William Faulkner's The Sound and The Fury

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Recommended: gender and roles of women in literature

Heart's Darling: Faulkner and Womanhood

In William Faulkner's The Sound and The Fury, Caddy Compson is the anchor character because Faulkner himself is so obsessed with her that he is unable bring her down off a platform enough to write words for her. Instead, he plays out his obsession by using her brothers as different parts of himself through which to play out his fantasies and interact with her. Faulkner writes himself into the novel by creating male characters all based on aspects of his own personality. In Freud's personality theory the human personality is composed of three parts; the id, the ego and the superego. (Freud 17) By writing about Caddy from her three brothers' perspectives, Faulkner is able to use each brother as a vessel for expressing his different personal feelings about the character Caddy.
Caddy's brother Benji is mentally retarded, making him out of contact with reality. He never speaks, we only hear his basic impulsive wants, needs and feelings. Benji represents Faulkner's id. The id only knows what it wants, it doesn't know why or how or whether is it right or wrong. Benji loves Caddy more than anything but he does not have the intellectual power to say what he wants to say. Faulkner writes Benji as his id in order to indulge himself in his basic feelings of love and attachment for Caddy. Here we see her as a woman who is always there for him, promises never to leave him. Benji repeats over and over that Caddy "smells like trees." (Faulkner 6). She is organic, natural, innocent and free-spirited.

Caddy was all wet and muddy behind, and I started to cry and she came and squatted in the water.
"Hush now." she said. "I'm not going to run away." So I hushed. Caddy smelled like trees in the rain.
(Faulkner 19)

Faulkner also uses Benji as his voice to say that he doesn't want her to grow up, doesn't want her to use perfume. He wants her always to stay an innocent little girl. He wants to show that he is helpless as Caddy begins to grown up and mature and become sexual. This is the part of Faulkner that wants women to be the eternal virgin mother figure.
&nbs...

... middle of paper ...

...ation, she is his ultimate view of womanhood. He creates this woman who he builds up to perfection, only to bring her back down. By placing Caddy Compson as the anchor character of the book, Faulkner gives a voice to his own feelings about women.

Works Cited

Faulkner, William. The Sound and The Fury. Harrison Smith and Jonathan Cape, 1929. Corrected text, Vintage Books, a division of Random House,
New York: 1984.

Faulkner, William. The Sound and The Fury: The Corrected Text with Faulkner's Appendix. Norton, 1994.

Freud, Sigmund. Ego and the Id of Sigmund Freud (The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological works of Sigmund Freud Series).
Trans. Joan Riviere Ed. James Strachey. Norton, W.W. & Company Inc, New York: 1972.

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