The Gothic Grotesque

Disability, Deformity, and Monstrosity in Faulkner’s Sanctuary

Williams, Sebastian A.

Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies (2019), 13, (4), 461–476.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3828/jlcds.2019.34
Language: English
Pages: 16

Abstract

Faulkner is often associated with the Southern Gothic, a genre that features Freudian repression, horror, and the grotesque. The article considers the relationship between disability and the Gothic in Faulkner’s Sanctuary, with a particular focus on the notion of monstrosity. While several critics have written about the range of disabled characters in Faulkner’s writing, Sanctuary may be read as part of a broader modernist engagement with textual and bodily deformity. Building on the work of scholars such as Ato Quayson, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, and Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, the article demonstrates the ways disabled characters are often dehumanized in Faulkner’s Southern Gothic. Disabled characters may be said to disrupt ableist assumptions and draw attention to the dark, incestuous desires that have become the norm in Yoknapatawpha County. While Faulkner is notoriously ambivalent about disability in his writing, Sanctuary does blur the boundaries between able-bodied and disabled, normal and abnormal. Ultimately, the novel plays with the Gothic genre, creating a productive space in which to critique many popular discourses about biology, the body, and form that arose in the early twentieth century.

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