Christmas and Women Essay

It was not the dangerous work which he hated, nor the penalty and injurist. He was used to that before he ever saw either of them. He expected no less, and so he was neither outraged nor surprised. It was the cleaning wo existence that soft kindness which he believed himself doomed to be forever victim of and which he hated worse than he did the hard and ruthless justice of men. (Faulkner 158) In William Faulkners Light in August, Joe Christmass misogynistic view towards women has argue behind it, based on his negative past with significant young-bearing(prenominal) characters.The above quote emphasizes his feelings towards women, describing how Joe is able to handle the harshness of a man, just now cannot stand the abstemious and nurturing nature of a fair sex. Moreover, he believes women are save out to see him cry, as we see with his attitude towards the dietitian and Mrs. McEachern. everywhere the course of his life, beginning with the absence of a bugger clear up , Joe has been impacted by several(prenominal) womanly influences, from a brief stint with an orphan girl, Alice, up to his neglect of a relationship with his pay back, Millie.These women wipe out led to Joes distrust and dainty hate of femininity. Alice, a twelve year-old girl from the orphanage, is his branch encounter with a maternal figure. Joe relies on Alice as a supportive comfort, as he does not nominate a mother or any pornographic figure to turn to, for that matter. He had liked her, enough to let her mother him a little perhaps because of it. And so to him she was as mature, almost as large in size, as the adult women who ordered his eating and backwash and sleeping, with the difference she was not and never would be his enemy.One night she waked him. She was grave him goodbye besides he did not know it. He was sleepy and a little annoyed, never full awake, suffering her because she had always well-tried to be good to him. He didnt know that she was crying bec ause he did not know that g course of studyn people cried, and by the time he learned that, memory had forgotten her. He went back into sleep darn still suffering her, and the next morning she was g wholeness. Vanished, no trace of her left, not even a garment, the very bed in which she had slept already industrious by a new boy.He never did know where she went to. (Faulkner 127-8) When Alice leaves, Joe is mistake and feels lost. He then has no one to rely on, learn from, or be close to, in such a setting. With this experience, he feels as if women are unpredictable and will leave at any habituated point. There is not consistency in relationships with them and, in that respectfore, they cannot be trusted. The incident speaks volumes of what the child at the orphanage had lacked, the lack that was to warp him away from womankind (Brooks xxiii).It is understandable that this abandonment could shake such an impression on a young intellect with no real stability in his life. T he Freudian theory applies here, with the supposition that childhood experiences mold an individual most significantly and they determine the attitudes and perceptions of utter individuals in their futures. (Hamblin and Peek 303) Also at the orphanage is the dietitian, who is another female influence, contributing to Christmass misogynistic attitude. After Joe has been caught consuming pink toothpaste, he expects punishment.However, she does not reprimand him right away and he agonizes over the anticipation. It never occurred to her that he believed that he was the one who had been taken in sin and was being tortured with punishment deferred and that he was specifyting himself in her way in order to stand by it over with, get his whipping and strike the balance and write it off (Faulkner 115). This is when he first gets the idea that women are that out to make him cry. He believes that the dietitian is intentionally torturing him by not immediately carrying through with a puni shment for his wrongdoings.The action which adds salt to the wound is when the dietitian, accept that the boy will convey his knowledge of her amorous actions to an orphanage authority, tries to bounty him with money. Therefore, Joe becomes confused and unsure of what to do. This only emphasizes the notion that women are unpredictable and hard to read, and that they possibly represent temptation.When Joe leaves the orphanage, he moves into the country with Mr. and Mrs. McEachern. It is possible that he would have responded positively to Mrs.McEacherns nurturing manner had he not dealt with those negative incidents with female figures at the orphanage. However, whenever Mrs. McEachern tries to show kindness towards Joe, he retaliates with acts of cruelty, such as when she offers him furtheste and he dumps it on the floor angrily. Later, Joe says to himself She is trying to make me cry, he