Jaclyn Markowitz
11-16-09
Question 1- Sexuality/Gender
Faulkner concentrates on the internal lives of his characters, their memories, and their stream of consciousness, to draw the reader into the specific world the characters create for themselves. Although Faulkner does not give Caddy a voice in the novel, by conjuring her presence through memories, her brothers revel the depth and destructiveness of her sexuality on the family. Caddy’s role in the novel is to disrupt the brothers’ narratives and challenge the underlying southern social and gender constructs that imbue them. Faulkner uses Caddy to demonstrate the effects of female sexuality on the Compson brother’s own sexuality. In this manner, even after Caddy leaves the house, Miss Quentin remains a physical reminder of Caddy’s role in the family’s demise. Consequently, Caddy remains inevitably connected to all the characters and her presence helped define the rest of these characters themselves. However, the void of her own narrative demonstrates how women’s social existence was dependent on male acknowledgement. But to the reader, Caddy remains an elusive mystery whose enforced silence prevents her from ever being known. To her three brothers, she is a source of obsession and irritation that cannot be forgotten or overcome. Faulkner places Caddy at the center of the novel to demonstrate that it remains impossible to avoid female sexuality, despite attempts to suppress it with Southern Values.
For Benjy, language becomes a literal expression of what he sees, hears, and remembers. However, these memories are selective and generally center on Caddy and her sexuality. Accordingly, his cries of distress express a need that he cannot articulate or even understand, his desire for Caddy to remain pure and unchanged. “We watched the muddy bottom of her drawers,” (25). By describing Caddy’s underwear, Faulkner illustrates the lasting effects of this memory on the all three brothers, as this memory constantly returns as the emblem of her disobedience. Caddy’s dirty drawers foreshadow her future promiscuity and become a prefigure to menstruation, the stain of female sexuality in general. Benjy views Caddy as his protector and voice of authority, as she attempts to use language to communicate with him and provide him with the maternal care he lacks. Therefore, “Caddy smelled like trees,’” (27). After Benjy sees her muddy drawers by the stream and cries, she crouched in the water and comforts him, incidentally washing away her sins in a symbolic baptism, and Benjy thinks she smells like trees again. Caddy’s virginity gives off a natural scent of purity. In this section, all of Benjy’s memories converge around Caddy and her sexuality, demonstrating that Benjy cannot escape the effects of Caddy’s sexuality even though he is mentally handicap and Caddy has moved away. Faulkner uses Benjy’s sensory images to demonstrate that Caddy regains her innocence when she washes herself with water, a symbol of femininity and purity. This mirrors the emphasis placed on her chastity in Southern Culture, since women were viewed as symbols of enduring morality. Benjy only remembers Caddy as a child, when she was a virgin. After she loses her virginity, she is no longer able to wash away her sins. Although Caddy acts as a maternal figure to Benjy, he cannot forgive her for her sins as her memory still haunts him, resulting in his present cries.
