Roles Of Women In The Unvanquished

The journal article was a great companion piece to go along with “The Unvanquished.” Berg claims that woman in Faulkner’s two novels are transformed from the New Woman to the True Womanhood and that women’s jobs in the war connected to gender roles because of the specific roles the characters played. The article starts off by explaining how “Flags in the Dust” depicts the New Woman after the Civil War is inappropriately gendered. Then, compared to “The Unvanquished” the New Woman is an imaginative retreat because the gender roles were not as rickety. Men are suspected to be the most important roles in the war, but in the novel the woman plays a whole other role. They are the more dominant and prominent role in the war. “The Unvanquished” makes it certain …show more content…
The female characters do not understand their role in the war while it is taking place. The characters don’t surrender the sanctity they had before the war began. The book goes from depicting the New Woman to creating what is known as the True Womanhood. The women have to defend their role as woman instead of what is prescribed. Considering the time period, people were not as open about gender roles. Drusilla defied what it meant to be a woman to pass as a male solider. Women as well as men during the war were not free to go around redefining their genders. Drusilla choosing to be a male soldier makes her praiseworthy, but only in the war. If this took place outside of the war, there could have been severe consequences. The women characters in the novel and how Berg portrays them cannot be contained in a dress cooking in the kitchen. Faulkner explores a complex connection between gender roles of woman and war. He rewrote parts of the Civil War through his eyes to show a female hero. His rewriting of the Civil War by switching roles allows for a connection between gender and sex and also between gender and war. Faulkner allows a representation of war that not only destabilizes but also revokes the fixed gender