Faulkner's portrayal of a decaying southern belle in the sound and the fury

Abstract EN

The present research paper seeks to shed light on one of the pertinent Southern issues rendered by the colourful Southern American writer William Faulkner.

In his influential work The Sound and the Fury, Faulkner crystallizes for his readers a decaying state of a typical type of female characters, widely known as the Southern belle.

The latter features tremendously as a recurrent character in Faulkner's body of fiction, more particularly in this novel.

The Southern belle just like the American South; which was painfully and slowly moving on into a new changing South, could no longer resist change.

Pride, modesty, beauty, strength and devotedness were the famous attributes of any Southern belle, yet confronted with an endless array of new challenges, expectations and loss of moral conducts, the Southern belle lost her innocence and the essential features that used to define her as a Southern woman.

To explore this matter, this study will attempt to examine Faulkner's heroines: Mrs.

Compson and Caddy Compson who appear to be a good case in point whereby they are painted by Faulkner as decaying Southern Belles.