Women In William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying

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For a long period of time in American history, women have been treated unequally in relation to men. Women were not as important as men; for instance, the men, for a long time, was the head of the family, and were the one who would make every decisions in the family. Women, on the other hand, normally stayed at home and took care of the house. Because of this social norm, the women did not receive the same respect compared to men. In the drama “As I Lay Dying” by William Faulkner, the author describes gender inequality through the stream of consciousness from the character Dewey Dell. A pregnant, unmarried teenager, Dewey Dell wants to protect her reputation and her life in the bigger picture, causing her to hate Darl, her own brother, because Darl knows she is pregnant. Dewey hides her pregnancy because it will ruin her life if people know about it, …show more content…

In the drama, Dewey states, “ I knew he knew because if he had said he knew with the words I would not have believed that he had been there and saw us” (Faulkner 27). Dewey Dell is pregnant by Lafe, a farm worker; because of that, she does not want anyone to know about her pregnancy. Surprisingly, Darl somehow knows about it, as well as the relationship between Dewey Dell and Lafe. His knowledge of her condition makes Dewey constantly nervous and afraid that Darl will reveal her secret, creating tension between them. In his article “Perception and the Destruction of Being in As I Lay Dying,” literary critic Homer Pettey claims, “She seizes upon this certainty of Darl's knowledge not by words directly, but implicitly, by his gaze. And she hates him for knowing her secret.” Darl does not inform or speak to Dewey Dell about her secret, but by the way Darl looks at her, Dewey Dell is certain that Darl knows about the pregnancy. As a result, Dewey Dell dislikes Darl, even though Darl is her own

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