Absalom, Absalom! And All the

¶ … Absalom, Absalom! And All the King's Men represent a less traditional, more subversive version of history, and how they are also clearly male representations of history "Absalom! Absalom!" Carries the theme of the Old Testament story where Absalom, David, Solomon, God, the entire narrative, in fact, is patriarchal; not a woman appears on the scene. Absalom, the son tries to, prematurely, take his father, David's, place. He murders his older brother Amnon, and his coveted position is, ultimately, inherited by another male, Solomon.

In the Biblical pattern, it is always the son that takes over the father's house. Sutpen wished to imitate this via biological reproduction, and failed. Nonetheless, in Faulkner's story, women's voices are muted and the male does usurp them. Much like Sadie Burke transmitting her knowledge to Jack Burden in "All the King's Men," the articulate Rosa has to convey the story to Quentin, so that he may write it, telling him that, with the proceeds, he may buy trinkets for his wife.

It is as though she is incapable of telling her story; the way it can be told best, most logically, sensibly, and honestly is by having a man convey it. Indeed, Rosa's narrative method (told through the feminine lens of a dream) disturbs Quentin who redrafts it to reflect his, presumably, more masculine tenor of logic and reason. In the end, Rosa speaks as an agent of patriarchy. Faulkner makes her the mouthpiece of the masculine, and she -- as all women in his story - has lost her voice.

Similarly too, Rosa "cannot pass the gatepost" without Quentin; she has to stand beside it "whimpering until Quentin walks through it with her" (Wilson, 74O), and still she stumbles having to grip Quentin's arm to support herself. The whole is a masculine story, with women portrayed as passive and submissive.

Not only does the theme of the story indicate the paltry role of woman - Sutpen had to kill himself and those dearest to him because of the lack of a son - but the message of the story -- the tone, the pathos, the implications -- betray women's impotence too. "Absalom! Absalom!" also carries subversive undertones in that "part of what is lost in the Old South is the division between races, classes, and genders that enabled white males to maintain authority and mastery." (Wilson, 77).

Thomas Sutpen is a white man who is born into poverty. Despite his greatest endeavors, he can never be accepted by the self-regarding aristocracy of the Southerner upper-class. Eulalia was, unbeknownst to Sutpen, of mixed race. Charles was, therefore, though by now greatly diluted, of mixed race too.

The whole results in anarchy with one killing the other, and this 'messiness', it may be suggested, can be indicated in the pattern of the narrative that is filled with omissions and gaps, and where the listeners (such as Compson and later Quentin and Shreve) have to prompt Sutpen to "Go on." In 'All the King's Men' it is the woman's gaze that is, according to Wilson (2000), the subversive image.

Phebe, the slave, threatens the order that keeps her powerless by staring at her mistress with eyes "bright and hard like gold" when she realized that her mistress was responsible for Trice's suicide. Jack objectifies Anne Stanton in the opening sequence when he stares at her image on the society page of a newspaper, typically portrayed in a social and sexual role, and later whilst waiting for her when he gazes at another glamour shot of Anne.

Yet it is Anne's gaze at Willie that causes disruption of the patriarchal order, and that causes her to subvert society by stepping outside "the.