Robbing The Mother: Women in Faulkner

William Faulkner claimed that it may be necessary for a writer to "rob his mother," should the need arise. "If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' is worth any number of old ladies," he remarked.

This study of Faulkner's paradoxical attitude toward women, particularly mothers, will stimulate debate and concern, for his novels are shown here to have presented them as both a source and a threat to being and to language.

"My reading of Faulkner," the ...