Alongside the novels that we’ll All be using for primary texts, I found some very helpful sources that helped me to emphasize my main goal of discovering how the women in Faulkner challenge, survive, and arguably, thrive in a society influenced by a patriarchy. Aware of the limitations of some of the databases in terms of content, I went out and tried a handful such as Project muse, Jstor, Elibrary, Onesearch, and the MlA database. Regardless of how different thise databases are, I began my searches by filling in three advance search boxes with the same three key words: “Faulkner”, “Women”, “Masculinity.” It was incredible how the same three words vegetated new material under each database. Some articles repeated, but for each pair there were three new articles for me to dissect. In the end, I ended up choosing 5 of the 7-8 sources that I amassed. I chose these 5 because, after reading them, were just in the same ballpark of my intentions for my final project.

Clarke, Deborah. Robbing the Mother: Women in Faulkner. N.p., 1994. Print

• Arguably my favorite source out of the bunch, this source touches on the power of the women in Faulkner through their absence. I decided to focus only on the sections on Caddy, but the article continues to describe Addie’s agency as well.  What really drew me to this source is the described paradoxical power that Caddy has in Sound and the Fury. For example, this line says it best for now: “Caddy and Addie, caught in a world which vanquishes women’s bodies, nonetheless exert a powerful control over the literal and figurative, bodies and language, forcing brothers and sons to confront the fragility of their egos in the face of maternal power.”

BLAINE, DIANA. “The Abjection of Addie and Other Myths of the Maternal in ‘As I Lay Dying.’” The Mississippi quarterly 47.3 (1994): 419–439. Print.

• Chosen as a counter argument for the sake of having a peripheral view of all kinds of perspectives, this source stood out to me because of the harsh truth that despite the fact that Anse and some of the other characters are deemed “lacking” Addie is nevertheless dead and rotting as the story progresses. She possesses strength in language yet she is still just a dead body. I’ll start here and continue to flesh out.

Watkins, Ralph. “‘It Was Like I Was the Woman and She Was the Man’: Boundaries, Portals, and Pollution in ‘Light in August.’” The Southern literary journal 26.2 (1994): 11–24. Print.

• I was hooked by this source the second I read the abstract: “Throughout the book Faulkner explores the possibilities of placeless persons who exist partly inside and partly outside society. ‘Light in August’ recognizes the structure of the unconscious categories that shape all social relationships, providing the unifying theme that many deny exists in the book” Of course there are many other “placeless” characters like Joe Christmas, Brown, and Hightower, but my focus will be the placeless state of Lena who is without family, without class, yet she still moves forward.

Polk, Noel. Faulkner and Welty and the Southern Literary Tradition . Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2008. Print.

• Interstingly enough, I found this source that pins Faulkner with Eudora Welty (woman) in a battle for the truth about literature chronicling the American South. Readers have adapted Faulkner’s view of the south and therefore his view on Women while totally misunderstanding actual women writers. 

Dews, C. L. (1999). Why I can’t read faulkner: Reading and resisting southern white masculinity. The Faulkner Journal, 15(1), 185.

• Here I came across an article written by a Southern specialist who ironically just can’t read Faulkner’s work. “He (Faulkner) may indeed have been racist, homophobic, and misogynistic.” Dews says. He continues on to debunk and resist southern masculinity as expressed in Faulkner’s work which ultimately also speaks to the role of women within this structure.