摘 要

美国著名小说家威廉·福克纳的作品《喧哗与骚动》描述了内战之后的美国南方社会的衰败。本文从当时美国的背景入手，着重分析了小说中的三个女主人公， 分别是冷酷无情的康普生太太，勇敢叛逆的凯蒂和无私奉献的迪尔西。虽然她们有不同的性格特征，但她们的命运都是悲惨的，因为她们都是父系社会的受害者。通过对康普生太太的描写，福克纳表达了对南方旧社会的妇女观的厌恶与憎恨； 对凯蒂的形象描写则体现了作者对那些受到传统观念压迫的妇女的怜悯之情；而通过描写黑人女仆迪尔西，福克纳把未来南方新女性的希望寄托在她的身上。

关键词：《喧哗与骚动》; 美国内战；迫害；反抗

Content

1. Introduction 1
2. Demonstration 1
   1. Background for the author’s creation of the women characters 1
      1. Puritan womanhood 1
      2. The civil war 2
      3. The influence of the author’s mother 3
   2. Main women characters in the novel 3
      1. Mrs Compson: grim and unmerciful 3
      2. Caddy: brave and rebellious 4
      3. Dilsey: altruistic and dedicated 6
   3. Faulkner’s objectives reflected through the women characters 6
      1. To criticize patriarchy 6
      2. To show sympathy for those suffered women 7
      3. To highlight the hope for the new southern women 7
3. Conclusion 7

Works Cited 9

Bibliography 9

A Brief Analysis of the Women Characters in The Sound and the Fury

Introduction

William Faulkner, the Nobel Prize winner in literature in 1949, is a pioneer in literary modernism. He always uses the stream of consciousness technique in his writings, which makes his works a little bit difficult for people to understand. Faulkner is primarily known and acclaimed for his novels and short stories, many of which are set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, a setting Faulkner created based on La Fayette County, where he spent most of his life. There is no need to discuss the greatness of William Faulkner, whose genius is most explicitly demonstrated in his undeniable and thought-provoking book: The Sound and the Fury. It’s title is derived from Macbeth’s soliloquy, written by William Shakespeare:

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That’s struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury Signifying nothing.

( Act 5, Scene 5)

In The Sound and the Fury, Faulkner tells a story of a family called the Compsons, former southern aristocrats struggling to cope with the dissolution of their family and its reputation. Mr Compson is an incompetent father who changes his jobs frequently. Mrs Compson is an unmerciful woman, who suffers a lot from the persecution exerted by the old south. Their daughter Caddy is a brave and kind-hearted girl. And their black servant Dilsey is the embodiment of angles. This essay therefore will center on the discussion of these people.

Demonstration

• 1. Background for the author’s creation of the women characters
     1. Puritan womanhood

As Old Testament depicts, God brings about a woman by a man’s rib cage, and

requests this woman to obey the man. New Covenant also records that: You, who have been wives, are supposed to submit to your husbands just like obeying the Lord because husbands amount to wives’ heads, just as Christ is the head of the church……Furthermore, the story of Bible also tells people that because Eva couldn’t resist the devil’s lure, human beings then lost the Garden of Eden. Because of this, women have been the eternal sin and blamed for it from generation to generation.

The era that William Faulkner lived in was controlled by the new forces of Christianity. It dominated the whole southern society’s politics, economy and culture, and supported the slavery and racism. It also controlled people’s minds and behaviors. The whites’ superiority permeates the whole southern society from beginning to end. Under this circumstance, the old south women were similar to the old Chinese women, who lived under the three obediences and the four virtues. They had been both physically and mentally injured in their miserable lives. Those women were not respected and they did not have their own statuses and freedom. That society required women to submit to all the men. They couldn’t have their own requests. Rather, they were supposed to suppress their inner thoughts and all kinds of lusts.

