Once A Bitch Always A Bitch: Jason Compson Can’t Cope
Document Type
Event
Faculty Mentor
Rebecca Nisetich
Abstract
Eduard Glissant develops the concept of “The Real–The Deferred” as a logistic model for understanding Faulkner’s literary cannon as a whole. The “real” being the truth which cannot be reached through language, language itself being the act of deferral, pushing action behind a veil of machinations reaching for but never achieving truth. This concept can be applied to individuals as well. This paper will pair Glissant’s concept with Julia Kristeva’s theory of semiotic language– a pre-linguistic expression of human desire enacted as the rhythms and instincts of the body, and linked to the maternal body– in order to examine deferral in Jason’s Compson's narration in The Sound and The Fury by William Faulkner. This paper will also highlight the semiotic language of peripheral female characters speaking through action. here at the periphery the women who are able to become a force within the text must speak through action, not through sign and signified, but through direct act, which does not shroud their desire in machinations (as the male narrators do); rather, it is the tangible voice that concretely expresses the desires of those most vehemently repressed by the narrators: Caddy and Quentin. Through this examination I will prove that The Sound and The Fury is not the “tragedy of two lost women” which Faulkner claimed it to be; rather, I’ll prove that the story is satire which explains the success of the mother, through the actions of the daughter.
Once A Bitch Always A Bitch: Jason Compson Can’t Cope
Eduard Glissant develops the concept of “The Real–The Deferred” as a logistic model for understanding Faulkner’s literary cannon as a whole. The “real” being the truth which cannot be reached through language, language itself being the act of deferral, pushing action behind a veil of machinations reaching for but never achieving truth. This concept can be applied to individuals as well. This paper will pair Glissant’s concept with Julia Kristeva’s theory of semiotic language– a pre-linguistic expression of human desire enacted as the rhythms and instincts of the body, and linked to the maternal body– in order to examine deferral in Jason’s Compson's narration in The Sound and The Fury by William Faulkner. This paper will also highlight the semiotic language of peripheral female characters speaking through action. here at the periphery the women who are able to become a force within the text must speak through action, not through sign and signified, but through direct act, which does not shroud their desire in machinations (as the male narrators do); rather, it is the tangible voice that concretely expresses the desires of those most vehemently repressed by the narrators: Caddy and Quentin. Through this examination I will prove that The Sound and The Fury is not the “tragedy of two lost women” which Faulkner claimed it to be; rather, I’ll prove that the story is satire which explains the success of the mother, through the actions of the daughter.
