The Maternal Figure in Richard Wright's and William Faulkner's Work

Richard Wright's and William Faulkner's work played on the cultural representations of the maternal figure and the determinism they play on the psychological, emotional, sexual and personality traits of their male protagonists.

A source I'll refer to throughout this paper is based on an essay called "Construing Faulknerian Maternity" by Philip M. Weinstein. Though the essay deals primarily with Faulkner's work The Sound and the Fury, I've found that the issues he addresses can be made in Wright's work, as well.

When I say cultural representation of the maternal ideal, I'm dealing specifically in how mothers or maternity is represented in Western culture and we'll see how both Wright and Faulkner addresses these representations in their work.

Two representations that I'll address primarily are religious (i.e., the Virgin Mary) and psychoanalytical, as in Sigmund Freud's work on the psyche, human behavior, and the role the mother plays specifically in childhood development.

The Virgin Mary is a well-known icongraphic figure in religion and Western culture, particularly in Catholicism. Her representation in literary or religious texts is often limited to her relationship within the male patriarchal system and certainly there have been many feminist studies that detail how her representation in Western culture is manifest. She is usually depicted as a non-sexual figure, someone who is self-sacrificial (placing the concerns on external rather than internal influences), and is, as Weinstein describes, a "sacred servant," meaning that she serves as a "bodily carrier" or vessel in which the male identity/body/voice can be brought forth. In essence, the Word is manifest in a patriarchal worldview, denying an autonomous language in which she can express herself. Her role is to nurse and then to mourn the "son," or in this case, Jesus Christ. But, as I said before, her limitation as a person becomes a symbolic relationship that upholds the patriarchal ideal.