A Multidimensional Interpretation of the Female Images in The Sound and the Fury 《喧哗与骚动》中女性形象的多维解读文献综述

 2021-12-28 09:12

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文献综述

A Multidimensional Interpretation of the Female Image in The Sound and the Fury《喧哗与骚动》中女性形象的多维解读1.IntroductionWilliam Faulkner is a famous American writer, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950. The Sound and the Fury is one of his most famous and successful work. The story takes place in the Compsons home. This was a once prominent family, which had once own a large field and a group of black slaves. Old Dilsey and her little grandson Luster were the only black servants left. Mr. Compson, the head of the family, died of illness in 1912 and the story unfolded among the remaining family members.The book is divided into four parts, each with a character to tell the story. The first, Benjis Part, follows the family on the verge of decline and describes the world around it, as observed by Benji, who is an idiot, the younger son. The second part is Quentins Part, which unrolls the story through Benjis brother, Quentins memory, thinking, and talking in his dreams, subconscious activities and his real life. The third part is Jasons Part, which is narrated by Quentins selfish and humble brother, Jason. Because Quentin failed to get Jason to get a position in the bank, Jason hated the Quentin family very much. The fourth part is Dilseys Part, which complements the plot of the novel with Compsons black maid, Dilseys observation of the family and her inner monologue. Taken together, the four parts narrate the process from prosperity to decline and demise of the Compson family, and reflect the history of the southern United States.Apart from several well-defined male characters, there exists a few female roles which increase the fun of the book like Caddy, Dilsey, and Mrs. Compson. Among them, Mrs. Compson was selfish, cruel and moaning. She always felt she was being wronged, and she was really the burden and affliction of the whole family. She was obsessed with the status of a lady in the south, so that she only became the embodiment of status, and did not have the warmth that should have been a mother and wife. No one in the family could get love and warmth from her. Mrs. Compson is indifferent to her son, Benji. She even feels that he is her shame and punishment from God. When Benji was four years old, she realized he was an idiot and immediately changed his name from Maurai to Benjamin, because Maurai was her brothers name and she didnt want to bring shame on her birth family. Not only did she not love Benji, she would not allow anyone else to love him. When Mrs. Compson saw Caddy holding him, she said, Hes too big for you. You cant hold him any more. It will affect your back. Women of our kind are always proud of their upright posture. Do you want to look like a washer woman? Caddy still insisted, I dont want anyone else to hold him, she added, Five years old. No, no. Dont put it on my lap. Make him stand up straight. On Benjis birthday, when she reached for the fire, she howled. Instead of feeling sad, Mrs. Compson blamed Dilsey for not looking after him. When she saw the cake Dilsey had bought for Benji, she said, Are you going to poison him with this store-bought crap? This is what you set out to do. I cannot live a single minute of peace. Instead of celebrating her sons birthday, she cursed the others for poisoning him.Dilsey, a Black maid, has always cared for Benji, thirty-three years like a day to take care of his food and drink, but also often ordered her son and grandson to take good care of Benji. On his birthday, he used his own money to buy a cake to celebrate, Benji burned, quickly to his medicine bandage. She called Benji, the Lords child, and on Easter Sunday, because none of the Compsons went to church, she took Benji to a black church, believing that the good God doesnt care whether his followers are wise or foolish, and hoping poor Benji would be saved. Most of the narration concentrates on Dilsey, but Faulkner also uses her to give an account of the finale vents in the Compons story. Dilsey is a humble black servant, who has served the Compsons through several generations. She has witnessed their fall from a position of importance, but she has continued to serve them loyally. During all those years, she has remained the fixed center of the household, taking over the maternal responsibilities abdicated by Mrs. Compson, caring for the physical and spiritual needs of the entire family without any complains. In the society where races and women are under discrimination, where humanity is distorted and rights are negated, although her status as a black woman is the lowest, she never complains about tough life. The source of her strength is her humanity. She is simple and uneducated. Dilsey is not only a loyal black maid image, but also upright and selfless, kind and noble and has firm moral principles. Though she was a servant, she dared to speak out against Jasons wickedness and rebuked him for his callousness. She believed in and practiced the spirit of fraternity and compassion praised by Christianity, tenaciously supporting the declining Compson family. But in a pious sermon, she had a revelation, saying, I have seen the beginning and I have seen the end. This heralded the disintegration of the Compson family. Because on Easter Sunday, the Compsons were engaged in non-Christian activities. Traditional religious and moral beliefs have become illusory and even rejected. The Compson family fell, disintegrated, and died in part because they were faithless walking dead.Caddy, the daughter, is arguably the books center, and while there is no single chapter centered on her ideas, she is closely involved in the actions of all the characters. Things will go against the extreme, from the prim and proud, the rules of the very many old family will appear unscrupulous children. In the words of one foreign critic, Too much responsibility leads to irresponsibility. Caddy burst out from under the statute of Southern Girl, and went past as a giddy woman. She had a tryst with a man, got pregnant, and had to marry another man. After marriage, her husband discovered the secret and abandoned her. So they had to foster their illegitimate daughter in her mothers home, and go to the big city to make a living. Although Caddy is the focus of the novel, she never makes her vivid appearance nor say anything directly to the readers. She exists only in her brothers narrations and memories. In the first part, through her idiot brother Benjis narration, the readers know that Caddy acts as his protector and mother. She is the comfort and the whole world for Benji. After her leaving, Benji has lost his love and sought comfort in his sister Caddys discarded slipper. Benji can not talk, and he can communicate his feelings only by howling, moaning, or remaining placid. He reacts to sensual stimuli, so he often uses such patterns as Caddy smells like trees. In his sense, Caddy in her teens is as natural as nature itself.2.Literature ReviewThe significant achievement of The Sound and the Fury brings world-wide reputation to William Faulkner. Since