Racial and Gender Ramifications of William Faulkner’s Genealogy

Abstract

Racial differences, along with gendered ones, can work as two pivotal impediment factors which make it difficult to establish intimate and sustainable rapport among people from different cultural backgrounds. Thomas Sutpen as an inheritor of antebellum Southern conventional system in William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! exercises frontier spirit backed up by his immanent idea of labor and the prevalent social stratification. His subjective thinking, however. does not function consistently in the same way as the consciousness of community of the white Southern society. Sutpen’s self-righteous egocentrism embraces reasonable balancing of wealth in support of individuals’ economic freedom but it chronically lacks sense of community. His ego does not recognize the reasonable consent of the social majority as a necessary procedure of social distribution of wealth and power. Consequently Sutpen’s righteous distribution of wealth and power is reduced and limited to those whom he can build and maintain rapport with. Sutpen’s obsession with purity and genealogy continues unabated and causes widespread ramifications on his rapport relationships more significantly than his sense of community as a white Southern cavalier. His unnegotiable subjective thinking creates his chronic egocentrism and it inescapably brings in the destruction of his dynasty, “Sutpen’s Hundred” which can be buttressed up solely by blood genealogy.