A Psychoanalytic Approach to Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury In Faulkner's play, The Sound and the Fury, Caddy is never given an interior monologue; she is seen only through the gaze of her brothers, and even then only in retreat, standing in the doorway, running, vanishing, forever elusive, forever just out of reach. Caddy seems, therefore, to be both absent and present at the same time; with her Faulkner evokes an absent presence, or the absent center of the novel, as André Bleikasten and John T. Matthews have observed. The “absent center” is a key term in Lacanian theory, and to understand how Caddy's absence, or repression, supports masculine identity, we will need to revisit some Lacanian theories. According to Lacan, at first all children are engaged in an imaginary dyadic relationship with their mother in which they find themselves whole. During this period there are no clear boundaries between the [male] child and the outside world, and the child lacks a defined center of self. In order for the child to acquire language, to enter the realm of the symbolic, he must become aware of the difference. Identity is realized only through difference, only through exclusion. The appearance of the father establishes sexual difference, signified by the phallus, a sign of the difference between the father and the mother. The father creates difference by separating the son from the maternal body: he prohibits the fusion between mother and son and denies the child the use of the phallus to recreate this union. (Says Nancy Chodorow, the woman's entry into the symbolic is different from that of the man. The daughter is not threatened with castration and identifies with her mother. The girl wishes to recover the lost unity for her mother. of paper.. ....establish a relationship outside the family. A "lack" exists and is exacerbated by the conscious and unconscious divisions between the male characters, Jason and Quentin, and the female characters, Caddy and Faulkner easy exit or resolution of the paradox "lack" existing in the psyche of Quentin and Jason gives rise to other forms of absence and means of achieving absence, culminating in violence, suicide and loneliness. Works cited and consulted Fowler, Doreen Death: The sound, the fury and the denied unconscious,” Faulkner and psychology. Ed. Donald M. Kartiganer and Ann J. Abadie. UP Mississippi: Jackson 1994. Porter, Carolyn. “Symbolic Fathers and Dead Mothers: A Feminist Approach to Faulkner.” Faulkner and psychology. Ed. Donald M. Kartiganer and Ann J. Abadie. UP Mississippi: Jackson 1994.

Topic > A Psychoanalytic Approach to Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury In Faulkner's play, The Sound and the Fury, Caddy is never given an interior monologue; she is seen only through the gaze of her brothers, and even then only in retreat, standing in the doorway, running, vanishing, forever elusive, forever just out of reach. Caddy seems, therefore, to be both absent and present at the same time; with her Faulkner evokes an absent presence, or the absent center of the novel, as André Bleikasten and John T. Matthews have observed. The “absent center” is a key term in Lacanian theory, and to understand how Caddy's absence, or repression, supports masculine identity, we will need to revisit some Lacanian theories. According to Lacan, at first all children are engaged in an imaginary dyadic relationship with their mother in which they find themselves whole. During this period there are no clear boundaries between the [male] child and the outside world, and the child lacks a defined center of self. In order for the child to acquire language, to enter the realm of the symbolic, he must become aware of the difference. Identity is realized only through difference, only through exclusion. The appearance of the father establishes sexual difference, signified by the phallus, a sign of the difference between the father and the mother. The father creates difference by separating the son from the maternal body: he prohibits the fusion between mother and son and denies the child the use of the phallus to recreate this union. (Says Nancy Chodorow, the woman's entry into the symbolic is different from that of the man. The daughter is not threatened with castration and identifies with her mother. The girl wishes to recover the lost unity for her mother. of paper.. ....establish a relationship outside the family. A "lack" exists and is exacerbated by the conscious and unconscious divisions between the male characters, Jason and Quentin, and the female characters, Caddy and Faulkner easy exit or resolution of the paradox "lack" existing in the psyche of Quentin and Jason gives rise to other forms of absence and means of achieving absence, culminating in violence, suicide and loneliness. Works cited and consulted Fowler, Doreen Death: The sound, the fury and the denied unconscious,” Faulkner and psychology. Ed. Donald M. Kartiganer and Ann J. Abadie. UP Mississippi: Jackson 1994. Porter, Carolyn. “Symbolic Fathers and Dead Mothers: A Feminist Approach to Faulkner.” Faulkner and psychology. Ed. Donald M. Kartiganer and Ann J. Abadie. UP Mississippi: Jackson 1994.