The Culture of Miscegenation in Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! Cover Image
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The Culture of Miscegenation in Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!
The Culture of Miscegenation in Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!

Author(s): Wen-Ching Ho
Subject(s): Literary Texts
Published by: Editura Universitatii LUCIAN BLAGA din Sibiu
Keywords: William Faulkner; Absalom; Absalom!; miscegenation; incest; synecdoche; slavery; racism.

Summary/Abstract: This article aims to examine the racial politics of miscegenation in Absalom, Absalom!, which I perceive as a sexual synecdoche for slavery or caste. In the 1936 masterpiece, Faulkner places the theme of miscegenation against the backdrop of slavery and the Civil War, and he intends, among other things, to use the Sutpen story as a fictional representation of the malaise at the heart of antebellum South. Indeed, as Faulkner would later say at the University of Virginia, Absalom, Absalom! is a “condensed and concentrated version of a general racial system in the South” (Faulkner in the University 94). In the astonishingly rich and complex story of the Sutpen household, the problem of miscegenation starts with Thomas Sutpen’s repudiation of his first wife and their son Charles Bon upon discovery of her “tainted” blood. But the ruthless patriarch has no scruples mixing with the Negro woman he brings back from Haiti, thereby begetting a mulatto daughter named Clytemnestra. To the proud Sutpen as to the white South, white woman-black man miscegenation is even more horrible than incest. Henry, Sutpen’s white son, practically inherits the father’s attitude toward racial mixing, now that the young man, while coming to grips with the upcoming incestuous union between Bon and Judith, has to murder his half-brother to prevent the threatening miscegenation after learning that Bon is part Negro. In his imaginative reconstruction of the Sutpen legend, this episode interests Quentin Compson most because it has a crucial bearing on his own experience. Significantly, Henry’s love of Judith parallels his love of Caddy. Further, Quentin’s interest arises from Henry’s ability to act decisively for the sake of family honor—to protect his sister from the Negro, who happens to be his brother. Finally, in piecing together the Sutpen legend of incest and miscegenation, the reader has, along with Quentin, come to realize that Quentin’s frantic obsession with Caddy’s purity is in part motivated by the contagious threat of miscegenation.

  • Issue Year: 13/2013
  • Issue No: 1
  • Page Range: 87-102
  • Page Count: 16
  • Language: English