This was doubtlessly my FAVORITE read in my Faulknerian fiction class in college several years back. I loved the nitty-grittiness of it, but I feel I draw some differing conclusions on Joanna Burden. As her name suggests, she personifies the White Man's Burden--just as racist as her ... I don't know if you'd call them her more "legitimately" Southern neighbors, or what, but--just as racist, but the racism mainifests in a different way. It's the, I feel you're inferior but I'm horrified by how my race treated yours, so I'll exhaust myself uplifting you til I feel better, racism. That was the sour note prevalent throughout hers and Christmas's relationship; she saw him as a color rather than a human being; he was literally her show-monkey so she could prove what an educated and enlightened white woman she was, except she was wasting the effort on someone who didn't want it.
As for Christmas's attitudes toward women, he was just used to being treated like crap (and treating others in turn, like the repeated bitch-slapping of Bunch in the tavern earlier in the book), and when he wasn't, that was something that caught him offguard, provoking his anger. It is unfortunate and albeit probably not coincidental that most of the sympathetic figures in the book are women. It is ironic, however, that some of his regard for them, he holds in common with I believe his maternal grandfather, who obsessively hated him.
I'm not sure I recall the rape scene, though. I remember after the first time they had sex Christmas seemed traumatized, making some comment like "it was as though she were the man and I the woman," but most of their intimate scenes, like her pulling the gun on him in an act of religious fanaticism, were generally fucked up.
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Date: 2012-10-22 02:34 am (UTC)As for Christmas's attitudes toward women, he was just used to being treated like crap (and treating others in turn, like the repeated bitch-slapping of Bunch in the tavern earlier in the book), and when he wasn't, that was something that caught him offguard, provoking his anger. It is unfortunate and albeit probably not coincidental that most of the sympathetic figures in the book are women. It is ironic, however, that some of his regard for them, he holds in common with I believe his maternal grandfather, who obsessively hated him.
I'm not sure I recall the rape scene, though. I remember after the first time they had sex Christmas seemed traumatized, making some comment like "it was as though she were the man and I the woman," but most of their intimate scenes, like her pulling the gun on him in an act of religious fanaticism, were generally fucked up.