An Analvsis Of The Women Characters In Wiliiam Faulkner’s The Sound And The Fury-From The Perspective Of New Historicism

William Faulkner, as a most well-known and very prolific American writer, has written a series of novels and short stories with the background of an imaginary county named Yoknapatawha in the south of America. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in1949for "his powerful and artistically unique contribution to the modern American novel". Published in1929, The Sound and the Fury, with its innovation and experimentation, has widely been recognized as one of the most successful American novels in the history of the world literature. The Sound and the Fury, with the plot of the rise and fall of several generations in a typical southern family, corresponds with the historical changes of American southern society after the Civil War and the unique women values of the south. The novel reflects the dynamic relation and the power relation between history and the text by means of the theory of New Historicism.In The Sound and the Fury, Faulkner, taking the perspectives of an American southern writer, reveals the traditional values that American southern aristocracy spares no efforts to maintain, and under whose oppression the conflicts are made between the two generations of females and the confusion and resistance that the new generation has made in the specific historical period. Taking the stance of the New Historicism, the thesis makes an analysis about the women’s existential state, women’s characteristics and women’s fates so as to profoundly expound Faulkner’s historical awareness and the fact that Faulkner has a complicated feeling towards the southern tradition and values when he produces those women. In the first chapter, the women’s existential state in the novel and the real state in history are analyzed, which is based on "The Historicity of Texts" and "The Textuality of History". From their relationships, the dynamic relation of the text and history is revealed. The second chapter, based on the power relation between Subversion and Consolidation, focuses on the women’s characteristics and the origin. The third chapter has had the foundation from the analyses done by the former two chapters. By using the conception of Negotiation to study the women’s fates, the result that the women’s fates are the product of the negotiation between the author and the social consciousness has been reached.To summarize, this thesis makes full use of the New Historicism to interpret the women characters in The Sound and the Fury so as to reach the aim of making a deep understanding of the theory, the women characters in the novel, and making a scientific research on the southern culture and history of America.