Faulkner's Women: Characterization And Historical Context

In this thesis, the study of Faulkner's presentation of women with extreme behaviours takes account of issues of social, historical and family background, textual representation, as well as the author's psychological factors, based on characters including Rosa Coldfield from Absalom, Absalom!, Emily Grierson from"A Rose for Emily", Caddy Compson from The Sound and the Fury, and Temple Drake from Sanctuary. Their rebellious behaviours come in various forms which lead to their destruction, some of them going mad, some fallen, some self-imprisoned and some murderous.Structurally, this thesis is classified into focused sections, grouped together in accordance with their thematic coherence.It attempts to set up the historical and cultural framework for the demystification of the myth of the South in the specific historical context. Acknowledging the difficulties involved in the context of culture, this thesis maintains that women characters and their extreme behaviors must be read as a historically and culturally produced category, that is, their existence is interrelated with and interacted on the specific, but complex conditions of history and culture. Within the historical and cultural framework, this thesis then focuses on the investigation of family backgrounds which leads to rebellious behaviour of Southern women.Against the cultural and familial backdrop, this thesis then carries out textual analysis. Through detailed investigation, it attempts to present the various rebellious behaviours of Southern women and their awareness of their own right. And it is also intended to claim that these women are suffused with awakening and rebellion, contradiction and perplexity, despairs and failures, exposing Faulkner's own gendered subject position as he responds to the ongoing reformulations of gender roles in the culture at large.In the following part, the thesis takes as its object for discussion of Faulkner's psychological factors which bring about the creation of the unforgettable female figures with extreme rebellious behaviours.This thesis is an attempt to examine the historical construction of the myth of the Southern womanhood in the Faulknerian world of texts during the period when profound changes took place in the fabric of daily life in the South. Changes are mirrored in Faulkner's fiction which provides a means of historically documenting the socio-cultural transformations of the South in genernal and of the Southern woman in particular.