Berman, Jill. “‘this was the answer to it’: Sexuality and Maternity in As I Lay Dying.” The Mississippi Quarterly, vol. 49, no. 3, 1996, p. 393. Gale Academic OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A57535131/AONE?u=nysl_ca_nyempire&sid=AONE&xid=4cc1ecee.
This article focuses on the way Faulkner represents women in As I Lay Dying. It gives a deeper idea of the way Addie expresses herself in her monologue and explains how she desires to experience herself in isolation instead of as a mother. Addie believes that her “aloneness was invaded when Cash was born, thus, the article reinforces the idea of how women were portrayed at that time.
Blaine, Diana York. “The abjection of Addie and other myths of the maternal in ‘As I Lay Dying.’ (Special Issue: William Faulkner).” The Mississippi Quarterly, vol. 47, no. 3, 1994, p. 419+. Gale Academic OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A15939705/AONE?u=nysl_ca_nyempire&sid=AONE&xid=1127da5
This article explores the idea that the prolonged death and burial of Addie is related to her representation as a mother, monster, victim, victimizer. The author also explains how in the nineteenth century, femininity and death caused a disorder to stability. Addie is a good example of this because of the ideas she expresses from her coffin.
Chan, Amado. “Stereotypical, but revengeful and defiant: Addie Bundren in Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying.” Journal of Evolutionary Psychology, 2001, p. 118+. Gale Literature Resource Center, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A83038238/GLS?u=cuny_hunter&sid=GLS&xid=214a427f.
The author talks about the stereotypical fact of women being seen as inferior to men. He mentions how women had to be married and raise children in order to obtain status in society. By marrying Anse and raising five children, Addie does not achieve her desire for aloneness because she lives in a society where women have to be mothers and wives to pertain to society. He also suggests that Addie’s decision to be buried with her dead relatives is a form of revenge for Anse’s flaws.
Chase, Greg. “Acknowledging Addie’s pain: language, Wittgenstein, and As I Lay Dying.” Twentieth-Century Literature, vol. 63, no. 2, 2017, p. 167+. Gale Literature Resource Center, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A498130103/GLS?u=cuny_hunter&sid=GLS&xid=d6af6ba5.
This focuses on the relationship between language and experience. The author talks about Addie’s idea that language fails to communicate her private experience to others and supports this concept that language cannot be even a substitute for experience. The article mentions the words that Addie repudiates such as “motherhood” and “sin” and how her attitude affects her children.
Faulkner, William. As I Lay Dying. Vintage International, 1985.
This is my primary source. I will be focusing on Addie’s monologue. I will use quotes where she expresses her desire for “aloneness”, how her life has been, and what she thinks about being a mother. Also, I will use quotes relating to her idea of language.
Hewson, Marc. “‘My children were of me alone’: Maternal Influence in Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying.” The Mississippi Quarterly, vol. 53, no. 4, 2000, p. 551. Gale Literature Resource Center, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A76800196/GLS?u=cuny_hunter&sid=GLS&xid=855c384d.
The author describes Addie as the most “perplexing and vexing figure” of As I Lay Dying. He explains the concepts that the critics have about Addie, how we, readers, see her, how the other characters see her, and how she sees herself. The author mentions how other critics identify Addie as the “mythical mother of death”. However, the author prefers to see her as a teaching model, especially to the male children, to combat the oppressive patriarchal world that is presented in the book.
Hustis, Harriet. “The Tangled Webs We Weave: Faulkner Scholarship and the Significance of Addie Bundren’s Monologue.” Faulkner Journal, vol. 12, no. 1, 1996, pp. 3–21. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24907827.
In this article, we can see that the author focuses on Addie’s knowledge about the use of language in society and culture. She seems limited to being a mother, a wife, and a woman. The author believes that Addie’s monologue is the important part of the novel since the rest of it just demonstrates the absurdity of human life. However, her monologue has been devalued.
I continue my research process using the Hunter Library Database, by using OneSearch. I used the keywords “Faulkner AND women”. I had trouble finding recent sources and I used the resource from Hunter College Library “Ask a Librarian.” This was really helpful because she redirected me and told me to use the database Gale Literature, where I found most of my sources. I used advanced search, typing “Faulkner,” AND As I Lay Dying AND Addie, but I got no results. Later, when I only searched using the name of the work, and I was able to find sources that are relevant to my topic.
