Impacts of Miscegenation in William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom

Abstract

This paper explores the guilt consciousness of a white man, primarily emanating from his past interracial marriage with a black woman, within the context of antebellum racism in the American South in William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!.The central character Sutpen and his son Henry have a sense of dark vision of human conduct beset by the guilt of miscegenation that can't be forgiven. In the novel, sense of guilt, taken as a sinful act of defiance, leads to a tragic end of their lives and the subsequent fall out of Sutpen's ambition of creating a dynasty in Faulkner's fictive landscape, Jackson, Mississippi.Before Civil War and Lincoln's emancipation, there were laws prohibiting interracial marriages. Although such laws were annulledin the early twentieth century South, the past actions came back to haunt. Anti-miscegenation laws had aim to prevent degeneration of the higher races through legal control. Whites considered themselves as superior to the black and stood against interracial marriages. Sutpen over came the sense of guilt because of his connection with "Negro" blooded son and wife; he repudiated them and refused to have marital affair of Bon and his daughter Judith. When Sutpen revealed his inter-connection with Negro man Bon, Henry displayed outrages had an extreme sense of guilt consciousness and considered it to be true and his relationship with black, which he considered was unwanted and because of which he is continuously vilified. This sense of guilt troubled him and he tried to come out from it but couldn't, and eventually killed Charles Bon.In this dissertation, I have shownthe devastating effects of sin in the guilt-ridden characters who expiate it through suffering.