Out of the mire: faulkner's dualistic vision of women

Resumo

Critics of Faulkner have long recognized that his characterizations of women tend to reflect a mythic or primitive imagination. Rather than being fully rounded figures, his female characters are often stereotypes, incarnations of such qualities as fecundity, ideal beauty, serenity, sexual desire, death, or evil. Because we view them only through the (often troubled) consciousness of his male characters and narrators, these characters attain a degree of reality determined by the quality of the male's awareness that they exist, and they embody characteristics that are essentially projections based on his own needs and anxieties. It is often not possible to determine whether particular perceptions of women should be assumed to be true only for the fictional character or for Faulkner as well.