How does the growing influence of modern consumerism impact the lives of the female characters in Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying?
Addie, Dewey Dell, and Cora, in their own ways, try to reclaim their bodies from patriarchal society and create their own identity. My idea was formed by my interest in Faulkner’s presentation of Dewey Dell and her attempt at getting an abortion. The comparison of the three women in the book also intrigued me, in terms of how they tried to fight for control over their own bodies and their inability to access education or contraception to help them. I will most likely focus on the comparison of Dewey Dell with the other female characters and examine Faulkner’s commentary on modern consumerism’s failure to improve access to contraceptives.
Sources so far:
Holcombe, Heather E. “Faulkner on Feminine Hygiene, or, How Margaret Sanger Sold Dewey Dell a Bad Abortion.” Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 57, no. 2, 2011, pp. 203–229.
“Reading White Trash: Class, Race, and Mobility in Faulkner and Le Sueur.” American Mobilities: Geographies of Class, Race, and Gender in US Culture, by Julia Leyda, Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld, 2016, pp. 33–60.
Williams, Tyler. “How Faulkner Means Everything He Says: An Essay on James Baldwin’s Politics of Intentionality.” CR: The New Centennial Review, vol. 15, no. 3, 2015, pp. 49–64.
Good start. You might look at the production side, as well, since Cora Tull in AiLD and Mrs. Armstid in LIA prove to be good accumulators of capital. See if you can build out the bibliography further, locating some more recent sources. The FAULKNER AND YOKNAPATAWPHA series of edited volumes is a good source of recent work. There’s a volume from about 2018 called FAULKNER AND MONEY that might be helpful.