Race and Gender in Light in August Anonymous College

William Faulkner came from an American South background and in his time, wrote a number of novels that featured themes of patriarchal power and struggles caused by race. Joe Christmas plays an unusual role in Light in August – in him, Faulkner creates a central character with very few redeeming characteristics. Instead, Christmas is misogynistic, cruel and more than that, a murderer. This essay will examine how Faulkner treats race, sex and gender in Light in August, whether it was merely representative of the time of publication or a deeper criticism aimed at American society of the 1920s and prior. It will also look at the causes for Joe Christmas being such a malevolent man, such as his upbringing and the people around him.

To provide some historical context, Faulkner wrote Light in August in 1932, during “the Southern Renaissance of 1925-39” (Wittenberg, 1995, p. 148). This was a time, several decades before the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, in which institutionalised racism was very prevalent, particularly in the South. An example of society’s acceptance of racism and the viewing of black Americans as sub-human can be seen that, around the country, people were “uninterested in compelling southern school desegregation...