From a Shadow to a Woman: the Identity Metamorphoses of Rosa Coldfield in William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!

Abstract

: The researcher traces Rosa Coldfield’s identity metamorphoses from childhood as a shadow eavesdropping outside doors to puberty as a dreamer pursuing her love and marriage to adulthood as a ghost living in seclusion for forty-three years then to late adulthood as a woman by narrating to Quentin Compson her tales and saving Henry Sutpen from sickness and fire. The researcher mainly studies her identity metamorphoses from three perspectives which are family, marriage and community. By the analysis of her identity metamorphoses, the researcher digs up the three “huge mountains” that oppress American southern women before or after civil war, which are patriarchy, extreme Puritanism and southern ladyhood. The researcher also reveals William Faulkner’s severe criticism towards these factors that devastate southern women’s soul and body. Meanwhile, William Faulkner also shows us the power of women and thus shapes Rosa’s growth.