This study is an exploration of the role of women in William Faulkner's apprentice work, from his first national publication in 1919--the poem "L-Apres-midi d'un Faune"--until the completion of his first Yoknapatawpha novels Sartoris (originally Flags in the Dust) and The Sound and the Fury in 1928 (both published in 1929). Over the past fifty years, a massive amount of scholarship has accrued regarding Faulkner's women characters, but little on the female figures of his early work. However, Faulkner created a number of memorable and complex women characters in his apprentice period. In his poetry, the women are generally desirable, yet elusive and unattainable figures, with a few surprising exceptions. But in his short fiction and first two novels, Soldiers' Pay and Mosquitoes, Faulkner produced a variety of intriguing females who were not only prototypes for future characters but also well developed characterizations in their own right. Examples from the early short fiction of the New Orleans period include the independent country girl Juliet Bunden in "Adolescence" and the street-smart city girl in "Frankie and Johnnie." Margaret Powers in Soldiers' Pay is surely one of Faulkner's most remarkable characters, male or female, and in this novel he also created two recurring types--the slim flirtatious beauty Cecily Saunders and the earthy rural girl Emmy. In his final apprentice novel, Mosquitoes, Faulkner would provide an early rendering of the polar opposites of the epicene Diana-like figure and the lush fertility figure in Patricia Robyn and Jenny Steinbauer, who, while providing early appearances of these types, are nonetheless individualized, rather than stereotyped. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 51-09, Section: A, page: 3076. / Major Professor: Elisabeth Muhlenfeld. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1990.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_78309 |
| Contributors | Thurman, Susan Elizabeth., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 184 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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