the first edition of the novel came off the press in 1929, it has engaged a mass of readers by vivid figures and absorbing plots. With its rapid prevalence, the novel has already been researched from various aspects and gained multitudinous critical evaluations. These studies mostly include the theme of love and fate, feminism, ethical themes, feminism, writing techniques of stream of consciousness and so on. Through the reviews of these studies about The Sound and the Fury, it expects to provide an all-sided elaboration about William Faulkners novel.William Faulkners The Sound and the Fury was once thought of as a novel about men, because three of the four narrators are male, but when looking at the plot carefully, the readers will find that Caddy is the core character of the novel. Xiao Minghan (1999) mentioned in his book that in a 1946 interview, Faulkner talked about the process of writing The Sound and the Fury, he had to go through five revisions to get Caddys story right. When he finally finished, he was truly freed from the nightmare of creation. It can be seen that Faulkner spent a lot of effort to write this novel about Caddy. Despite five revisions, the central character of the novel never changes. Faulkner tells Caddys story through the words of three Compson brothers. Each of the brothers accounts has its own focus, revealing every aspect of Caddys life. Under the influence of Mrs. Compson, the first generation of ladies, Caddy became the second generation of ladies as her daughter. However, she is not the representative of the second generation of ladies, but is full of resistance to the first generation of ladies. The author not only endowed her with the identity of a famous lady and strict education, but also let her break through the shackles of morality; let her bear the responsibility for mother, female, reality and drive her to abandon the responsibility to go out. Not only let her out of the imprisonment, but also let her grasp out of the imprisonment of the scale. All these contradictions give the image of Caddy an aura of rudeness and fearlessness, as well as the authors mixed feelings about her. On Caddy, there is not only a clear consciousness of facing the impact of the development of the south and realizing that the glory of her family will never return, but also a young womans attempt to get rid of the bondage of family and feudal ethics. However, she does not grasp the scale well, lacks rationality and blindly collided with each other, resulting in a huge gap between ideal and reality.Obviously, Mrs. Compson is not the main character in The Sound and the Fury, but she represents the first generation of Southern ladies whose families were in decline as a result of the Industrial Revolution. Chen Xi and Jiang Chunmei (2018) further discuss that it was too big a change for Mrs. Compson to accept from a prominent family to a dilapidated old house. She has a deep-rooted sense of being a lady in her mind. She never forgets the life of a famous lady in the past, and even always hopes to numb herself with some nihilism. Mrs. Compson grew up to accept moral education system, the woman for positioning of the self is always lady, in her eyes, she is not her husbands wife, is not the childs mother, she is her own a highborn lady, this kind of consciousness from the point of a certain extent, such ideas she made her a maverick. However, she is not a completely independent individual, because she is also subject to religious constraints, which makes her want to conform to the secular vision, can not control their own destiny and thoughts. Fascinated by the vortex of being a lady and the Puritan sense of subjection, she even subjected her children to more oppression than she was willing to endure. At the same time, the contradictions between a famous lady and a declining family. This makes her can not let go for a long time, has a vague sense of self, she is depressed all day, even depressed, she became a selfish, cold, delusional person.Just like the name of the book, the whole The Sound and the Fury gives people a feeling of oppression and suffocating pain. The characters in the book are shaped as if they are coming to an end when they come on stage, and finally end up in the sound and the fury. However, unlike the oppressive atmosphere created by the whole work, Dilsey, the black maid, becomes a warm and bright presence. For the entire Compson family, Dilsey's identity is just a black maid, one of the domestic servants, but her value in the whole work is much more than that. Only she could stand Mrs. Compsons cruel, mean, selfish and heartless temper. Dilsey undoubtedly became the best person in the whole family to treat Mrs. Compson. She tolerated, understood and served this fallen lady for almost all her life, but rarely had a complaint. She is a surrogate mother for the children in the family. Compared with Mrs. Compson, who is the real mother, Dilsey gives more tolerance, understanding and love to the children in the family. She is wise and generous, and does not speak much. When each child is wronged, she gives proper care and help. She not only takes care of Katies illegitimate daughter, Quentin, but even becomes the only harbor in the family where Katies brother feels love and peace when he is dying. Dilsey is a selfless presence, and even when her master stopped paying her a paycheck, she never thought of leaving. On the whole, although Dilsey is positioned as a black maid of inferior birth in the whole work, her brilliance of humanity is unmatched by any woman in the whole work. Luo Ying and Li Yan (2015) hold the view that William Faulkner created this character, which is not only the rehabilitation of the black identity, but also the maternal glory and the family guardian image of the praise, so Dilsey became a relatively perfect female image.3. Methods and Procedures of the Study Firstly, I had to read the original novel written by William Faulkner. In order to have a better understanding of the novel, I first read the Chinese version, to have a general idea of the book. Then, I turned to the English version, trying to learn the emotions William Faulkner has put into. Intended to have a deep impression, I have searched online for adopted films and TV series because visualized works could give the audience direct and strong visual impact. I chose the TV series to watch, getting a clear mind of the main plots of the novel, as well as a primary impression of the main characters. Secondly, I had to search online for previous studies. Finding related papers on website like CNKI, looking into school online library and E-library, I have collected quite more information about the book, which was helpful to my thesis writing. With the information I had, I started to figure out the thesis structure. Finally, I came up with the primary outline of my paper. The first chapter of my thesis will be the introduction to the author, the novel, The Sound and the Fury. The second chapter of my thesis will be the literature review. The analysis of female characters consists of the third chapter, and then follows the ample examples in the novel. 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