{"title":"“I told you all the time”: Revisiting the representation of Temple Drake’s traumatic abuse in William Faulkner’s Sanctuary","authors":"E. Dobre","doi":"10.6035/clr.6961","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This article examines William Faulkner's representation of traumatic abuse through his (anti)heroine Temple Drake (Sanctuary, 1931). First, I bring to the fore the material dimension of the character's traumatic rape, as opposed to its classical consideration as a multi-valent cultural metaphor (Patterson, 2002). Aided by insights from the field of trauma studies (Caruth 1995; Davis and Meretoja, 2020; Herman, 2015), I examine the clinical import the sexual assault had on the character's psyche through a close reading of her dissociation-induced traumatic memories. Second, I turn to the way in which the text deals with the representation of an event fraught with referential impasses. Specifically, in dealing with the elision of Temple's violation, disclosed not at the moment of its occurrence, but in the last scenes of the novel, I establish a parallelism between the aesthetic encoding of the traumatic event and its psychological processing. I argue that the purported narrative effacement of the abuse parallels the way in which the protagonist mentally absents herself from the scene of the attack, thus failing to adaptively integrate said attack into consciousness. Further, I posit that the author counters the narratorial silencing of the rape via metonymic indexes enmeshed in the textual fabric referencing the assault. Thus, the novel retains the same fragmentary reminiscing of the abuse as the character exhibits. Finally, I conclude that, in eliding the violation scene, Faulkner carries out a prima facie process of erasure of a traumatic event, only to reckon with its representational demands. \n ","PeriodicalId":42176,"journal":{"name":"Cultura Lenguaje y Representacion-Revista de Estudios Culturales de la Universitat Jaume I","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.0000,"publicationDate":"2023-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Cultura Lenguaje y Representacion-Revista de Estudios Culturales de la Universitat Jaume I","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.6035/clr.6961","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"CULTURAL STUDIES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This article examines William Faulkner's representation of traumatic abuse through his (anti)heroine Temple Drake (Sanctuary, 1931). First, I bring to the fore the material dimension of the character's traumatic rape, as opposed to its classical consideration as a multi-valent cultural metaphor (Patterson, 2002). Aided by insights from the field of trauma studies (Caruth 1995; Davis and Meretoja, 2020; Herman, 2015), I examine the clinical import the sexual assault had on the character's psyche through a close reading of her dissociation-induced traumatic memories. Second, I turn to the way in which the text deals with the representation of an event fraught with referential impasses. Specifically, in dealing with the elision of Temple's violation, disclosed not at the moment of its occurrence, but in the last scenes of the novel, I establish a parallelism between the aesthetic encoding of the traumatic event and its psychological processing. I argue that the purported narrative effacement of the abuse parallels the way in which the protagonist mentally absents herself from the scene of the attack, thus failing to adaptively integrate said attack into consciousness. Further, I posit that the author counters the narratorial silencing of the rape via metonymic indexes enmeshed in the textual fabric referencing the assault. Thus, the novel retains the same fragmentary reminiscing of the abuse as the character exhibits. Finally, I conclude that, in eliding the violation scene, Faulkner carries out a prima facie process of erasure of a traumatic event, only to reckon with its representational demands.
期刊介绍:
CULTURE, LANGUAGE AND REPRESENTATION (CLR) is a biannual scholarly publication devoted to the field of Culture and Linguistics Studies, whose scope is aimed at the international academic community. Alternatively, each issue deals either monographically with a relevant aspect of the linguistic representation of culture in its various manifestations (social, political, educational, literary, historical, etc.) or encourages interdisciplinary and innovative approaches to language and culture research. The Journal is committed to academic and research excellence by publishing relevant and original material that meets high scientific standards. Submission of a paper will be taken to imply that it is unpublished and is not being considered for publication elsewhere. Articles will undergo an independent evaluation by two external referees, who will advise the Editors on the suitability of their publication. Publishing elsewhere an article included in CLR needs the author''s acknowledgement that it has first appeared in the Journal. If in doubt, authors are advised to contact The Editors.