{"id":54486,"date":"2017-07-13T00:29:00","date_gmt":"2017-07-13T00:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=54486"},"modified":"2017-07-13T00:29:49","modified_gmt":"2017-07-13T00:29:49","slug":"a-mysterious-heart-passing-and-the-narrative-enigma-in-faulkners-light-in-august-and-absalom-absalom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=54486","title":{"rendered":"A Mysterious Heart: ‘Passing’ and the Narrative Enigma in Faulkner’s “Light in August” and “Absalom, Absalom!”"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Mysterious Heart: ‘Passing’ and the Narrative Enigma in Faulkner’s “Light in August” and “Absalom, Absalom!”<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Amerikastudien \/ American Studies<\/a>
\nVolume 58, Number 1, 2013<\/a>
\npages 51-78<\/p>\n

Marta Puxan-Oliva<\/strong><\/a>
\nDepartment of Modern Language and Literatures and English Studies
\nUniversity of Barcelona , Barcelona, Spain<\/em><\/p>\n

This essay argues that William Faulkner’s <\/a><\/em>Light in August<\/a> and <\/em>Absalom, Absalom!<\/a> use the device of the narrative enigma to effectively tell stories in which the cultural practice of ‘passing for white<\/a>‘ in the United States<\/a> under the Jim Crow<\/a> system is strongly suggested. The secret is the essential feature of the social practice of passing, which makes the construction of the plot around a narrative enigma especially suitable. By not resolving the narrative enigma, the novels not only preserve the secret of the supposed ‘passers,’ but construct a narrative that departs from the most important conventions of the so-called genre of the passing novel. The truly modernist narrative strategy of placing an unresolved mystery to drive the plot even allows Faulkner to go a step further: the narrative can portray the Southern white fear of passing with even more significance than the actual act of passing itself. It is precisely the fact that the main characters, Joe Christmas and Charles Bon, have uncertain blood origins that allows and even urges the white community of Jefferson to build a story set only upon conjecture along established racial patterns. Therefore, the effect of the narrative enigma is twofold: it retains the racialization of the story and preserves the secret of the passers, while ambiguously uncovering the false grounds upon which the fear of miscegenation<\/a> constructs and maintains racial boundaries.<\/em><\/p>\n

He passes away under a cloud, inscrutable at heart, forgotten. unforgiven, and excessively romantic.
\nJoseph Conrad, Lord Jim<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sometimes literature illuminates in a striking way the emotional and historical effects that contemporary social practices\u2014no longer operative today\u2014had in the past, providing an understanding that an analysis from the viewpoint of our transformed, contemporary societies cannot offer. This is the case with the practice of \u2018passing<\/a>\u2019 in the United States, and with the series of novels that constitute what has been labeled the passing novel genre. Joel Williamson<\/a> defines \u2018passing\u2019 as \u201ccrossing the race line and winning acceptance as white in the white world\u201d (100). Movement in the opposite direction is less common. Even though the practice survives\u2014broadened to include gender passing, but still primarily denoting racial or ethnic mobility\u2014the force and historical function that passing for white had during the Jim Crow period, which peaks in the late nineteenth century and the interwar period, perished with the end of segregation. Viewed as a genre, the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This essay argues that William Faulkner’s Light in August and Absalom, Absalom! use the device of the narrative enigma to effectively tell stories in which the cultural practice of ‘passing for white’ in the United States under the Jim Crow system is strongly suggested.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1196,8,6462,20],"tags":[3871,27272,13355,27273,490],"class_list":["post-54486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","category-usa","tag-american-studies","tag-amerikastudien","tag-amerikastudien-american-studies","tag-marta-puxan-oliva","tag-william-faulkner"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54486"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54488,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54486\/revisions\/54488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}