thought, lying cold and rigid in his bed, his hands beneath his gaffer and the moonlight fa lling across his body, hearing the steady murmur of the mans voice as it mounted the stairway on its first heavenward stage She was trying to make me cry.Then she thinks that they would have had me (Faulkner 158). By relying on her, Joe thinks that he would show weakness. He can handle McEacherns harsh ways, but the weakness of Mrs. McEachern disgusts him. He fears displaying weakness, perhaps because he is weak in not knowing his past and not understanding who he is through his adolescence. Because he does not know his parentage, he defends not only with his racial identity, but his personal identity as well. And, the more Mrs. McEachern attempts to mother Christmas, the further her pushes her away (Schisler 2008).Throughout Joes young adult years, he has relationships with several women, namely prostitutes (or waitresses). He routinely tells them of his racial status, either to spite or disgust them or to test their feelings toward him. With these reactions, he travels from woma n to woman to find his identity. However, his first real love is with the waitress, Bobbie Allen. Joes initial standoff is to her manly features, such as her masculine hands. He tells her that he is ploughshare Negro to test her love for him. He sincerely opens up to her often, but when she ultimately rejects him, he is crushed.She could have been the one to save him from his hatred of women and his abominable past. A contribution to their relationship is Joes distance from nature. He is far from nature, the raw(a) representation of femininity (Brooks xvii), and he does not accept the natural processes of life. Thus, he gets frightened and frustrated and runs away. In the notseeing and hardknowing as though in a cave he seemed to see a diminishing row of suavely shaped urns in moonlight, blanched. And not one was perfect. Each one was cracked and from each crack there issued some liquid, death-colored, and foul.He touched(p) a tree, leaning his propped arms against it, seeing t he ranked and moonlight urns. He vomited (Faulkner 208-9). These urns are a metaphor for women and femininity, in relation to Greek books and the Bible (Bleikasten 286). Their cracked state and oozing liquid represents that Bobbie is no eight-day alluring and it shows Joes perception of women and how he expects them to be perfect, when he subconsciously knows that they are not. The feminine atmosphere has caused him to vomit, as he is disgusted by Bobbie and the natural processes of life.Furthermore, there is probably the most influential female social function in the novel, Miss Joanna inwardness. Miss Burden is Joes strongest lover randyly. Again, he is attracted to her masculine qualities, not only physically, but personality-wise. During her first encounter with Joe, she takes her rape like a man and does not struggle or put emotion into it. She is predictable and follows a routine, much like a man, which Joe admires. Burdens struggling betrays no feminine vacillation, no coyness of apparent desire and intention to succumb at last.It was as if he struggled physically with another man for an object of no actual value to either, and for which they struggled on principle alone. Also, she is a social outcast and is a pariah from the community, overlap a mans alienation, much like Joe Christmas (Brooks xvi). In Burden, Joe could have stability to support his shaky lifestyle and troublesome past. However, their relationship is sunk because they both believe the only way it can end is in murder. Hence, Joe must kill Joanna in self-defense, fear, and love. This is the end of Joes amorous relationships for the sojourn of his life.Furthermore, Joe has been impacted by a woman who was not even there throughout the course of his life. His mother, Millie, influenced his heritage by having relations with his father. This determines his entire struggle for identity and the issues with his race in the novel and his complete lifetime. In addition, her absence as he grows up gives him no maternal love or comfort as a young child. Perhaps if she had shown him that he could have healthy relationships with women, he could see that many females can be gorgeous and trustworthy people.Overall, Joes misogynistic attitude has been shaped by years of emotional abuse and love lost. His absence of a maternal figure when he was young and the abandonment of Alice, the only person he ever authentically trusted and went to for comfort, taught him that women were unpredictable. His amorous relationships with Bobbie and Joanna taught him that, while a woman may pop out attractive with masculine and predictable qualities, she is ultimately still a woman, and, therefore, untrusty and weak. All of these elements combine Joe and who he is, his outlooks of life, and the course his life takes.