Faulkner's the Sound and the Fury: Object Relations and Narrative Structure

Faulkner lends structural emphasis to the all-determining role of the mother substitute. Caddy, sister of the Compson men, each of whom receives a “section” of the novel, does not receive a section of her own, for Caddy, in the deepest psychological sense, is in the men, in them as a structural link to the disastrous introjection of the mother. Caddy's role in the Compson family, Faulkner's structural design informs us, can only be grasped from the inside, from within the male characters. In this way, the novel's form gives dynamic support to theoretical notions concerning the formation and quality of the internal world, or the endopsychic structure. The novel is a formal, aesthetic model of object relations theory. To read of Benjy is to read of Caddy because Benjy and Caddy are, at one deep level, indistinguishable; and this, of course, applies as dramatically to Quentin. Jason is the psychological “brother” of his brothers in that his life is also bound up overwhelmingly with the maternal influence; but with Jason, it is the actual mother who remains at the center. True, Jason accomplishes fantasy transference to related female characters, the second Quentin, for example, constituting in Jason's mind both a split-off version of the forbidden object—the mother as seducer—and a link to Caddy through whom the original splitting of the maternal figure was furthered. Nevertheless, Jason remains bound in a fundamental way to the actual mother while Benjy and Quentin transfer their regressive questing to the maternal substitute, the sister. Among many other things, this means that Benjy and Quentin will relate to their inner presences in one dynamic fashion and Jason in another.

But my purpose here is not to present in meticulous detail the psychodynamic interactions of all the novel's characters. On the contrary, my aim is to concentrate upon Quentin, for