Christmas and Women Essay

It was non the ruffianly work which he hated, nor the punishment and injustice. He was used to that originally he ever saw both of them. He expected no less, and so he was n both outraged nor surprised. It was the adult female that soft kindness which he thinkd himself blamed to be forever victim of and which he hated worse than he did the embarrassing and ruthless justice of men. (Faulkner 158) In William Faulkners Light in August, Joe Christmass misogynistic sentiment towards women has reason behind it, based on his negative past with signifi give the bouncet female characters.The above quote emphasizes his feelings towards women, describing how Joe is able to like the harshness of a world, but can non defy the weak and nurturing nature of a adult female. Moreover, he believes women are still out to entertain him cry, as we see with his attitude towards the dietician and Mrs. McEachern. Over the course of his life, beginning with the absence seizure of a sire, Joe has been impacted by almost(prenominal) female influences, from a brief skimp with an orphan girl, Alice, up to his lack of a dealingship with his mother, Millie.These women meet led to Joes distrust and pure hate of femininity. Alice, a twelve year-old girl from the orphanhood, is his first-year demote with a maternal port revoke. Joe relies on Alice as a supportive comfort, as he does non have a mother or any adult figure to turn to, for that matter. He had liked her, overflowing to let her mother him a olive-sized perhaps because of it. And so to him she was as mature, nearly as large in size, as the adult women who ordered his eating and process and sleeping, with the difference she was not and never would be his enemy.One night she waked him. She was telling him good-by but he did not bash it. He was sleepy and a poor annoyed, never full awake, worthless her because she had endlessly tried to be good to him. He didnt know that she was crying because he did not know that g course of actionn spate cried, and by the time he in condition(p) that, memory had forgotten her. He went jeopardize into sleep while still suffering her, and the next morning she was gone. Vanished, no accompany of her left, not even a garment, the in truth bed in which she had slept already occupied by a new boy.He never did know where she went to. (Faulkner 127-8) When Alice leaves, Joe is confused and feels lost. He then has no one to depose on, learn from, or be sozzled to, in lots(prenominal) a setting. With this experience, he feels as if women are unpredictable and leave leave at any apt(p) point. There is not consistency in relationships with them and, therefore, they cannot be sure. The incident speaks volumes of what the child at the orphanage had lacked, the lack that was to warp him outdoor(a) from cleaning ladykind (Brooks xxiii).It is understandable that this abandonment could have such an impression on a teen mind with no real const ancy in his life. The Freudian theory applies here, with the motif that childhood experiences mold an individual to the highest degree significantly and they determine the attitudes and perceptions of said 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 immediately and he agonizes over the anticipation. It never occurred to her that he believed that he was the one who had been taken in underworld and was being tortured with punishment deferred and that he was putting himself in her way in order to apprehend it over with, get his whipping and strike the balance and create verbally it off (Faulkner 115). This is when he first gets the psyche that women are alone out to doctor him cry. He believes that the dietitian is intentionally tortureso me him by not immediately carrying through with(predicate) with a punishment for his wrongdoings.The action which adds table salt to the wound is when the dietitian, believing that the boy pull up stakes convey his knowledge of her amorous actions to an orphanage authority, tries to bribe 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 bucolic 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 head kindness towards Joe, he retaliates with acts of cruelty, such as when she offers him food and he dumps it on the floor angrily. Later, Joe says to himself She is toilsome to make me cry, he thought, lying cold and rigid in his bed, his hands beneath his head and the lunar month falling across his body, hearing the lulu murmur of the mans phonate 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 sympathy who he is through his adolescence. Because he does not know his parentage, he struggles not only with his racial individuation, but his soulal identity as well. And, the more Mrs. McEachern attempts to mother Christmas, the pass on her pushes her away (Schisler 2008).Throughout Joes unripe adult eld, he has relationships with several women, that is to say prostitutes (or waitresses). He routinely tells them of his racial status, either to shock or disgust them or to test their feelings toward him. With these reactions, he travels from cleaning woman to woman to find his identity. However, his first real experience is with the waitress, Bobbie Allen. Joes initial attraction is to her manful features, such as her male hands. He tells her that he is part 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 execrable past. A contribution to their relationship is Joes distance from nature. He is far from nature, the natural representation of femininity (Brooks xvii), and he does not accept the natural processes of life. Thus, he gets excite 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 work, blanched. And not one was perfect. Each one was yeasty and from each crack there issue d some liquid, death-colored, and foul.He touched a tree, slant his propped arms against it, seeing the ranked and moonlight urns. He vomited (Faulkner 208-9). These urns are a fiction for women and femininity, in relation to Greek literature and the Bible (Bleikasten 286). Their cracked state and muck liquid represents that Bobbie is no longer bid and it shows Joes perception of women and how he expects them to be perfect, when he subconsciously knows that they are not. The womanish atmosphere has caused him to vomit, as he is stimulate by Bobbie and the natural processes of life.Furthermore, there is believably the most influential female component part in the novel, Miss Joanna commove. Miss slant is Joes strongest lover emotionally. 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 obvious inclination and intention to succumb at last.It was as if he struggled physically with another man for an object of no actual nurse to either, and for which they struggled on principle alone. Also, she is a hearty outcast and is a pariah from the community, overlap a mans alienation, much like Joe Christmas (Brooks xvi). In Burden, Joe could have perceptual constancy to support his shaky lifestyle and hard past. However, their relationship is ruined 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 domiciliate 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 incline in the novel and his complete lifetime. In addition, her absence as he grows up gives him no maternal love or comfort as a youthful child. Perhaps if she had shown him that he could have well-preserved relationships with women, he could see that many females can be beautiful 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 truly 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 appear attractive with masculine and predictable qualities, she is ultimately still a woman, and, therefore, untrustworthy and weak. All of these elements combine Joe and who he is, his outlooks of life, and the course his life takes.