Faulkner And Love: The Women Who Shaped His Art, A Biography
by Judith L. Sensibar /
2009 / English / PDF
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This book is about the making of the writer William Faulkner. It
is the first to inquire into the three most important women in
his life—his black and white mothers, Caroline Barr and Maud
Falkner, and the childhood friend who became his wife, Estelle
Oldham. In this new exploration of Faulkner’s creative process,
Judith L. Sensibar discovers that these women’s relationships
with Faulkner were not simply close; they gave life to his
imagination. Sensibar brings to the foreground—as Faulkner
did—this “female world,” an approach unprecedented in Faulkner
biography.
This book is about the making of the writer William Faulkner. It
is the first to inquire into the three most important women in
his life—his black and white mothers, Caroline Barr and Maud
Falkner, and the childhood friend who became his wife, Estelle
Oldham. In this new exploration of Faulkner’s creative process,
Judith L. Sensibar discovers that these women’s relationships
with Faulkner were not simply close; they gave life to his
imagination. Sensibar brings to the foreground—as Faulkner
did—this “female world,” an approach unprecedented in Faulkner
biography.
Through extensive research in untapped biographical
sources—archival materials and interviews with these women's
families and other members of the communities in which they
lived—Sensibar transcends existing scholarship and reconnects
Faulkner’s biography to his work. She demonstrates how the themes
of race, tormented love, and addiction that permeated his fiction
had their origins in his three defining relationships with women.
Sensibar alters and enriches our understanding not only of
Faulkner, his art, and the complex world of the American South
that came to life in his brilliant fiction but also of
darknesses, fears, and unspokens that Faulkner unveiled in the
American psyche.
Through extensive research in untapped biographical
sources—archival materials and interviews with these women's
families and other members of the communities in which they
lived—Sensibar transcends existing scholarship and reconnects
Faulkner’s biography to his work. She demonstrates how the themes
of race, tormented love, and addiction that permeated his fiction
had their origins in his three defining relationships with women.
Sensibar alters and enriches our understanding not only of
Faulkner, his art, and the complex world of the American South
that came to life in his brilliant fiction but also of
darknesses, fears, and unspokens that Faulkner unveiled in the
American psyche.
