Traveling Voices and Female Mobility in William Faulkner’s Light in August

초록

In William Faulkner’s Light in August, critical attention has largely centered on the tragedy of Joe Christmas, who is haunted throughout his life by a childhood memory of being called a “little nigger bastard” in the orphanage and by the uncertainty surrounding his racial identity. My paper strives to shift critical attention from Joe Christmas, who turns to silence to repudiate the mobility embedded in talking, to Lena Grove, the only female character in the novel—and a rare one in Faulkner’s entire oeuvre—who moves around happily, avoiding, or at least not being affected by, social punishment for transgressing sexual codes. In the Jim Crow South, Lena’s baby, an illegitimate child whose father is a stranger, can provoke a bitter, even frenzied hostility. However, despite the anxiety surrounding her movements, Lena manages to keep traveling, enjoying good food, and talking with others, by repeatedly telling the story of her search for her baby’s father. By associating Lena’s mobility with talking and the heterogeneity of language, this paper argues that Faulkner critiques Christmas’ silence while celebrating the potential of talking as a means of cultivating intimacy and fostering progress. Ultimately, it suggests that Faulkner’s endorsement of linguistic heterogeneity illuminates his vision of fiction as a form of talking, one that opens up possibilities that disrupt and complicate the racial and sexual discourses of the South.

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