Re-Envisioning the Mother in Mitchell's Gone with the Wind, Faulkner's Light in August, Welty's the Golden Apples, and Trethewey's Native Guard and Other Poems
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Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University English Dissertations Department of English 5-4-2020 Re-Envisioning the Mother in Mitchell's Gone with the Wind, Faulkner's Light in August, Welty's The Golden Apples, and Trethewey's Native Guard and Other Poems Jill Goad Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss Recommended Citation Goad, Jill, "Re-Envisioning the Mother in Mitchell's Gone with the Wind, Faulkner's Light in August, Welty's The Golden Apples, and Trethewey's Native Guard and Other Poems." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2020. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss/237 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of English at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. RE-ENVISIONING THE MOTHER IN MITCHELL’S GONE WITH THE WIND, FAULKNER’S LIGHT IN AUGUST, WELTY’S THE GOLDEN APPLES, AND TRETHEWEY’S NATIVE GUARD AND OTHER POEMS by JILL GOAD Under the Direction of Pearl McHaney, PhD ABSTRACT My dissertation will analyze mothers and maternal figures in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind, William Faulkner’s Light in August, Eudora Welty’s The Golden Apples, and Natasha Trethewey’s Native Guard and other poems according to a feminist psychoanalytic framework that argues for the significance of Freudian castration occurring at birth instead of during a child’s early years. I contend that the mother’s body may be seen as a site of castration instead of a site of wholeness and plenitude; because the mother embodies traumatic separation or its possibility, the mother-child relationship is marked by lifelong ambivalence. The traumatic symbolic designation of the mother’s body has the same repercussions for a relationship between a maternal or caretaker figure and the children in her charge. My approach to analyzing the pre- Oedipal mother and the consequences of birth entails classifying the mother as a more powerful and complex figure than most current scholarly work on mothers has supposed her to be; further, my analysis of the mother’s power in giving birth to selfhood and subjectivity involves contesting Freudian and Freudian-influenced theory, the prevailing psychoanalytic theory that lends the mother little agency. Though psychoanalytic theory is intended to report on the way things are, not the way things should be, theory allied with Freud misrepresents the mother as marginalized and silent. Rereading the southern mother according to feminist revisions of Freud is particularly significant, since southern culture has absorbed and normalized two roles for the middle-class, white southern woman, the belle and the lady, and one role for the black southern woman, the mammy, while often erasing or ignoring women who fall outside of these roles. Rereading the mother, then, can reconfigure her as central to culture and powerful in her creation of selfhood. INDEX WORDS: Margaret Mitchell, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Natasha Trethewey, Mothers, Castration RE-ENVISIONING THE MOTHER IN MITCHELL’S GONE WITH THE WIND, FAULKNER’S LIGHT IN AUGUST, WELTY’S THE GOLDEN APPLES, AND TRETHEWEY’S NATIVE GUARD AND OTHER POEMS by JILL GOAD A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University 2020 Copyright by Jill Suzanne Goad 2020 RE-ENVISIONING THE MOTHER IN MITCHELL’S GONE WITH THE WIND, FAULKNER’S LIGHT IN AUGUST, WELTY’S THE GOLDEN APPLES, AND TRETHEWEY’S NATIVE GUARD AND OTHER POEMS by JILL GOAD Committee Chair: Pearl McHaney Committee: H. Calvin Thomas Matthew Dischinger Electronic Version Approved: Office of Graduate Services College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University May 2020 iv DEDICATION First and foremost, this dissertation is dedicated to my husband, Daniel Van Briesen, whose tireless and unconditional support of every aspect of my academic career has helped push me forward. I am lucky to have such an incredible person in my corner. I would also like to dedicate this dissertation to my wonderful parents, Ray and Brenda Goad, who have cheered me on my whole life. Their pride in my accomplishments means the world to me. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Many thanks to my dissertation director, Pearl McHaney, whose meticulous editing eye and continued encouragement compelled me to complete work I am heartily proud of. I am also incredibly appreciative of the comments I received from Matt Dischinger and Cal Thomas, whose insights are helping me keep the next big project in mind. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................ V 1 INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................. 1 2 MOTHERS IN GONE WITH THE WIND: MORE THAN BELLES AND LADIES ........................................................................................................................................... 22 3 “MY, MY. A BODY DOES GET AROUND”: RECONFIGURING THE FREUDIAN MOTHER IN FAULKNER’S LIGHT IN AUGUST .............................. 44 4 “DO I WANT TO BE THAT?”: MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS IN WELTY’S THE GOLDEN APPLES ................................................................................................. 74 5 “BUT IN DREAMS YOU LIVE”: THE COMPLEXITY OF THE MOTHER IN NATASHA TRETHEWEY’S POETRY ...................................................................... 97 6 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................. 119 WORKS CITED........................................................................................................................ 125 1 1 INTRODUCTION My dissertation will analyze mothers and maternal figures in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind, William Faulkner’s Light in August, Eudora Welty’s The Golden Apples, and Natasha Trethewey’s Native Guard and other poems according to a feminist psychoanalytic framework that argues for the significance of Freudian castration occurring at birth instead of during a child’s early years. In my work, a mother is defined as a woman who has a relationship to her child: she may have given birth, raised a child, carried a child or any combination of these. I define a maternal figure as a woman who elicits a strong emotional reaction from a child who looks to her to fulfill some role traditionally embodied by the mother such as role model, confidant, or caretaker. I contend that the mother’s body may be seen as a site of castration instead of a site of wholeness and plenitude; because the mother embodies traumatic separation or its possibility, the mother-child relationship is marked by lifelong ambivalence. The traumatic symbolic designation of the mother’s body has the same repercussions for a relationship between a maternal or caretaker figure and the children in her charge. My approach to analyzing the pre- Oedipal mother and the consequences of birth entails classifying the mother as a more powerful and complex figure than most current scholarly work on mothers has supposed her to be; further, my analysis of the mother’s power in giving birth to selfhood and subjectivity involves contesting Freudian and Freudian-influenced theory, the prevailing psychoanalytic theory that lends the mother little agency. Pre-Oedipal refers to the period in a child’s psychosexual development before the onset of the Oedipus complex that is marked by attachment to the mother. Within the Oedipus complex, however, renunciation of the mother is required in order for the child to develop; this renunciation is based on the assumption, according to Adrienne 2 Rich, “that the two-person mother-child relationship is by nature regressive, circular, [and] unproductive” (197). Reconfiguring castration as birth, which renders separation from the mother originary instead of secondary, dissolves psychoanalytic theory’s necessary link between the father and culture and removes the mother from her place in the margins (Sprengnether 10). Mothers in Southern Literature Though psychoanalytic theory is intended to report on the way things are, not the way things should be, theory allied with Freud misrepresents the mother as marginalized and silent. Rereading the southern mother according to feminist revisions of Freud is particularly significant since southern culture has absorbed and normalized two roles for the middle-class, white southern woman, the belle and the lady, while often erasing or ignoring women who fall outside of these roles. In addressing the persistence of the image of the ideal southern woman, Anne Goodwyn Jones defines the belle as “flirtatious but sexually innocent, bright but not deep, beautiful as a statue or painting or porcelain but risky to touch…she entertains but does not challenge her audience” (42). Upon marrying, the belle becomes a lady; no longer flirty and chatty, she embodies morality and manners and submits to the authority of her husband, the church, and God. The lady’s job includes “satisfying her husband, raising his children, meeting the demands of the family’s social position, and sustaining the ideals of the South” (Jones 42). In 1891, Wilbur Fisk Tillett praised native southern women’s purity, neatness, and passivity, noting that their lives