[#3]
The Unvanquished (TU) provides a space for the characters of women to be bold and courageous, something that has been uncommon in Faulkner’s work. Normally, women in Faulkner’s texts are seen as traditional women who are meek, sensitive, and powerless. However, in TU, Drusilla is a character who embodies the male spirit, especially during the Civil War. She is strong and unafraid, and respectable in the eyes of the male figures in the text, especially young Bayard Sartoris.
We’re first introduced to Drusilla (Dru) in the chapter “Raid.” Bayard compares her to the likes of a man several times in our introduction. For example he states, “…Cousin Drusilla riding astride like a man and sitting straight and light as a willow branch in the wind. They said she was the best woman rider in the country.” and again, “Then she saw me. She was not tall, it was the way she stood and walked. She had on pants, like a man. She was the best woman rider in the country;…” (89). Bayard admires and even respects his cousin. He can admire her, while also acknowledging that she is still a woman. The repeated phrase, “She was the best woman rider in the country, ” makes her an equal to a male counterpart with the same skill set.
It’s clear that Drusilla rejects the traditional values that are placed onto women. In the midst of the Civil War, she takes advantage of the freedom that has been granted to her so briefly. During the war, Drusilla was free to embody the qualities and lifestyle that was granted to men. Being able to live like a “man,” Drusilla is able to reflect and comment that there’s much more to life than just growing up in “your father’s house.With her taste for freedom, Drusilla believes it be almost like a dream in which she doesn’t want to get up because if she were to wake up from her dream, then she’ll be forced to go back to living an ordinary life, which is something she is strictly against. Drusilla almost wishes that it wouldn’t end or that it didn’t have to. She doesn’t want to live a routined life. The war has given her so much to think about and experience:
Who wants to sleep now, with so much happening, so much to see? Living used to be dull, you see. Stupid. You lived in the same house your father was born in and your father’s sons and daughters had the sons and daughters of the same negro slaves to nurse and coddle, and then you grew up and you fell in love with your acceptable young man and in time you would marry him, in your mother’s wedding gown perhaps and the same silver for presents she had received, and then you settled down forever… (100-101).
Interestingly, Drusilla used the word “stupid” to describe her life before the war. Or more specifically, life for a woman before the war. She describes life as being simple and ordinary; you’re born, live in your father’s house, grow up with brothers and sisters, fall in love, get married, and on and on the cycle goes. It offers no excitement or alternate perspective to living except for the one simple fact that as a woman, you’re destined to perpetuate this cycle of being confined to the house and familial duties. Drusilla doesn’t want the simple kind of life, she doesn’t want to be sheltered from the experiences real life has to offer.
For women, traditional values only point in one direction: family. Men have their own set of traditional values, but many of these values overlap. Men aren’t bound to the home the way women are. Being a man means experiencing life, taking action, having flexibility. These are just some attributes Drusilla wishes she can take on without having to be a man. I think she questions if there can be such a life/or time for a woman to live outside the boundaries of tradition.
