to isolate her out of the loud world ' Towards a Maternal Continuum in the Writings of William Faulkner

Date of Award

2003

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Dimino, Andrea

Keywords

Faulkner, William, Mootherhood in Literature, Feminist Literary Critique

Area of Concentration

Literature

Abstract

This thesis presents a feminist-theory informed approach to motherhood in four major works by William Faulkner; respectively: Absalom, Absalom!, The Sound and the Fury, Light in August, and As I Lay Dying. It examines the maternal roles created in the texts to begin to understand the structural importance the space of maternity creates. Using a deconstructionistfeminist theoretical approach as the guiding methodology, the idea of a maternal continuum is presented, upon which each of the maternal characters examined are given a place. This continuum allows for connections between mothers, both physical and textual, that works against the patriarchal dominant ideology which informs the texts, and constrains their voices. This thesis begins by presenting a dominant ideology working in Faulkner that seeks to confine and define women by their biology, thus chaining them to motherhood as the telos of their existence. A major way in which mothers are able to be understood in connection to each other is by freeing them from the patriarchal need to assert that group, one begins to see that the fragmented maternal roles in Faulkner can be filled only by allowing a maternal continuum that connects the dissonant motherhoods which abound in Faulkner.

Rights

This bibliographic record is available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. The New College of Florida, as creator of this bibliographic record, has waived all rights to it worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

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