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Abstract
This thesis explores the significance of femininity, especially daughterhood, in the representational space of William Faulkners South. Using the spatial theory of Henri Lefebvre and others, it reads various female characters in Faulkners body of work as advocates for an altered space in which feminine identity and desire can shape the future of a post-Civil War South. From Drusilla Hawk, who departs her home to fight in the Confederate Army, to Charlotte Rittenmeyer, who dies from a failed abortion, to Clytemnestra Sutpen, who burns down the home of her father and former master Thomas Sutpen, Faulkners women make incremental attempts to reveal their trauma and recreate southern space. As the inheritors and survivors of an aggressively paternalistic space, these women will dictate the way in which Faulkners South moves toward a feminine representational space, or a future in which the feminine voice joins the masculine voice in constructing narratives of being.