Thomas Sutpen ja sokeriruokoviljelmiä Länsi-Intiassa

William Faulknerin Yoknapatawpha ja kolonialismi

• Matti Savolainen Tampereen yliopisto

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30665/av.74699

Abstract

Thomas Sutpen and Sugarcane Plantations in The West-Indies: William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha and Colonialism

The article sets out to explore the scope and effects of colonialism in William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! (1936), paying special attention to the enigmatic figure of Thomas Sutpen and his secretive stay in Haiti. Triggered by a recent change of emphasis in American Studies which draws attention to the Caribbean and Latin America, I analyse parallels and analogies between Absalom, Absalom! and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1903); drawing also from the nexus of Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea and Charlotte’s Brontë’s Jane Eyre as potential subtexts of Faulkner’s novel.

I demonstrate how Thomas Sutpen’s colonial background crucially informs his career as a Southern plantation owner; furthermore, I claim that by distorting historical facts—the Santo Domingo Rebellion led by Toussaint L’Ouverture— Faulkner was able to emphasize the integrity of the Southern plantation ethos and the role of submissive slaves. Different aspects of Absalom, Absalom! (the Colonial Gothic, Epistemological Uncertainty and Manichean Tropology) all contribute to my reading of the novel in a colonial context.

Finally, I raise the question of the widespread and prominent use of the terms “colonial” and “postcolonial” in contexts that do not always warrant it. In reference to Charles Baker’s William Faulkner’s Postcolonial South (2000), I argue that to read Faulkner and his work in the frame of postcolonialism is extremely problematic and overlooks the role and the function of the “real” subalterns (Native Indians, Blacks and Poor Whites) in the Gramscian sense.