부산대학교 도서관

Absalom, Absalom! is the story of Sutpen's family. A poor white man, Thomas Sutpen, tries to set up his own dynasty. He spends his whole life trying to gain a plantation, a house, a pure white wife and a son. Sutpen's legend is similar to the history of the South. Faulkner, who was born and grew up in the South, tried to face the realities of Southern life including family dynamics, race, gender, social class, incest, miscegenation and the pain of human mind in his novels. Faulkner revealed the problems of the South through Yoknapatawpha, an imaginary space he made. The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the process of the rise and fall of the Southern patriarchal ideology and figure out problems related to the status of female characters and racial issues in the immoral value system of the South. In order to tackle these problems, this thesis consists of three main parts.The first part examines the nineteenth-century Southern historical backgrounds of slavery and patriarchal violence along with the features of Southern local color. In particular, this part deals with the impact of the Civil War which changed the social status of Women and black slaves in the Southern society. The second part focuses on the changes in consciousness which the characters undergo through the collapse of Sutpen's family. Since Quentin is a descendant of a southern aristocrat, he is caught up in his traditional heritage. However, while Quentin reconstructs Sutpen's legend with Shreve, he is able to recognize the causes of the Southern defeat. This opens up the possibility of overcoming the past and envisioning the future. The third part analyzes how Faulkner's view of womanhood is related to his experimental way of writing. The female characters (Rosa, Judith, and Clytie) in Absalom, Absalom! are caught in a conflict between their personal desires as women and the Southern value system. However, female characters appear in history by denying their fixed identity in Sutpen's patriarchal genealogy and expressing themselves with their feminine power. Faulkner fulfills ‘feminine writing’ as the open space by continually producing new meanings without closure. ‘Feminine writing’ of the female characters transcends a fragmentary notion, women's liberation and opens a new history for harmony of mankind beyond race and gender issues. In conclusion, Absalom, Absalom! presents the Southern contradictions of evil through the collapse of Sutpen's family. In this process, the characters of the second generation live a tragic life because of Sutpen's inhuman acts and the violent Southern patriarchy. Although the story of Sutpen's family seems to be the tragic history of the South, I suggest that Faulkner represents the vision of hope for the future through Quentin of the third generation and the female characters. Faulkner dramatically depicts the core contradictions of race and gender in the South through a creative language and experimental narrative skill. This novel has no closure and goes on and on with open meanings. Likewise, Faulkner's messages is that we should deny fixed identity and meanings and take time for introspection.