The Brooch- William Faulkner

In The Brooch by William Faulkner I found it interesting in the beginning when the narrator was describing Howard Boyd and his wife Amy how very briefly he mentioned the death of their child. “‘Yes, she will. She’ll live forever, just to hate me.’ ‘No,’ Howard said. In the next year the child died. Again Amy tried to get him to move. ‘Anywhere. I won’t care how we have to live.’” The entire story and importance of which Faulkner was trying to reveal to his audience was focused on Mrs. Boyd (Howard’s mother) and how both Howard and Amy’s lives are affected by living with her. This same crudeness by Faulkner is seen when Amy mentions it Mrs. Boyd that drives her mad enough to start going out dancing on her own rather than the death of her child which would have left her completely distraught.

This attitude is not unlike Faulkner, actually it is very characteristic of him to not have much emotion for or focus on death. This is also seen in his works As I Lay Dying and The Sound and the Fury. Through this very depressing and morose style of writing, Faulkner character take on this odd appeal to his readers, in which they cannot seem but eager to take the place of these strange characters and act differently. He offers characters that live in strange, boring, run-down areas of the South where they act upon life’s occurrences in different manners that leave his readers often disappointed in his never-ending battle to make all of his works’ outcomes seem hopeless.

"There Was a Queen" - William Faulkner

In William Faulkner’s, “There Was a Queen,” I found it really interesting that Faulkner had just about the same approach with this story as he has in all of his works. For instance in, “The Sound and the Fury,” Faulkner has the same remorse, dull, boring appeal with numerous run-on sentences and extremely lengthy diction. This type of writing is typical of William Faulkner and for most these examples define their reason for why they dislike Faulkner so much.

I personally enjoy Faulkner unnatural and different writing style. Yes it is hard to understand at times, but I enjoy the struggle in which I always find different areas of his work that could be interpreted several different ways. In Faulkner’s, “There Was a Queen,” he does not refer to women as having any real importance or significance other than being the main family member with any sense of religious hope. In his previous works just as his background suggests, Faulkner doesn’t really speak of women with the same manner as he does the men. By this of course I mean that he just seems to highlight the male characters in his stories more, similar with this time period. However during the reading of, “There Was a Queen,” I first thought that it might be on purpose that women are not highlighted in his text, to possibly prove a point. Already having stated that the only real significance women in his work serve is the religious, comfort-zone that they provide to their whole families, well Faulkner could simply be portraying these female characters with these limited roles to make his audience aware of how women are mistreated. This work comes about the same time as the 19th Amendment is passed an women’s suffrage is legal, therefore it could very well be that Faulkner is relaying his real thoughts about this subject through his work in which he knows he has a very widespread audience for and can having a very lasting impact upon.

William Carlos Williams

At first I thought it was a little odd that a man would make such a point to side with the women's right movement. Typically men in this time would not have even come close to respecting or accepting women as equals. However William Carlos Williams is the most diverse and challenging poet of his generation. Perhaps most of his cultural diversity and respect for women, the working class, and middle class resulted from his mother being of Spanish decent and his father of English decent. He was an extremely well-rounded individual growing up in Paris, Geneva, and Rutherford, New Jersey. Therefore William Carlos Williams has a very good reason for why he believes so strongly in siding with the women's movement.

In his work, "The Young Housewife," Williams speaks in the voice of a woman who is a housewife living under the contraints of "her husband's house" in a man's world. Williams suprisingly sarcastic attitude towards a woman's usual role as a housewife is not exactly seen clearly at first. Most see it as Williams making fun of woman or even further degrading them for even trying to be individuals. Although once a very in-depth look is taken into, "The Young Housewife," it then becomes evident that Williams is acting in a sarcastic manner to relay information to his audience which includes his true feelings for women's rights. I enjoy Williams' approach here, and I think that his actions taken toward helping the women's right movement are extremely revolutionary in that not many men especially in this time would even consider treating women as equals.