• • 1. The civil war

The early development and expansion in the America was just a history of blood and tears, which led to black slaves’ leaving their native places and then living under persecution. What’s more, every transformation about the society would inevitably bring about the differentiation and reorganization of social classes. So did the south. When the south underwent the civil war, it was devastated to a large extent: plantation economy was damaged a lot, and the classes of manor lord went downhill quickly. They couldn’t own the dutiful black slaves and luxurious lives went with the wind. The privilege of Southern Bayern went away forever. The biggest change in the construction of the southern society was that slave owners and the slaves all disappeared in American history. Meanwhile, it also destroyed the society and the economic structure that the south had already built up and made it in long stagnation. The relationship between slave owners and slaves has transferred into the relationship

about plantation owners and tenants. The class of plantation owners still dominated the society. However, its power was challenged by business men day by day.

Invisibly, the old south in America disappeared after the ending of the civil war. On the contrary, the old south was still alive and remained more stable than at any other times. Just as Mrs Compson in The Sound and the Fury said, “years go we in the south made our women into ladies. Then the war came and made the ladies into ghosts. So what else can we do, being gentlemen, but listen to them being ghosts?”(12) In her words, we can see that those women in the south suffered more than before after the war.

• • 1. The influence of the author’s mother

When William Faulkner was a child, he didn’t have a lucky family. His father was always on job hopping, but he never could find a suitable place to make ends meet. However, his mother had a sense of strong self-esteem and a sense of stable will. His mother often compelled him to make a choice between weakness and stability. She encouraged Faulkner to read some masterpieces. We can easily see that most strong-minded women made by William Faulkner all have something precious as his mother’s, such as Dilsey, Caddy , the women characters in The Sound and the Fury.

• 1. The main women characters in the novel
     1. Mrs Compson: grim and unmerciful

Caroline Compson, a mother in this novel, is a vital woman character in the Compsons. She is oppressed by the old south culture and tradition, but didn’t resist them. Under the influence of Lady View, she is neither a qualified wife nor a passable mother. She is arrogant because she was born in a wealthy family in the south. She is also an indifferent woman, who doesn’t care about her four children, but separated herself from her children. She doesn’t love her children. Her son Benjy is a mentally disabled boy. When Caddy puts the five-year-old Benjy on her lap, she dodges quickly as if Benjy were a dirt. What’s more, she often complains that,“i thought that Benjamin was punishment enough for any sins i have committed i thought he was my

punishment for putting aside my pride and marrying a man who held himself above me ” (96) . At the same time, she isn’t equipped with fondness to be a mother and only regards Jason to be her son. She says that “ he is the only one of my children with any practical sense you can thank me for that he takes after my people the others are all Compson”(88). Those four children can’t get deserved understanding and enlightenment from her. Mrs Compson herself is a sacrifice of the south patriarchal society, and she uses the exclusive doctrine in this period to educate her daughter again and again, which makes Caddy become another sacrifice. When Caddy was fifteen years old, she kissed a boy owing to her curiosity. That is heinous in Mrs Comoson’s view, and it is against the code of ethics that Mrs Compson represented. She supposes affirmatively that Caddy has already been so reprobate that Mrs Compson wears mourning to condole Caddy. From her behavior we can see that she is deeply ruined by Lady View. She doesn’t give Caddy some advice, and even instigates Jason to monitor Caddy in order not to let Caddy play with boys. When Caddy is found to fall in love with a boy and be pregnant, Mrs Compson has a vacation with Caddy to avoid rumor and is occupied with looking for a husband for Caddy. After Herbert discovers Caddy’s pregnancy and abandons her, Mrs Compson expels Caddy out of the family and the town, and orders that Caddy’s name should never be mentioned in the family. As a result, Mrs Compson ruins her daughter’s happiness.

• • 1. Caddy: brave and rebellious

Caddy is much important to this whole novel. When she is young, she is a brave and ambitious little girl. She always makes her brothers and servants willingly submit to her as if she were a king, a giant or a general as a boy when they play games together. She will say “You have to do like I say”.(173) In order to spy on something that adults don’t want children to know, she even climbed up a tree at her grandma’s funeral, but her brothers don’t dare to violate the father’s orders. Caddy knows clearly that she is supposed to obey father’s regulations. However, she still does something she likes. As a child, what she shows is courage and rebellion.