroline as “Mrs. Compson or mother infers her social stature. In contrast, Dilsey, is referred to as mammy or by her first name. Informally, mammy means mother. However, in the south, its connotation is the derogatory, racially prejudiced definition of a black woman working as a servant for a white family, nurturing the family’s children. When addressing Dilsey, Caroline often “called, without inflection or emphasis or haste, as though she were not listening for a reply at all” (267). Caroline’s sense of entitlement is evident in her expectation that Dilsey would respond immediately. Similarly, any need or desire in the Compson house appears to be Dilsey’s responsibility. Caroline follows Jason up to the stairs, calling his name, but “then she saw Dilsey and she quit calling him and began to call Dilsey instead” (280). Calling her name shifts the obligation from Caroline to Dilsey thereby making her a scapegoat for the family’s problems. (the scapegoat seems like a stretch for this example).
Benjy constantly repeats the fact that, which, to Benjy, symbolizes Caddy’s innocence (Faulkner 6). Later in the novel, Benjy realizes that Caddy has lost the innocence Benjy once idolized and loved (Faulkner 40). Quentin’s depiction of Caddy’s loss of innocence is one in which he blames himself. The suicidal Harvard student blames himself for Caddy’s pregnancy and hurried marriage. Quentin repeats the phrase, wishing that he could have saved his family by joining Quentin (Faulkner 79)....
William Faulkner used indirect characterization to portray Miss Emily as a stubborn, overly attached, and introverted women through the serious of events that happened throughout her lifetime. The author cleverly achieves this by mentioning her father’s death, Homer’s disappearance, the town’s taxes, and Emily’s reactions to all of these events. Emily’s reactions are what allowed the readers to portray her characteristics, as Faulkner would want her to be
Faulkner's style may give you trouble at first because of (1) his use of long, convoluted, and sometimes ungrammatical sentences, such as the one just quoted; (2) his repetitiveness (for example, the word "bleak" in the sentence just quoted); and (3) his use of oxymorons, that is, combinations of contradictory or incongruous words (for example, "frictionsmooth," "slow and ponderous gallop," "cheerful, testy voice"). People who dislike Faulkner see this style as careless. Yet Faulkner rewrote and revised Light in August many times to get the final book exactly the way he wanted it. His style is a product of thoughtful deliberation, not of haste. Editors sometimes misunderstood Faulkner's intentions and made what they thought were minor changes. Recently scholars have prepared an edition of Light in August that restores the author's original text as exactly as possible. This Book Note is based on that Library of America edition (1985), edited by Noel Polk and Joseph Blotner.
Faulkner, William. THE SOUND AND THE FURY, The Corrected Text with Faulkner's Appendix. The Modern Library, New York, 1992, Random House
To conclude with, William Faulkner was an author that used uncommon technique in his works. The complexity of his themes make readers feel more engaged into thinking deeper and feel the beautiful Southern setting Faulkner describes ( William Faulkner: PBS). Faulkner based his stories on his childhood experiences and the experience of being an adult in the South (Unger, 67). Faulkner represents the Southern man in his works and the beautiful scenery of the South. William Faulkner wrote about his experiences of his childhood, his time in the war, adulthood, and Southern society (William Faulkner: Biography). Faulkner’s journey to find his passion in writing, the novels he created that would make him stand out from other authors, and the legacy he had on readers is what made William Faulkner a significant author in American history.
William Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury" (1929) is one of the monuments of High Modernism. It was the dark side of the social scene, that caught Faulkner's imagination and makes him delves deeply into the social structure of the Americans. He shows the fall and the decay of the family as a unit of society, the failure of the family to hold together and its damaging. The Compson family is one of the samples of a disintegrated and ruined American family whose members are characterized by absence of either the parental or the maternal role, lack of respect and constant conflict, which has shaken the balance of their family leading to its disintegration. Compson family Children are living a life of prisoners of family manners and beliefs in