Sutpen's white women in W. Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!

Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 2,7, University of Wuppertal, course: American Historical Novels, 9 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: William Faulkner's novel Absalom, Absalom! is often proclaimed to be one of hisbest writings no matter how hard and difficult the first glance seems to be. After I had finished Faulkner's masterwork (Dimino 181), I decided at onceto choose it for my term paper.For me, the novel is not a difficult one: It is demanding and gives you, as a reader, the opportunity to activate all of your background information and ideas concerning a story about the South. Of course, it is not a kind of book you can 'look through' at one day on your vacation, but it is hugely eventful that you could read it again and again without loosing interest. The more often you spend some time with Absalom, Absalom!, the more you will find out about the plot's hints and ideas.This term paper concentrates on Thomas Sutpen's three white women, namely Rosa Coldfield, Ellen Coldfield Sutpen and Judith Sutpen. To be examined are their roles in the novel, their relationship to Sutpen and their femininity or gender respectively. The interpretation of Rosa will be the largest one, because she gives the reader as a narrator more information than the other females. After a short overview of Absalom, Absalom!, I begin every analysis of the single white female characters with a short introduction of their biography and status, before I describe more detailed aspects and facets of their functions in the story.Because the novel itself is full of useful passages that have to be interpreted and questioned, I have decided to limit the secondary literature for this term paper in order to stay close to the book as much as possible. My research in the internet did not turn out to be useful for this term paper. What perhaps might be true in Absalom,