Hybridity That Matters: William Faulkner and His Hermaphrodites

초록

Eunju HwangUnlike many other male modernist writers who have tried to co-opt femininity to complete their artistic authority, Faulkner celebrates the shifting gender boundaries through creating incomplete, discordant, but surely unforgettable hermaphroditic images in his fiction. In his actual life, Faulkner oscillated between the pull of the southern community that strictly abided by traditional gender codes and the pull of modernity that gave him a sense of relief from the burden of the tradition; however, in his fictional world, he is bold enough to create numerous characters of androgyny who cross gender boundaries, forever haunting, disturbing, and disrupting the society. This essay traces and investigates the androgynous characters in "Elmer"　(1925), The Sound and the Fury (1929), Sanctuary (1931), and Light in August (1932). Elmer Hodge in "Elmer,"though he becomes a failed artist in the end due to his pursuit of material success, experiences hermaphroditic desire in the process of creating an art. In The Sound and the Fury, Quentin goes through gender trouble; he is not masculine enough to protect the southern tradition, nor enough to "unvirgin"　himself before Caddy does. Quentin, however, cannot undo his masculine identity. In Sanctuary, Popeye, an impotent gangster, and Temple, whose body looks more like that of a boy than of a woman, become man and woman only by performing the corresponding roles of gender stereotypes: Popeye, the rapist; Temple, the victim. Light in August portrays a man of hybridity who crosses gender and sexual boundaries because of the indeterminacy of his racial identity. Key WordsAndrogyny, Hermaphrodite, Gender, Masculinity, Femininity, Modernism