Motionless as an Idol - Columbus State University

Bullock 37townspeople, readers can sense the sympathy Faulkner harbors for Emily and also forAddie and Caddy in their analogous circumstances and the value change for which headvocates. However, it is worth noting that Faulkner presents his views throughmetaphors, shielding himself behind his own art. This intentional distancing perhapssuggests that he recognizes the presence of the culturally engrained beliefs he iscriticizing within himself, as a Southern man.The system present in each of the works discussed is one that employs thearchetype of belle/spinster. All of the male authorities in the pieces believe the womenfor whom they are responsible must maintain their purity at all costs or be ostracized andcondemned for their sins. As I Lay Dying ends before Dewey DelFs secret pregnancy isexposed, leaving the reader to speculate on her future. Caddy, in The Sound and the Fury,goes through painful romances as a result of her family's lack of guidance and also theirextreme disapproval and shunning of her. Miss Emily, in "A Rose for Emily,' 1floutsconvention and yet keeps her deviation secret, protecting herself from the inevitablepunishment of her community and, thereby, creating her own private torment. In eachwork, the communal hand of morality and conformity directs the women's experiences,and that hand is distinctly male.Returning to the concept of Faulkner shielding himself behind his intricatelyconstructed metaphors, we must explore two possibilities for this effect. The firstpossibility is that Faulkner was maximizing the Modernist practice of layering. Faulkner,as author, is directing the depiction of his female characters on the page, choosing to castthem in metaphor and, thereby, removing them one layer from the reader. This issignificant because it doubles the layered effect readers perceive from the text - the first